A few months ago I had a chance to play Rock Star for the first time. I wasn’t
very good at it for two reasons: I didn’t know how to switch the guitar into
left-handed mode and, slightly more importantly, no one told me that I had to
push the strum button in addition to the chord button so I missed every single
note.
I went back to just watching after my debacle but it inspired a thought. There’s
a Grateful Dead pack of songs already; why not have a Phish downloadable set?
That raises the obvious question. What songs would work in the game? There’s
actually a serious challenge here. Unlike Guitar Hero, Rock Band has a
microphone. You want to give the person with that controller something
interesting to do. So ‘You Enjoy Myself’ or ‘The Divided Sky’ would be out.
Sorry ‘Mike’s Song’ and ‘The Curtain With.’ I swear I still love you! Secondly,
there’s no keyboard controller. ‘The Squirming Coil’ would be a horrible song
for this game because what would be the fun of playing if you can’t play along
with the big solo at the end? ‘The Lizards’ and ‘The Mango Song’ might also
have made the cut if they didn’t have strong keyboard parts that will taunt you
with their unplayability.
Like the Grateful Dead release, I’m going to choose 6 songs for my personal Rock
Band release. I’m going to select two each from Phish’s rockers, their mid tempo
songs, and their epics along with some honorable mentions. If I were tasked with
this goal, here’s what I’d choose.
- Rockers*
