Bija Andrew Wright 8 October 2009 One Million Watts 1,447 views No Comment Print This Post  Email This Post

A likeness of Kurt Cobain appears as a playable character in the recently-released video game Guitar Hero 5, and can be made to perform songs that the real Cobain would never have performed if someone else weren’t controlling his actions. In the second half of this epic battle, we consider what it means to be an avatar.

The figure on the stage is unmistakably The Man in Black, direct from his appearance at Folsom Prison.. Though it’s Kurt Cobain’s appearance in Guitar Hero 5 that has generated the most controversy, the game’s other posthumous avatar in Guitar Hero 5, one Johnny Cash, hasn’t escaped notice. As a New York Times reviewer noted, it is both hilarious and disconcerting to see The Man In Black cross his arms a la Flavor Flav and shout “Yeah boyee!”

But there’s evidence to suggest that, unlike Kurt Cobain, Cash might have been a good sport about appearing in a Guitar Hero game. After all, in his last decade, Cash covered songs by U2, Nine Inch Nails, and Depeche Mode. There’s every reason to believe that he’d think of these songs as an interesting new challenge. I think even if Rock Band Beatles could be hacked so that John and Paul were shown rocking “Eye of the Tiger” or “One Way or Another,” it would seem like a fitting tribute in a way, that all rock music that followed owes something to the Beatles, so they can play a part in it. It would be only a little weird.

Kurt Cobain, as the avatar of grunge, doesn’t seem so good-natured. Grunge music was seen as a complaint against the 90s music industry; the now-meaningless “alternative” suggested that it came from dissatisfaction with what everyone else was playing. Perhaps it feeds into a simplistic understanding of the history of rock music: Pat Boone sucked, so Elvis Presley came on Ed Sullivan and shook it up. The clean-cut Bobby Darin and Neil Sedaka sucked, so the Beatles came in with their long hair and inspired a frenzy. The Bee Gees sucked, so the Sex Pistols came along and rebelled. And, by the same process, Winger and Warrant sucked for making corporate-produced hair-metal, until Nirvana came along and made “real music.” Of course, the way it all really happened is not so simple, but it’s an easy, seductive way to think about the evolution of music.

It’s also a way that may be completely outdated. Much of the most creative new music of the 21st century has come in the form of remixes and mashups. A new musical style comes not from the desire to demolish previous music, but the desire to reconfigure. A mashup–in which the vocal track of one song is mixed with the instrumental track of another–seems to grow out of an honest affection for both sources. The track “Love Will Freak Us,” remixed by Dsico, wouldn’t have happened if the remixer didn’t honestly like both Missy Elliot and Joy Division. The open mind is the way of the future.

But all of these benefits for open minds and good sports aren’t exactly, well, rock-n-roll. The lyrics about rebellion and insubordination that scroll across the screen seem shallow compared to the obedience implied by the structure of the game. The amusingly vapid lyrics to The Living End’s “Prisoner of Society” come to mind–as the player follows the scrolling guitar line, the singer sneers, “We don’t need no one to tell us what to do. No, we don’t need no one like you to tell us what to do!” And while Cobain’s lyrics aren’t so banal and direct, it’s hard to reconcile his musical stance with the values of the game–team cooperation, precision, and flow-going.

Truth be told, in my time playing GH5 I haven’t spent much time with the unlocked Cobain avatar. Oh, sure, I had to give it a whirl, setting up a supergroup with Kurt and Johnny and Shirley Manson, but after the amusing shock of watching them hip and hop their way through “Bring the Noise,” I went back to my first choice of avatar: me. Or rather, the XBox me.

See, my Wii-owning friends have failed to make me envious of their high-tech Wii-motes and their Wii-Fit regimes, but they do seem to have a lot of opportunities to use their own avatars–called “Miis”–within the games. I envy that. When you create an account on an XBox 360, you design a little avatar cartoon version of yourself, but so far there have been remarkably few games that use them. The avatar has the proportions of a Peanuts character–stumpy body and large, round head, and it’s a version of me, complete with spiky hair, polo shirt, horn-rimmed glasses, cargo shorts and Chuck Taylors, greeting me as I log in to the system but then disappearing when I start a game.

With GH5, I can finally put him in action, guitar in his hand, rocking the stage. And it turns out he’s a born entertainer. Before the song he throws devil horns at the audience, and afterwards, if he has a particularly good show, he leaps up with a jump-kick, or windmills his strumming arm. During the song, I can’t pay full attention to him because I’m watching the notes scroll on the screen, but I catch images of him pointing the guitar like a shotgun, or leaning over the frets and nodding frantically with the rhythm. The animation of a cartoonish figure as a rock star radiates such unbridled joy that, if I’m tempted to get too frustrated with the game, I can’t forget how much fun this is. I might be rolling my eyes when I have to endure a Bon Jovi song, (while I’ve learned to be a good sport I still don’t particularly like Bon Jovi) but the cartoon dude that has my glasses and my hair is rocking out, unabashed and uninhibited. Sometimes he throws his head back and beams. It’s adorable and infectious.

If anyone–industry or fan–takes music too seriously, this could be the antidote. As the oft-quoted Rolling Stones song says, it’s only rock and roll, but I like it. When we’re music fans, especially in the teenage years, we might be prone to histrionics. We see our musical heroes as brilliant prophets of the inner world; we recite lines of songs as if they’re scripture; we separate the music we hear into not just good and bad, but into sacred and profane, our salvation or our downfall. I once told one of my adolescent favorites that her music saved my life, and maybe it did, but maybe it didn’t. Maybe my life was evolving as I grew up, and because there was music playing when it happened, it seems like the music did it. Maybe it was just music.

The sight of my avatar in the role of rock star reminds me that the verb for making music is still “play.” Even career musicians use the word “playing” instead of “working,” a well-paid leisure pursuit. We love music, we hate music, we think it holds the meaning of life. But even if I think a particular song is deep and relevant and life-changing, I’m still just childlike and starstruck, a big-headed figure in horn-rimmed glasses, in a fantasy and loving it, playing on a stage and waiting for a video game to tell me, “You Rock.”

- Bija Andrew Wright

PHOTO BY RUSTY RYAN