Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Guitar (anti)Hero

Went to see a band last night and it reminded me of a couple of things.
1) There is a reason why there are no major Italian language rock bands that I am aware of.
2) Rock should be left to the kids.

Italian is not a language that lends itself well to the Rock format. Opera perhaps, but here it sounded just a little bit odd. Of course when they did do songs in English it only made me glad for the others being in Italian as I was able to understand the god awful lyrical composition.

Take this particular gem of a chorus for example.

"I called her on the phone and I asked her out,
Do you want to know what she
said?
She said we are gonna have a good time.
Yeah!
We are gonna have a
good time."

Now I don't claim to be a lyrical genius myself but I can sure as hell tell the good from the bad and the down right ugly.

The band while technically very good had absolutely zero raawwk in them. Take the singer/guitarist for example. The man was mid thirties, bald (but not shaven), had his shirt tucked into his jeans and was wearing hiking boots (for comfort and stability no doubt). Not exactly going to have God fearing Christian parents burning little Johnnie's record collection is he? No this was £1.50 that might just have been better spent playing Euro millions.

What it made absolutely clear to me was that I must abandon all idle day dreams of picking up my guitar and forming a band again. This balding, middle age rocker was a message from above, like the lottery finger, "It could be You!". Yes indeed it could be me wearing comfortable shoes and singing my bad lyrics to a mid week crowd of uninterested punters. Rollins I am not.

I will no longer devote any more time to daydreaming about taking the stage to a screaming and adoring crowd before rocking them to within an inch of their lives with three chords and the truth. No, instead I will make do with playing Guitar Hero, on my own, in the dark and drunk.

0 comments: