borrowed & blue 26.12.08Spent Christmas day being introduced to what will by now surely be the great xmas tradition of our times: Guitar Hero. It's somewhat depressing to think that I've spent infinitely more time trying to master the fake guitar-wrangling game's intricacies than I have the Boss DD-3 Digital Delay pedal I bought myself as an xmas present.
And it's embarrassing. How utterly crap I am on anything above beginner level. I can't even do Paramore. Fucking Paramore! They're, what, 12? Have they even learnt the F chord yet?
But it's so satisfying. Being able to belt out Raining Blood (Raining Blood is HARD. Hard in real life and hard in fake life. I've always resisted learning how to play it properly because I don't want to undo its skin-tearing magic) though, or the death-from-above whammy-divebombs and guitar-tire-screeches in White Zombie's Black Sunshine, while a cartoon character you poses and preens like a bastard in an exploding-with-colour dream-gig (the kind of gigs I'd always imagine would happen in the beginning years of this century - with loads of over-the-top stage action and hologram-like effects). Satisfying in a way that playing the real guitar in your living room isn't.
It sounds better for one thing. I sound shit when I play guitar. To the extent that the last few things I recorded weren't even music at all, but lazy noise-improvisations, exercises in trying to make as many stupid non-guitar noises as possible and collaging them into an ugly imploding mess. It also finally, smugly rams home the point that you can't even do Raining Blood in a computer game and, therefore YOU WILL NEVER ACTUALLY BE IN SLAYER THE TIME TO ACCEPT THIS IS NOW.
I began my xmastimeoff with two vague projects: learn riffs from the recent Decibel Top 50 Greatest Riffs In Extreme Metal and work on my book proposal. So far I've managed a couple of lame attempts at Am I Evil (Diamond Head) and Black Coffee (Black Flag).
Everything else is over-eating, held-down-past-your-stomach stress, a constant expenditure of reassurance and comfort to those around you and a sick, gnawing feeling growing around the hole in my middle that I'm fucked, I'm useless, another year gone and I've wasted myself.
ACTION
And it's embarrassing. How utterly crap I am on anything above beginner level. I can't even do Paramore. Fucking Paramore! They're, what, 12? Have they even learnt the F chord yet?
But it's so satisfying. Being able to belt out Raining Blood (Raining Blood is HARD. Hard in real life and hard in fake life. I've always resisted learning how to play it properly because I don't want to undo its skin-tearing magic) though, or the death-from-above whammy-divebombs and guitar-tire-screeches in White Zombie's Black Sunshine, while a cartoon character you poses and preens like a bastard in an exploding-with-colour dream-gig (the kind of gigs I'd always imagine would happen in the beginning years of this century - with loads of over-the-top stage action and hologram-like effects). Satisfying in a way that playing the real guitar in your living room isn't.
It sounds better for one thing. I sound shit when I play guitar. To the extent that the last few things I recorded weren't even music at all, but lazy noise-improvisations, exercises in trying to make as many stupid non-guitar noises as possible and collaging them into an ugly imploding mess. It also finally, smugly rams home the point that you can't even do Raining Blood in a computer game and, therefore YOU WILL NEVER ACTUALLY BE IN SLAYER THE TIME TO ACCEPT THIS IS NOW.
I began my xmastimeoff with two vague projects: learn riffs from the recent Decibel Top 50 Greatest Riffs In Extreme Metal and work on my book proposal. So far I've managed a couple of lame attempts at Am I Evil (Diamond Head) and Black Coffee (Black Flag).
Everything else is over-eating, held-down-past-your-stomach stress, a constant expenditure of reassurance and comfort to those around you and a sick, gnawing feeling growing around the hole in my middle that I'm fucked, I'm useless, another year gone and I've wasted myself.
ACTION
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