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While My Guitar Gently Beeps
theodp writes "As the world prepares to meet the Beatles all over again on 9-9-9, the NY Times Magazine takes a look at the making of The Beatles: Rock Band, and asks a Fab Four tribute band to take the game for a test drive. (Not surprisingly, they fare well.) 'As huge as Guitar Hero and Rock Band have been over the past few years,' says Harmonix Music Systems co-founder Alex Rigopulos, 'I still think we're on the shy side of the chasm because the Beatles have a reach and power that transcends any other band.' The Beatles: Rock Band follows the group's career from Liverpool to the concert on the roof of Apple Corps in London in 1969 (trailer). The first half of the game recreates famous live performances; the second half weaves psychedelic dreamscapes around animations of the Beatles recording in Studio Two. 45 songs deemed the most fun to play, rather than the band's most iconic numbers, come with the game."
From the article:
> Apple's preoccupation with security meant that the high-quality audio "stems" he created never left Abbey Road.
> If the separated parts leaked out, every amateur D.J. would start lacing mixes with unauthorized Beatles samples.
> Instead, Martin created low-fidelity copies imprinted with static for the Harmonix team to take back to the States -- in their carry-on luggage.
And why would that be such a terribly bad thing? It's exactly this kind of gone-out-of-control control-thinking that makes me respect the idea of copyright less and less. I believe that trying to 'make a quick buck' from the work of others is unethical. But creatively extending someone else's work is art.
On a unrelated note: Has someone already managed to rip the individual tracks off the Guitar Hero / Rock Band games? I assume they're not just simply there as .wav files on the CD :-)
...this one got a smile out of me.
Compare it to the other music from the '60s. Especially their later albums pretty much wrote the book on psychedelic rock and albums as more than just a collection of loose hits, yet they somehow managed to never leave the mainstream. Very diverse music. They did a lot more than just Let It Be and Yesterday.
The article says that: "In many respects, Martin and the Harmonix developers obsessed over creating an accurate portrayal of the Beatles. (They were never without teacups in the studio!)". So, do we get to see Lennon take LSD and trip during the recordings ? According do a interview (http://taz4158.tripod.com/johnint.html): "It went on for years, I must have had a thousand trips. Literally a thousand, or a couple of hundred? A thousand - I used to just eat it all the time." Probably not. Not a good idea to let the youth of the nations know that their heroes ate LSD like candy back in the days.
The most newsworthy part of this article from a Slashdot perspective isn't that Rock Band Beatles is coming out. We already knew that.
It's that the New York TImes, the old grey lady, published a *nine page* video game review.
Because they were the first.
Yes, today that's easy listening. At least some of their songs, if not most, are mainstream vanilla pop. But that was new back then. They created a style that wasn't heard before, that was new and rebellious, their music, their style, their everything. You have to understand that in those days, even this rather tame beat was rebellious and quite suitable to drive your parents nuts. More than Marilyn Manson could today.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Have you ever tried to licence anything from the Beatles? It's not quite as simple as you paint it. They certainly don't sell their stuff to the highest bidder, regardless.
[FUCK BETA]
It's not, really. Sgt. Pepper was recorded about the same time as the first Pink Floyd album - the Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Both were THE psychedelic rock albums at that time.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Ummm, I hate the Beatles and even i know you're completely wrong. While My Guitar Gently Weeps was on the White Album, which I'm fairly certain was a Beatles album not a George Harrison album. He did write it, and Clapton did play lead guitar on the studio version, but it was still a Beatles song.
Yes, today that's easy listening. At least some of their songs, if not most, are mainstream vanilla pop. But that was new back then. They created a style that wasn't heard before, that was new and rebellious, their music, their style, their everything. You have to understand that in those days, even this rather tame beat was rebellious and quite suitable to drive your parents nuts. More than Marilyn Manson could today.
This reminds me of how I was talking with a friend about Black Sabbath. My dad came in the room and said, "Man, Black Sabbath, back in my day those guys were OUT THERE. My teachers said their music would rot your brain". And it made me laugh because I could totally see their music being totally strange back when they first started, but now their music is the norm because everyone is influenced by them.
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." - Pablo Picasso
By cracky, you may be on to something there. You find something "fun" or "not fun". Perhaps if game companies produced a wide range of games, so that they would have a broader base of games that people find "fun", they would sell more games overall.
Why, it will be revolutionary! Imagine, not all games would be Rock Band! You might have games based upon the American version of football, or simulations of science-fiction warfare against alien races, or dare I hope... games wherein a stocky Italian water and sewage maintenance worker solves a variety of problems for his viewed from afar love, a lovelorn scion of royalty.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
I think you greatly underestimate the effect that 'See Emily Play' had on the British music scene at the time.
It's crazy, I know, but it's just fun. You should try it once before knocking it.
Perhaps xkcd will explain better than me: http://xkcd.com/359/
Also, your description of how to play is somewhat inaccurate.
Yeah, um... have you seen the cover of "Meet the Beatles?" They were whitebread brits with novel mop-top haircuts, comparable to the Jonas Brothers in marketing and social impact, though clearly superior in talent.
Christ. The Doctor had the same haircut! They were utterly mainstream.
They didn't get rebellious until they were assured of their wealth in perpetuity, round Rubber Soul. Then they rapidly train wrecked after a few albums because they couldn't get along.
And none of it is worthy of much lasting artistic impact. It ain't Mozart. They were ever following, rarely leading. Like Microsoft, they scooped up whatever was being innovated and killed with their marketing muscle.
They were most certainly not ever "the first," any more than Microsoft was "the first" to bring the GUI, the web browser, or SQL.
--
Toro
Oh you bet it was a rebellion (at least in the part that I grew up in). Judging from what I got to hear from my parents, it was a revolution in music. And culture.
Everything had to be "British". My dad used to have a scarf he was really proud of because it was "original English". You have to see, the people that grew up with the Beatles were born around the end of WW2, to parents who, at least in central Europe, were born into a culture that had a heavy nationalist and dictatorial background. Not only Germany had its Nazis, you know, similar fascist regimes were common from Italy to Hungaria to Austria and even Switzerland was leaning towards the political right during those times. Now the kids listen to this music coming from abroad, either from a former (middle Europe) or a current (eastern Europe) enemy, a music that sounds strange, that makes people gyrate and wiggle worse than those sounds that were already "banned" during their youth because it drives the young people nuts. Not to mention those long hairs!
Not to mention that the very idea of some young guys from Britain creating a band and having huge success gave birth to a lot more bands all over Europe. My dad was in a band (and, bluntly, if you knew him today... I mean, if you look up 'square' in a dictionary you find him there as the role model), and a lot of young people picked up guitars, drums and other instruments just because of the Beatles and because some of their songs are easy to play (and some ain't... especially some of their later songs are completely insane to play) and yet they were a big success. That wasn't possible with the sounds of the 40s and 50s where you needed a big orchestra or great players and singers if you wanted success, it was four people and some fairly affordable instruments, as well as (let's be honest here) not too stellar voices. It's one of those "anyone could do" things.
That's the revolution of the Beatles. Not so much that they wrote some, admittedly, fairly easy and easy to listen songs. That they inspired people.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I like how people enjoy bashing Activision for "selling out" and doing band-specific games, but the truth is, Harmonix's designers sold their -souls- just for a contract.
Fact: The Beatles: Rock Band DLC will not be playable on any other Rock Band titles, and normal Rock Band songs will not be playable on Rock Band: The Beatles because of technical reasons associated with the "dream sequences" and three-part harmonies. Bull - both issues are minor, trivial things that would take a good programmer a day or two to work around. The real reason is that Harmonix sold out to Apple Corps, who would never have signed on were it possible for The Beatles to sing non-TB songs, or for non-TB bands (in Rock Band or Rock Band 2) to sing TB songs.
Fact: The Beatles: Rock Band will no longer have a usable whammy bar. Certainly, the user will still be able to pump up Star Power or whatever it's called in RB using the whammy bar, but it won't affect the audio at all. Why would they change a simple gameplay mechanic like that? More soul-selling. Apple Corps would have freaked if people were able to change the way The Beatles' songs sound.
Fact: The Beatles: Rock Band will no longer have a "drum fill" mechanic as we know it; instead, the user will have to hit all the notes in a pre-tracked drum line in order to activate Overdrive. So, it differs from normal gameplay... how, exactly? Again, more soul-selling, for the same reason: If users were able to trigger arbitrary drum samples, Apple Corps would have flipped out.
So, who's more evil? The company that signs on bands for profit, or the one that's so desperate to sign a band on for profit that they'll sell their own design principles to get it?
Sources for the above three fundamental changes to the Rock Band series are at the Wikipedia page for The Beatles: Rock Band.
Harmonix has never shied away from picking the deeper cuts from a discography, rather than just the most popular hits. That said, this game is still chock full of #1 singles, as well as the b-sides. So, what about those songs do you think makes them more expensive to license?
Makes perfect sense to me to go by the fun factor rather than chart position or sales. "Love Me Do" was their first #1 hit in the US, but the melody is all harmonica. Similarly with "Elanor Rigby" and violin. Put the most fun songs on the disk, then release most of the rest of the discography as DLC to allow everyone to pick and choose their favorite of the others.
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