Word: bandness
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...what's the band been doing? Breaking up mostly. The current lineup has just one original member, Axl Rose. The rest, including guitar savant Slash, departed years ago, presumably too intrigued by the Internet and other human advances to stay locked up in a recording studio with their famously controlling singer. Rose, once as blond and lithe as a stalk of wheat, has suffered the pudgification of middle age and burned through a reported $14 million in production costs, making Chinese Democracy the most expensive record in history. But given the cruelty with which pop culture devours its celebrity eccentrics...
...critical expertise. But nearly every arrangement has been manipulated and fussed with until the music feels encased in Lucite. Appetite for Destruction, Guns N' Roses' 1987 debut, had a brutish confidence - it sounded like five sharpened instruments and lots of open space. That Guns N' Roses was a band; this incarnation is a whole zip code. On some tracks, Rose has five guitarists soloing and jamming to fill every cranny, but the result isn't chaos so much as needlepoint. "Madagascar" has a string section, horns, samples of the "I have a dream" speech and dialogue from Cool Hand Luke...
...beginning--that is, November 2005--there was a video game called Guitar Hero, in which players jammed on a fake plastic guitar along with real rock songs. And it was good. But not good enough. A year ago, the rival Rock Band added drums, bass and vocals. Now there are two improved versions that feature the full instrumental lineup: Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero World Tour...
That's the name--ripped from the headlines!--of the virtual band I formed with three other TIME staffers, whom I will not name because, unlike me, some of them are still hoping for a career in management. We spent a hard day's night pitting Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero World Tour against each other in a titanic battle of the fake-band video games. We came to play, and we brought a lot of beer and some tequila, if it came to that. Fortunately, it didn't come to that. (See the video...
...that came with Guitar Hero. The pint-size guitars feel realer and more substantial, and the toy drum set comes with a pair of fake cymbals that make pounding it that much more satisfying. But--and it's a big one--the Recessionists vastly, overwhelmingly preferred the way Rock Band looked onscreen. While you're playing the game, you're watching notes stream toward you--plus lyrics if you're the singer--and at the same time, you're checking how well you and your bandmates are doing. That's a lot of information to monitor...