Five songs you won’t see in Rock Band or Guitar Hero

I was walking home today from somewhere and was listening to a song on my ipod and thought to myself, “man that’d be fun to play on a video game thing”. And then I realized that logically speaking, it probably couldn’t be done. That song is on this list by the way. I rocked to it all the way home because it was quite long, and walked right into trying to find 5 awesome songs that probably won’t show up in Rock band or Guitar Hero.

5. Kaki King – Playing with Pink noise
She is the kind of artist where it would be rather difficult to find a song from her whole catalog that you could put into a video-music-game. I guess Pull me out alive would probably be the easiest pick. But honestly, this would be the kind of case wherein you’d have to have a person using both sets of buttons on a Rock Band guitar in order to even think of hitting the same amount of things that she’s doing. Don’t even think about doing Close your eyes and burst into flames. I think that’s on a level higher than that Dragonforce song everyone was all happy about seeing at the end of GH3. I wonder if she plays RB/GH. And if so, can she hit the buttons as fast on a plastic guitar as she can play a real one?

4. Led Zeppelin – Bonzo’s Montreux
I imagine it’d be difficult to get the folks at LZ incorporated to agree to put a bunch of songs in RB/GH in the first place, but as a test to how great he was, Bonzo’s Montreux would also be nearly impossible to transcribe into those drum buttons, especially when those crazy effects kick in. Because there’s a drum track with them, how does one play both? Does the singer hit those notes? Do you get two people drumming at the same time? Anyway, it’d be rather rough for anyone to play, seeing as how great the fills are, nevermind the amount of bass drum usage. I like how in the live version, everyone walks off stage. Thats great right there.

3. Spookey Ruben – Mechanical Royalty
In order to hear this song you’re going to have to find it on his myspace because unfortunately, Spookey isn’t as popular as I’d like him to be. But that doesn’t make this song any less of a difficult one to imagine in a video-music-game. It’s fifteen minutes of consistently changing things. The song is broken down into seven different parts, tracks that could essentially be their own and yet work as one large cohesive unit, some of which (especially the parts around 6:40) would be difficult to transcribe into wee little colored buttons. Also, who would play a fifteen minute song in a game and not get tired? Our attention spans are not the way they used to be. Everyone’s insane about Beatles Rock band and I think part of the reason why (besides the obvious) is because 95% of those songs clock in under 4 minutes. Opus-like tracks are probably frowned upon, but shit this would just kick ass to play all the way through. That first riff that invites you to come in, and that salsa-like weird tempo part around 7:30, if that doesn’t make you want to pick up a plastic guitar and rock out, then what the hell is wrong with you?

2. Fantômas – Page 27
I really could have put any Fantômas track here, because the pure logic behind having people play the insanely crazy stuff that they do is well, crazy. People would lose their voices and hands would fall off. Also, because of how short most of the tracks are, they’d most likely have to merge a few songs together, right? Imagine playing six songs where you have absolutely no idea what’s coming next, no matter how many times you play it. Imagine having a friend come over who wants to sing, and have him sing parts that include yelping, and just straight abrasive yelling. What neighbor wants to hear that besides me? I know I’d have a blast trying to find a friend to drum some of those parts too, by the way. As a matter of fact, out of all of the other ones, I’d want a downloadable Fantômas pack the most, just because it’d be freaking hilarious.

1. Focus – Hocus Pocus
Okay, so the actual “recorded song” on that one starts at about 50 seconds. But the point here is that it would not only be hell for most drummers that are pretty decent about hitting the buttons in a game when they practice enough, but this one defies all logic for vocal parts. All. There is no way in the world I can imagine someone singing eight minutes of that over and over again of random…..  How do you describe that? It is however, an extremely fantastic song. The whole put together of it is perfect. I don’t know that that band ever had as big a hit as this, either, by the way. I actually bought this album specifically to hear what the rest of the songs are, and they’re all somewhat crazy like this, so I don’t understand why they weren’t more popular. I guess a lot of people considered them a novelty act, or something. But you can tell how talented they are, right? So where was the problem? Maybe putting this hilariously fantastic song in a game will make them more popular.