Guitar Hero and Rockband seem to have created a completely new breed of music listeners. My music instructor tells me that school kids learning music now are more dexterous because they are used to playing on Guitar Hero and the like.
Of course, now there's a whole generation of people whose musical tastes are informed by tracks available on Guitar Hero.
Last week I was cycling through radio stations on the dial. Within a span of 30 minutes, I heard three songs that have been made famous by these games - Carry on wayward son by Kansas, Killing in the Name by Rage Against the Machine and Orange Crush by REM.
No, this wasn't a 'songs made famous by wannabe shredders too lazy to really learn a musical instrument' special. These songs played on three different stations playing different styles (classic rock, rock and alternative respectively)
And I don't know if I'm the one paying excessive attention, but Carry on... seems to play on radio way more than is good for a single song to be heard. It's in danger of becoming like Hotel California for me - a perfectly likeable song that I can't stand anymore, simply because of the number of times rock radio has made me listen to it.
In other news, Rage Against the Machine becomes the ultimate sell-out - part of the same 'evil capitalist system' they once railed against. Welcome to the machine.
xkcd like many other times has the last word.
