Joey - Guitar Hero 2/9/08

Last night I went to a friends dinner party. After eating we decided to go to out drinking, but since it was still too early, we were left looking for a way to kill some time. Someone, suggested having a Guitar Hero tournament. Consequently, the winner would drink for free the entire evening. Although at the time, I was still a Guitar Hero virgin, I had little doubt in my musical capabilities. Well, little did I know, you could be Jimi Hendrix ,and still royally suck at this game. Apparently it has more to do with how much free time you spend in your skivvies playing video games, then having any bona-fide guitar skills. Needless to say, I wasn't drinking for free that night. The pathetic reality was, I couldn't even make It through a single song without getting booed off stage. But surprisingly, the fact I sucked didn't seem to matter.

The bottom line is this game is feverishly addictive, and if you don't have a couple hundred bucks to blow on an Xbox or Playstation, you're shit out of luck. Unless of course, you live in New York where you can actually find multiple bars fully equipped with the game. CBS coined the term “guitaroake” and it's popularity in the bar scene is exponentially growing. The good thing is that unlike Karaoke, if a performer sucks you're not forced to painfully sit through the entire song wishing you had an ice pick to jam through your eardrums(which of course ,would ultimately be more pleasant then listening to some jackass pretending to be on American Idol.) Cleverly, the bars capitalized on the games popularity and used it as a way to bring in people on slow nights. So now, not only can I satisfy my Guitar Hero fix, I can also get drunk in the process. Brilliant!

Once I heard that Pianos gave up their Tuesday night's to Guitar Hero, I had to go. I used to frequent the LES hotspot back when I was heavily into the music scene, but nowadays, I don't go too often. I will admit that having an audience of strangers is a little nerve wracking. Especially when some people who apparently have some sort of delusional disorder, seem to believe they're Slash up there playing a 8 oz. plastic guitar. However, once you get over any stage fright jitters, it's actually a lot of fun.

Here's a few other listing of bars in or around the city that have jumped on the band wagon:

Ochi's Lounge (no website, but)
Saturdays 10pm
353 W. 14^th st., New York, NY 10011

Pianos
Tuesdays 10pm
158 Ludlow St., New York, NY 10002

Bar 4 (no website, but)
Wednesday Nights
444 7^th Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11215

-Joey