Three-Tune Tuesday: Guitar Hero II
Guitar Hero games, are they not due a comeback? Every few years they start appearing in what is left of the UK's retail sector in those large oversized boxes, with those plastic instruments, only to vanish shortly after when everyone gets bored again.
In the lull times, good condition box sets go for quite decent money on eBay. All you need to do is wait for the right time to offload that bunch of 'plastic crap' you no longer use as it's no longer 'a thing'.
You can always buy it again when fashion dictates.
Source
...'Guitar Hero II, March 2007, this is when it all happened'...
I have good memories of creating a plastic instrument band, with myself on lead. You always needed someone a little outgoing to be cast as the vocalist, and the rest of the crew was easy if you had the people.
Many iterations including ‘Rock Band’ followed Guitar Hero II, not the first, but my first exposure to this franchise. The fact most of the songs were done by cheap rip-off artists hardly distracted me at the time.
It was all about the guitar, and Harmonix jacked up the solo parts so we could really here them, or hear them get balls’d up if you didn’t have the skill to pull off the parts.
I owe Harmonix for introducing me to songs I had never heard previously, only these versions below are by the original artists.
Strutter – Kiss (Kiss – 1974)
Kiss was a band I liked at around 15 years old. Was it the music or the image?, probably the latter, but I do remember 'Detroit Rock City', and the Destroyer and Kiss Alive albums, all of which I owned.
My art teacher also will remember me liking the band, as I was quite adamant that I would draw the Kiss logo perfectly in his classroom instead of concentrating on 'real art'. He was not amused at all, and I ended up with an 'E' for Art. Maybe it wasn't my thing?
Source
...'my attempts are drawing the above went unnoticed, I could have been a world-class replica creator if my Art teacher was into American hard rock'...
'Strutter' was a track on Guitar Hero II, and not by the ‘real’ Kiss. As I had not heard it previously, I was not fazed by the cheesy imitation and the solos in the song really caught me ear, especially the mid-section one.
It was one of the easier tracks to master and with a lot of practice I could manage it on ‘Medium’ difficulty. Anything beyond that meant moving your left hand up and down the fret board. Fuck that!
Stop! – Jane’s Addiction (Ritual de lo Habitual – 1990)
It's strange I should choose a song which I don't particularly like right from the start..., from the initial cliched foreign female voice over talking, to the indifferent verse right after.
Perry Farrell has a squeaky high-pitched annoying voice, sounding somewhat similar to Rush’s Geddy Lee, except I can cope with Geddy, and Rush are one of my favourite vintage bands from the 1970's.
'Stop!' changes direction around 1 minute 40 seconds in and for a short while that grungy heavy sound does float my boat. A shame is doesn’t last for the rest of it, and we get thrown back into the humdrum only too soon.
Apparently the band was famous for the live shows, but in the UK they didn't catch on. If it wasn't for Guitar Hero, I would have never heard the middle section I am so fond of. As for their other songs, I have never bothered seeking them out.
Tattooed Love Boys – The Pretenders (Pretenders – 1979)
A couple of years ago, I listened to Steve Jones (Sex Pistols) autobiography in the form of an unabridged audio book. It was a great entertaining 'read', full of explicit language and very different from John Lydons' which was the previous listen.
When young, Steve was an insatiable sex monster and Chrissie Hynde happened to be a fan at the time the Pistols band took off. If you believe what Steve says, then Chrissie got done over many times.
It didn't stop her from creating her own band a couple of years later and what a fan I was. Their debut album is patchy, but contains this, the monster hit, 'Brass in Pocket' and a song beloved to me, 'Lovers of Today' which I highlighted in a STEEM post long ago.
If there’s an element of ‘punk’ in ‘Tattooed Love Boys’ then I can equate that with the tempo (fast) and length (short) only. It contains an irregular time signature, more often found in complex pieces of music that got my ear.
Playing it on Guitar Hero was highly problematic. This is no simple tune, and I am kind of glad it was reserved for the expert players later on in the game.
Guitar Image - Source
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Don't Get Me Wrong is my favorite Pretenders song. One of their slower ones for sure, but it is still good. I remember playing guitar hero when I first met my wife. I never owned it, but her brother did and we had a lot of fun playing it. I remember my favorite songs were Message in a Bottle by the Police, Crossroads by Cream, and the one Rolling Stones song that was on there. I can't remember the name now. I liked the Allman Brothers song (Melissa, or Jessica) too, but we hardly ever did it because it was just too long!
It was 'Jessica', this is the full complement. After GH2, more of them came out but the magic wasnt there. I think it was due to a few of my friends all playing it, and there was a 'leaderboard' per song. It was the competition that made it good, even when solo.
That Pretenders track is quite fast, this is slow one.., the slowest I think.
Can't you hear me knocking is the Stones song that I enjoyed playing. They were a bit more technical, but had fast parts that were repetitive. It made you feel like a rock god when you finally got the pattern down!
I would pick it up again in a minute if everyone else did. Still got a plastic guitar in the closet.
Wow. Really nice
I was a guitar hero god!!!!
We had those thing in my work where we all passed around this scammy Microsoft rise for broken gear to get the replacement guitar for free and a group of us after doing it started having guitar hero nights.
Aw man, those were the days. We would get insanely drunk and have tourney's to see who was best. Modestly I have to say I kicked ass! Even when pished!
It was brilliant, you made a band with a ridiculous name and then it played out like a RPG campaign. Pure genius, and I miss it.
I far from kicked arse. Hard and Expert meant the 'blue' button and that meant moving fingers on the fret board. Were you one of those types?
I was a fingerer!! It didn't go against me that I play guitar despite that not being necessary! My mate who also plays a bit of real guitar couldn't get it at all.
I did think they were genius marketing games. I wish I had kept them actually cos the kids would have loved it. The singing at least!
I checked and Harmonix are still issuing new songs, in 2024. Amazing that they are keeping at it for a 'dead' franchise. Maybe it's still going underground somewhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_downloadable_songs_for_the_Rock_Band_series
Some of my favourite stuff has not made an appearance. 😌
That is awesome apart from none of your favourites!
The thing is that as time goes on it gets harder to keep old shit to run it on. Gamers in general are an upgradey bunch. Although I think I might have my Xbox one somewhere, bet it wouldn't work if I sparked it up
Interesting arbitrage. While they think it’s in fashion, the visionary hammers them and gets the benefits. Nice!!
Muy buena publicación, realmente el juego está genial
!WOC
You know, I never played Guitar Hero. I remember when the Beatles one was released, I was thinking about buying it, but then I realized I didn't want to buy an entire video game system just for one game, even one that looked fun.
They have some guitar games that are pretty popular in the Japan arcades. Not even remotely as popular as the taiko games which always have a line, but still usually people play.
LOL, the huge boxes started appearing in HMV. If you were there at the right time when they were coming to their sell by date, you could get some deals!
Holy video game vintage!! I still have all my well used gear, I can't believe some of this stuff is still making it's ways around shops. One of my favorite that was ever produced, good way to listen to music in an interactive way.
I don't think any of the songs were from the actual artist, they had their own band with creative licensing.
There were one or two on GH2, John the Fisherman was one. It didn't seem to bother me then, though some of them were quite terrible such as 'Killing in the name of'.
haha yeah, a few songs were dodgy but you know the drill, get thru those lesser ones to get to the good tunes, there was a lot to get thru. I didn't know they still had a couple from the original signers on one of the games, I thought it was all their own band.
Most if it is, but they changed all that with subsequent releases.
Good Picks! 🎸🎙️🥁👍
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So sad I didn’t listen to the tunes on a Tuesday, lol
It is Wednesday here already
Anyway, I’m not familiar with any of those tunes but they really sound nice
That was amazing!
Oh man, Guitar Hero and Rock Band were so popular back then. I remember my friends and I would hang out and we would be playing it for hours. I didn't realize that a lot of the songs were not the original ones, but I guess I wouldn't have cared back then anyways.
Only on GH2, and the original one. After that, they started licencing the songs and that's were the problems started.
I always liked Strutter - one of Kiss' best songs. And I absolutely love Beth - what a cracker of a tune that is.
I'd never heard Tattoed Love Boys before - way more punkier than anything else I've ever heard by the Pretenders - I quite surprised about that.
They did hail from the punks, and this was debut album material. That guitarist reminds me of the dudes from the Stray Cats, if remember them.
I remember my dad telling us tales of Guitar Hero and Rock band. He always said they were popular in their time. So he always enjoyed playing them with his friends. But I never had the chance to listen to one of them. Hope I hear them someday.
I may have mentioned that I've never played those games. We did have some dance ones on the Wii :) Actually I did try playing along with some drum backing tracks that had the notation scrolling like in those games.
I only really know the Jane's Addiction song, but I did buy that album. It's not a favourite.
I guess some of the most heard music will be in games, so a band getting a tune in there could be worthwhile. When I did play games I tended to turn off the music if possible, but for this it was the whole point.
Those games were great, and were a very collaborative effort. They were not a simulation for instruments, but you did feel like you were playing.. and delivering the real sounds you could hear. Shame you missed them.
I read about an open source clone, but never tried it. I've just not been into gaming in a long while.
Three awesome picks! I think we all liked the image of KISS, they did make some good music though! Interesting picks form Jane's Addiction and The Pretenders, but very solid songs! I never really got into guitar hero, I just had to much work at that point of my life to even have much time for games like I could when I was younger. Being an adult can really suck sometimes!
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