danajohnhill.org | Hard Times Come Again No More

Much ado is being made today about the simultaneous release of the newly-remastered Beatles catalog, and the interactive video game, Beatles Rock Band.  I am intrigued by the former, and ambivalent about the latter.

One one hand, Rock Band strikes me as the height of poserdom – another example of the artificial replacing the real in our society.  We don’t play tennis or go bowling anymore; we play Wii Fit.  We don’t play guitar; we play Guitar Hero.  John Lennon and Paul McCartney were introduced to one another on the afternoon of July 6, 1957.  Had the two merely played guitar-shaped pieces of plastic in their bedrooms instead of real guitars, popular music would be quite different today.  When the Beatles played the Ed Sullivan Show seven years later, an army of American boys were inspired to pick up their own guitars, start rock bands, and write the rock songs that defined an era.  What if today’s kids are picking up game controllers instead of real instruments?  Wither music?

On the other hand, a segment I heard on the radio last night raised a point I might have otherwise never considered.  A caller to On Point said that he treasures the quality time he has spent playing Rock Band with his children, and that it has helped him feel more connected with them.  They get to know his music, and he gets to know their music.  This got me thinking: what if the millions of parents who felt so upset by rock music in 1964 had instead been able to share the experience with their children?  After all, shaggy hair and suggestive hand-holding talk wasn’t really what bothered parents about the Beatles.  The Beatles were the physical embodiment of the growing divide separating the World War II generation from their kids.

The Beatles are popular enough, and certainly not at risk of being forgotten, even by kids today.  So I don’t think all this hoopla is about introducing a new generation to Lennon-McCartney.  I think, rather, that it might actually be about bonding.  Video games have divided parents and children for more than twenty years.  If Beatles Rock Band can bring them together, things really will have come full circle.

Filed under: Musings, Popular Music, Technology on September 9th, 2009