I love Guitar Hero. I’ve never played the game, but my seven-year-old played it on his cousin’s wii over the holidays. When I came home from work one day last week he asked, “Do you know Paint it Black?” We don’t own Guitar Hero, but he’s been standing in front of our computer screen watching a video of someone on YouTube “playing” Paint it Black. “Dad, do you have Paranoid?” he asked me next. I pulled out the Black Sabbath album that my uncle gave me in the late ’70s. Original Warner Brothers, green label.
I dropped the needle at the end of War Pigs. A few seconds of silence and then the riff. My son kneeled on a cushioned chair and bounced up and down for 2 minutes and 50 seconds. I love Guitar Hero because it has insinuated a dozen rock tracks into my seven-year-old’s brain. Rock You Like a Hurricane, Slow Ride, Welcome to the Jungle. He asked me if Slash is a “guitar legend,” because that’s what it says on Guitar Hero. I told him yes. The game introduced him to Tom Morello, The Devil Went Down to Georgia, and Anarchy in the UK. Does the game’s developer have a suggestion box for parents who want to hear their sons and daughters ask, “Do you know London Calling?” “Do you have Ziggy Stardust?”
I guess that movies already do this for literature.