Guitar Hero

Growing up in a small, semi-rural town where broomball and shining deer were considered high entertainment (if you’re unfamiliar with these provincial pastimes, please, don’t ask), I was keenly aware of a strange, terrifying sub-set of my peers. No, not the girls who harbored abnormal crushes on Channel 12’s Jerry Taft, or even the kids who looked like circus animals (my graduating class alone had three pandas), but something much more puzzling, much more insidious: 13-year-olds with facial hair.

For the most part, these freaks of nature were farm kids who drank at least four cartons of milk during lunch, had nicknames like “Goatsy” or “Yummers” and were almost always excellent bowlers. So enamored were these mutants with their precious little dirt-staches that they never once shaved them, instead opting to savor each scraggly whisker for years on end as if it were manna from heaven. Of course, much like a farmer’s field, if you fail to cultivate the land (or, in this case, your upper lip), you deprive your crops the chance to flourish and grow, leaving you with nothing but dirt. And that’s exactly what happened here: all throughout high school, these redneck goons sported the same ill-formed, uncultivated facial hair. Occasionally running into them now during drunken jaunts back to my hometown, I always take a certain amount of pleasure in seeing these grown men still rocking straight-up peach fuzz.

I bring up this disturbing phenomenon because I harbor something of an ill-formed mustache myself: my sub-standard guitar playing (in the realm of facial hair, I still remain as smooth and ridiculous as a baby bird). Technically, I’ve been playing guitar for nearly half my life; this statement is entirely misleading, however, when you consider that in my case, “playing” roughly translates to “learning some basic chords when you’re 16 and strumming them to death for the next decade-and-a-half.” Perhaps it was my early frustration with never figuring out that goddamn opening riff to “Come As You Are” (something most eight-year-olds could probably lick in ten minutes) but after a while, I simply gave up.

This piss-poor attitude was recently thrown into sharp relief when local tunesmiths The Danger asked me to fill in for their recently departed lead guitarist. It was understood this emergency substitution would be for a single show at the Cactus Club (opening for the criminally underappreciated Dark Horse Project), and that we would only have a few weeks to rehearse. It was also understood that I would be expected to play some of the leads – nothing complicated, I was assured – but leads nonetheless. Would I do it? After carefully considering my utter lack of time, energy or talent, I immediately said yes.(A side note: if The Danger happens to be playing near a venue near you, do yourself a favor and check them out; it’s nice to hear a band that doesn’t rely on chamber-pop chanting or lyrics about robots and zombies to get their point across.)

Rehearsals went well, though my lack of expertise was painfully evident throughout. Minor and seventh chords eluded me. A bass line I was asked to play continually baffled me. Nevertheless, I worked diligently (it’s a credit to the collective patience of Thomas, Jered and Ian that they never once told me to go fuck myself), and in the end, arrived at a point where I was confident I could pull it off.

During this process, I was assailed with countless questions from friends and family alike: Would I be getting paid? Wouldn’t I be better off staying at home and watching Magnum P.I.? Why, exactly, was I doing this? Ultimately, the only reply I could come up with was, “Why not?” Though it can sometimes seem passé, playing guitar in a rock and roll band is still pretty fucking awesome, and not something that should be taken lightly.After all, what’s the alternative?

This seemingly rhetorical question was answered the next evening while playing the video game Rock Band. By now, I’m sure we’re all familiar with the basic premise of this evil, evil game (playing along to a smorgasbord of classic rock songs with faux-guitars and drums), and yes, it’s pretty fucking fun, and yes, it’s a good way to kill a couple hours with your friends. Let’s be honest, though: it’s far from the real deal, it’s kind of dorky and it’s guaranteed to never get you laid. (If you think about it, Rock Band is the rock and roll equivalent of dry humping: hollow, off-putting, and more than a little bit embarrassing.)

Playing the game, I grew sad: was this the grim future in store for millions of aging band nerds? Was this my future? Did I really want to resign myself so soon to hanging out in a woodpaneled basement and “playing” along to some fucking Molly Hatchet songs? If we still have opportunities to do this thing for real – even with less than stellar skills at our disposal – shouldn’t we throw all caution to the wind and simply say “yes” before it’s too late?

It’s a few days later and the Cactus show has arrived. We’re standing on the stage, instruments poised, a roomful of people preparing for what we’re about to do. Thomas looks over at me. “Are you ready?” he asks.

I nod my head, turn my body to the crowd and go for broke.VS