My Rock On, Sistahs family knows that I have a very short shit list of things that I find, well, shitty. Yep, Lady Gaga is still on the list. But sharing the number one spot are the Guitar Hero and Rock Band video games. I find these games abhorrent because they are the couch potato's way to music education. Fans of these games would argue that they are entertaining learning tools that teach today's youth about their parents' favorite musicians. Well, I can think of another learning tool....a book. There's also what our former president affectionately called "the Internets," where one can find video clips of Hendrix on You Tube and music blogs:-). Case in point. To coincide with the release of Valleys of Neptune, an album of unearthed Jimi Hendrix songs, the Hendrix estate has given its blessings to the creation of the Jimi Hendrix Experience Rock Band game. It's official: NOTHING'S SACRED, especially in a world where a former Hitler youth is pope. I'm all for today's youth learning about the greatest guitarist of all time but not with a fucking video game. The game trivializes and bastardizes Hendrix and his legacy. Worse, the game may promote delusional thinking among kids that they can play guitar as good as or (gasp) better than Hendrix, which is a claim Hendrix's contemporaries like Pete Townsend and Neil Young never ever made. I wish today's children and teenagers would learn about Hendrix the old fashioned way: by picking up a music book and a guitar. Or like how I did by watching the documentary Jimi Hendrix and discovering that a man brown like me turned chords and feedback into sonic works of art. Hendrix is more than a video game. Hendrix is an experience to be cherished and savored not played for points.
