Beatles Rock Band

I really want The Beatles: Rock Band. I don't have any game system so I can't get Guitar Hero or Rock Band, so I always have to hit up my friends that have one of the two to play.

I saw an ad on the outside wall of Blockbuster for The Beatles: Rock Band and I've seen one of the Beatles' Rock Band music videos on tv for "Ticket to Ride". It looks really bizarre! Seeing the Beatles in black and white on The Ed Sullivan Show, for example, and then seeing them in computer animation, is really a trip. It was like when The Beatles' "Love" came out (which, by the way, I really didn't like. Why combine songs together and try to make them sound more psychedelic if that wasn't the original intention for the song?) Even though I am not sure if I like how The Beatles have been put into the music video world of the 21st century, the songs don't seem to have been changed for the game, as far as I can tell.

What is different about this new version of Rock Band is that four-piece harmonies have now been added, and each song you master rewards you with extra rare footage of the Beatles. As the advertisements provide, "The acclaimed Rock Band elements of interactive play and full band capacity are here, but with brand-new additions. This will be the first music game to offer harmonies, challenging you to recreate The Beatles’ vocal blend. There are custom-built models of the instruments the band itself played, audio straight from the masters, and graphics that take you on a magical tour through the key moments in Beatles history. Master the songs to hear rare audio and view unseen photos from the archives!"

The songs on Rock Band that I enjoy playing the most are the ones that are fast, or at least have good guitar solos because it presents more of a challenge. I'm interested to see how Rock Band with the Beatles will turn out - Rock Band and Guitar Hero haven't used Beatles songs yet probably because they don't usually seem to be "hard rock" enough, but at the height of The Beatles, they were the ultimate rock and rollers. The definition of what rock music even is has completely changed; forty or fifty years ago, Elvis, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones defined rock and roll music, but for today's standards, their songs, when not played on "Classic Rock" radio stations, would be considered softer rock. Rock music has changed with every musical decade: the faster guitar riffs of the 1980's, the grunge era of the '90s, and now the addition of indie pop-rock that has ruled the 2000's.

In the 1960's, The Beatles had the mop tops that parents feared were too long and that their kids would copy (and they did!), but it is absolutely ridiculous to look at their haircuts now and see them as a threat. After all, we saw what the 1980's hair bands were like.

In my previous post, I talked about how it is interesting to think about how The Beatles would be seen if they became a new band of today and if nobody had any preconceived notions of them. Although it would be hard to study because it is impossible to ignore the history we already know, blending Rock Band and The Beatles together is probably as close as we can get; we can see an example of a 21st century music frenzy combined with a 1960's music revolution and see the affect one has on the other.

Here is a link to the website that is promoting the new game, out on September 9th:

http://www.thebeatlesrockband.com/