What do you call someone who hangs around with musicians? A drummer. With the popularity of music games such as Guitar Hero, a commonly held suspicion among musicians has been confirmed. Of all the members of a band, the lead guitarist is the one everyone wants to be.
It is very rare that anyone stands in front of the mirror with a tennis racquet pretending to play bass or bop their parents upturned pots and pans with a wooden spoon aspiring to fill Roger Taylor's shoes.
It is either the singer or lead guitarist the vast majority of people dream of being, the charismatic ones at the front of the stage taking all the glory while the bass player and drummer mumble under their breath about how they could do that, they just don't wanna.
Not to underestimate bass players, there have been some great bass lines like The White Stripes '7 Nation Army', The Hives 'Because i wanna', Queen's 'Another One Bites The Dust' and the Jets 'Are ya gonna be my girl' but memorable bass lines are very few and far between and the same can be said for those in the drumming business.
'Smells like Teen Spirit' has an excellent drum beat and 'My Sharona' is about the only song i play drums to on the steering wheel as i drive along, but then i put My Sharona up as pretty much perfect in every aspect, especially the guitar solo in the long version, although the lyric 'I always get it up for the touch of the younger kind' is highly suspect.
Bass and drums are an integral part of any band but they are mainly there as the background noise for the likes of Slash, Hendrix, Kirk Hammet, Matthew Bellamy and Brian May to look cool.
There are kids and adults clutching their guitar shaped game pad and prancing about their living rooms all over pretending to be Slash although i defy anyone to do the thing he does with a cigarette, it takes a special type of person to be able to smoke a whole cigarette without removing it from their mouth and you won't see Mike Mills from REM do that.
5 comments:
hey! easy on mike... are you actually suggesting that slash is better? yikes. :0
guitar here is most likely a sign of the apocalypse. so very faux.
funny post!
It's great that this game is so popular. My daughter, who drums, has 2 guitar hero games.
I think John Deacon's bass in Another one bites the dust is the best I have ever heard.
Maybe this partly explains my liking for dance music, but on the whole, I love a really great/massive bassline easily as much as a lead guitar riff. My faves include:
Joy Division - She's Lost Control (Peter Hook)
Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Give it Away (Flea)
Pink Floyd - Money (Roger Waters)
The Stone Roses - Fool's Gold (Mani)
The Clash - Guns of Brixton (Paul Simonen)
There's lots more though. e.g. The (admittedly double-bass) playing on Van Morrison's 'Astral Weeks' album is one of the most staggering things I've ever heard...
And as for the ciggie thing, I saw (French composer/songwriter) Sebastian Tellier smoke one with his nose a while ago. That's more weirdly impressive than actually 'cool' though, I guess.
Don't get me STARTED on gee-tar players. Haven't you the read the blog???
The ladies like guitar players because the shape of the instrument is sexy, with curves like a woman’s body. We imagine having done to us what’s being done to it as it’s strummed and stroked. And there’s the occasional glimpse of “O” face.
We have Rock Band (includes Guitar Hero, Drum Hero, and Karaoke hero)for the Xbox 360 her in the Cody Bones house, and it includes drums. We rock, especially on the Nirvana tunes. My son just finished Heavier than Heaven for a summer read, I love it.
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