In my free time, when not working or gaming, I go to music shows with my friends. I like bands. Like, a lot, and I love to see live shows. Mostly I like the local stuff here in Brooklyn, but once in a while I'll pay a little more for a ticket to see a better-known touring band in a bigger venue (the sort I normally avoid because of the $10 beer or whatever!) .
One of my favorite bands is Animal Collective (yeah, yeah, you and every other d-bag in Brooklyn, Leigh). They're probably in my top five, at least for these days, and the music blogosphere is full of all kinds of cynical snark and eye-rolling about how they're about to "cross over" to the mainstream and blah blah. So seeing them live would be a pretty big deal, even if the ticket's going to be a bit pricier. And yet, every time the opportunity's arisen, I decline.
It's not just because I prefer more intimate shows to huge affairs. It's because I don't think Animal Collective would be too much fun to watch, or at least not relative to how much it'd cost. This is because they're three dudes who make their music with major contribution from electronics and effects -- seeing them would be less "watching a band play" and more "watching some guys fiddle around with equipment."
As much as I love the band, "watching some guys fiddle around with equipment" is just not the same to me as "watching some guys rock out on stage."
Okay, and now I'm getting to the video game part. It's the energy of a rock show that makes plastic guitar games so successful -- that, and the aspirational rockstar fantasy. This is something I really don't think translates into hunching over a turntable in DJ Hero. In other words, I think DJ Hero is by its very nature less broadly-appealing than Guitar Hero, and yesterday at Gamasutra, I wrote about why, expanding so that my position hopefully makes a bit more sense to you.
Of course, I'm more intense of a music consumer than average, and I'm also more intense of a video game "consumer" than average, so the collision of two major interest spheres for me is bound to color my perspective differently from that of some dude wandering into GameStop. Nonetheless, I feel pretty strongly on this point -- check it out and tell me what you think.
By the way, if you're among the large swath of my gaming readers who couldn't give a hell about my nerdy music, you wouldn't know that the header image is the cover of Animal Collective's critical-darling Merriweather Post Pavilion, which you might like to listen to. I tried making a giant version of this image my desktop wallpaper once, and I lasted all of thirty seconds before my eyes started gushing founts of blood. Trippy, right?
[PS: As you can see, I survived both my move to a great new apartment as well as the most crippling flu I can recall ever having -- thanks to everyone who sent kind wishes and comments through my travails!]
