My roommates, the Cummings brothers- Rich and Randall, who both ride matching scooters (so I also like to call them the Scooter Brothers), own the game Rock Band.  They don’t just own it.  They own it.  Rich set up a projector in our other living room (it’s not really a family room right?  Cause we aren’t a family.  We’ll just call it the Cummings room.  Ew.).  The screen is like 8 feet wide.  They have surround sound set up, and they rock all into the night like wild-eyed banshees pushing the crap out of little buttons on toy guitars. 

If you’ve never seen the game... it comes with a fake toy guitar, fake toy drums, and a fake toy microphone.  You can buy an extra guitar and have a fake toy bass too if you want.  In the game, you form a band, and your band performs songs by different famous rock bands.  As you play, multi-colored little squares shoot at you, like the intro to star wars, but in reverse, and you have to hit them at the right time.  It’s like learning to play guitar, except you literally don’t learn anything that’s useful outside the game, but it does literally take nearly the same amount of work and commitment (and with some songs it takes more work.  When they put a Nirvana song on expert mode it’s going to have to be unrealistic, because Nirvana songs were never written by experts).

Anyway.  I play the game with them from time to time, but I can’t  get into it like the Scooter Brothers do.  They’ve spent entire weekends on that thing.  One weekend they had a drunken orgy, and someone out there kept singing ’Dead or Alive’ by Bon Jovi in this horribly off-key drunken retard slur... through my wall it sounded like a cerebral palsy kid singing karaoke inside of a pillow.  But what really sucked was that it got stuck in my head.  Not the song... I mean- yes- the song got stuck in my head... but not the song.  It was the drunk guy’s version of the song.  The next couple of days I kept hearing him singing it through my wall, somehow my brain decided to copy down all of the off key notes, and memorize the offensively atonal melody this guy’s drunken mind had constructed to replace the original melody.  So that when I hear the song in my head, I can’t find the "songs/artists/bonjovi/DeadorAlive.mpeef" file.  The file that comes up is "songs/artists/drunkretardedguyinthewall/DeadorAlive.mpeef".

The best way I can describe it is what I imagine a rape victim goes through... sort of involuntarily reliving a horrible experience forced upon them by someone else.  You never wanted to experience it in the first place, but now that you have it won’t stop playing over and over in your mind.

But that’s not what this blog is about.  Well... actually it sort of is.  This blog is about how every time I play this game, it takes me back.  It transports me to a folding chair next to our folded out merch table, in a dark musty room in some rural town in some state somewhere... in a place called something like "the other place" or "the underneath" or something that says "this is the place all the outcast fringe kids hang out to emote and listen to screamo, and be little douches."

I just want to warn you, if your reading this and your sensitive to things involving Lunaractive, don’t read on, because I’m going to be honest about a few things that I never really talked about while the band was going... because it would have been bad for troop morale.  But the war is over and, hopefully, the veteran’s wounds have healed.

So I watch this game and it’s amazing to me that they’ve programmed these fake computer-people to dress and act like real rock band folks.  It’s amazing because it shows just how bland people truly are.  The moves and mannerisms of these video game characters are so spot-on that I would go so far as to say that if they could create robots that move and act just like this, no one would need coke snortin’ human rock stars anymore. 

From town to town we’d go, and I swear, all these bands were getting the same "how-to" tapes for rock band stage mannerisms.  I think the main reason I acted like such a dweeb on stage was because I’d rather look like a retarded fat guy then one of these little tools, mimicking the latest effeminate indie scream rock-god to the last little scruple.

It’s sad because somewhere along the way I realized that the rock scene, like most anything else, is not set up to make people who have something original succeed.  It’s not non-conformity.  It’s the complete opposite.  It’s conform or be shunned.  And I’m not saying this in some bitter way because I wanted Lunaractive to take off and it never happened- truth be told, and I’ll be totally honest here, and I speak only for myself and no other members of Lunaractive when I say this... I just about hated our music by the time the band ended- and I really hated our last album.

But in rock... which is supposed to be this non-conformist, self-expression, blah blah blah (which I am not defending), the road to success is narrow and full of fitting in.  You have to scream like the kids like it.  You have to dress the right way.  You have to act this way on stage.  If you don’t, the labels aren’t looking at you.

Again, I’m not saying that because I wanted in.  I stopped wanting in a long time ago.  I always felt weird pursuing the "rock dream."  What I’m saying here, is that, this video game just reminds me of how hollow that whole world was.  The greatest part of it all- the only valuable thing in it all- were the relationships formed.  The people we met and still love to this day.  And that’s really the best part of anything.  But... you can have that without blaring loud music and screaming your throat inside out... and especially without driving 30 hours to douche-funnel Montana to play for nine emo kids and a couple child molesters.

This game, Rock Band, reminds me of the idol that is rock stardom.  It’s pretty widely accepted that anyone would be a rock star if offered the opportunity, and for some reason, many rock stars are likened unto gods.  The truth about these people is that a large amount of them are some of the most vapid, empty souls on the planet.  I’d say even worse than Hollywood actors and actresses.  What is it about human beings that makes us so ready to worship the most undeserving of our admiration?  The most empty people... the furthest from a real hero you can be without being a criminal... and we put them on the highest pedestal.

That sparkling idol stands tall in the video game... I don’t think the game would have nearly as much appeal if it was called "Jazz Band"  or "Orchstra"  or even just "band."  The huge adoring crowd and the stepping into the shoes of human deities like Metallica and Aerosmith seems to add to the experience. 

Maybe I’m reaching with that one.  But I can’t get over the fact that this rock idol is such a strong force with people.  I’ll never forget while on tour last summer, how bad things had gotten.  We’d played a number of shows that either had nobody present, or a few people there.  We’d played a number of shows where we sold no merch, and got paid nothing.  We were running on pure rock idol worship, believing that the merciful god of rock would repay us if we paid it our dues as it’s faithful followers.

During one part of the tour a whole week of shows got canceled while we were in Arizona.  So I ended up going to visit my buddy Eric in Phoenix.  The next show we had scheduled was in Las Vegas, and then the next show after that was back in Phoenix.  My worry was that this Vegas show was going to be a dud (and all signs pointed to it being a dud).  I checked out the venue online and it looked like a total douchatorium.  But, as it goes, the band is a rockocracy, and I was outvoted.  So I had to have Eric drive me back up to meet the guys in Lake Havasu, then drive to Vegas. 

This is how the show went.  It was such a dumpy place we almost didn’t play.  But when around 15 people showed up, someone started pulling out instruments.  When we finally played, the people in the bar literally all had their backs turned to us through the duration of the performance.  Between songs, they were totally non-responsive.  We could have been NPR coming through a couple of speakers and would have gotten the same response.  Later on, this big douchy guy (and I mean douche with all my heart on this one) comes up to our merch table.  This guy is in the process of flirting with some very... used... looking women at the bar.  He buys a hat and gives it to one of these ladies.  He eventually comes back and I think that, in his drunken horny stupor, buys about $60 worth of stuff.  When he sobers up he will wonder where his money went, and the whores of his pursuit will look at the hats and shirts they got and wonder who "Lunaractive" is by the next morning.  We could have been any band... we could have been a band called "Poop Scab" and he would have bought the merch.  Our shirts could have been a picture of him being sodomized by baboons and he would have bought our stuff.

The next day, we drive all the way back to Phoenix where we meet my buddy Eric.  Eric asks how the show went.  "Sucked balls" I say.  The guys get pissed at me and tell me to stop being so damn negative.  "We got like $60, you can’t complain about that!"

That’s how low we’d sunk.  We drive six hours, spend 8 to 10 hours hanging around a poop-hole bar, play music to a group of hairy backed barflies, and some drunk douche chugging orangutan buys some of our merch to try to add a few STD’s to his collection.  We didn’t earn a single fan, it was a pointless show.  Another one.  And we couldn’t even be honest and say that.  We had to be excited about the dirty wad of cash this guy dropped on our table.

The show sucked balls.  If we’re doing this all to collect small amounts of money from dirty drunk strangers, why not just hang out outside the bars in our home town and try to sell merch there?  It.  Sucked.  Balls.

As did many of them.  And the further I distance myself for those days, this sense of some kind of shame only grows.  I’m not ashamed of the songs we made (well... mostly), I’m not ashamed of the people we brought together.  I’m not ashamed if the amazing experiences we had, mainly in Coos Bay.  I’m ashamed more in a way that someone who leaves a cult probably feels in hindsight.  You look back at the mindset you allowed yourself to be run by, and how you allowed your life to be so controlled by such a whacky set of ideals and rules... and you just feel ashamed that you were one of those people.  Imagine how Tom Cruise would feel if he ever snapped out of it... then saw the videos of himself on YouTube.  He’d feel ill.  He’d feel ashamed.

I look at those computer generated fake rock stars on the Scooter brothers’ huge ass projector screen, and they look just like the same tools I saw on every stage we played on.  Worshipers of the rock idol.  I look at these video game "people" and I get this sort of little barf chunk that comes up in the back of my throat, because it reminds me of how much I tried to be just like the robots on this video game.

At one of our last shows, in San Diego, we played another douche swamp in this tiny little bar in a basement.  We played with some band who was going for that hard core Mexican image.  I can’t remember their name... El Nacho Rocho or something.  Lucha Lubrito.  Del Chango.  I don’t know. 

After the show, we all ended up sitting outside while everyone was packing up gear, and the lead singer of Del Chango, somehow, in the midst of conversation, started giving us all this pep talk about what it takes to make it as a rocker.  He talked about how you have to overcome these obstacles that get in your way, like having kids, and getting chained to a woman, and you have to make rock and roll your number one.  I wish I could have taped the speech because it was disgusting.  The things this guy was illustrating as "obstacles" were the most precious things in life- but he was an ordained minister of the rock idol gospel.  He knew that when it comes to being a follower of rock, you give it all or nothing.  What added to the sadness of this man’s existence was that his band really sucked... and anyone who was not in his band, or immediate family, could easily know for sure that he was in pursuit of something he would never get, and his family was obviously paying a high price for that.

I don’t regret what Lunaractive accomplished.  But looking back, I wish that we had been honest with ourselves more.  I wish we hadn’t gone the "all or nothing" route.  I wish we’d kept it more of a hobby and less of a cult-like religion.  I feel ill that I sacrificed so much in the worship of one of the most vapid and useless idols there is in existence... rock music. 

I feel like I could go on forever talking about this, but it’s probably getting boring for the rest of you.  Just blowing off some steam I guess.  It’s funny that philosophically, while growing up, I was trying to find a path that lead in a more objective way, toward a true morality, and a world of order.  The philosophy of rock is the exact opposite of that.  It’s an ideology that is fully subjective, it’s amoral (or more often immoral), and built on total chaos.  I should have known early on that we weren’t a good match.

So, I guess if Randall reads this, he’ll know why that game bothers me.  It doesn’t bother me for them, I’m glad they like it, the problem is in me.  I have this past that’s still a little fresh and I’m still sorting through it.  As you get older you look at the things you invested huge chunks of your life in, and you usually end up realizing you went way overboard.  Usually it’s a girl or something like a rock band.  Maybe a religion or some sort of organization.  I guess that’s the only way to find balance... to become a total whore of something and not know you were a whore until you step away from it years and years later.  Not that I’m anywhere near that balance.  I’m mainly curious what my next big wasted chunk of whoredom will be invested in.

Better work on my comic.

DOH!