If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that I’m hopelessly addicted to Rock Band and Guitar Hero. I pretend that I bought those games for my kids, but we all know I really bought them for myself (and if the kids are nice, I’ll let them play, too).
It’s a sure sign that you’re addicted to these games if you see colored notes flying towards you when you listen to music. In my case, it’s become so bad that when I hear one of my favorite songs on the radio, I often find myself wishing I could play it on my cheap plastic guitar.
So far, here are the top 10 songs that I wish I could play:
- Frank Zappa – Peaches en Regalia
- Stevie Ray Vaughan – Little Wing (Hendrix cover)
- Led Zeppelin – Black Dog
- Metallica – Master of Puppets
- Avenged Sevenfold – Bat Country (dumb video, but good song)
- Focus – Hocus Pocus (hat tip to Fake Steve Jobs)
- Red Hot Chili Peppers – Under the Bridge
- The Beatles – While My Guitar Gently Weeps
- Steve Vai – For the Love of God
- Pink Floyd – Comfortably Numb
Bonus wish: Metallica’s One and Rush’s YYZ are in the Guitar Hero series, but I wish they were available in Rock Band as well. I’m a lousy vocalist, but I think I could do a decent job with the vocals on YYZ :)
I would love Master of Puppets; I thought I’d heard that they were considering doing a whole album, so the whole Puppets album would be awesome!
“Bat Country” would be insane on Expert drums. :)
My favorite songs in GH3 are definitely those with a very obvious blues groove running through them (like SRV, Eric Johnson, ZZ Top), so anything with more of that would also be great in Rock Band. :)
There are some great prog rock/metal bands that could offer a good variety of music that would be nicely challenging, including Pink Floyd, Dream Theater, Opeth, Porcupine Tree, King’s X, The Mars Volta, Pain of Salvation, Acroma, Scar Symmetry, Soilwork, In Flames… I’d love to see any and all of them offer up a song (or 3). Rush and Coheed & Cambria are a good start, though. :)
Then just to be polar opposite, the other band I think would be a huge win for Rock Band is The Decemberists. Just about any track off of The Crane Wife would be a great addition, especially “Yankee Bayonet”, “O Valencia!”, or “The Perfect Crime #2”.
Hi Nick,
[quote]I’m a lousy vocalist, but I think I could do a decent job with the vocals on YYZ :) [/quote]
I bet you’ll do a great job on ‘Hocus Pocus’ also :-).
best wishes,
Peter.
@Peter – I could probably handle “Hocus Pocus,” provided I was given a steady supply of tequila and helium beforehand :)
very good list!
But Where is Eddy Van Halen?
Nick you have some masterful stuff on your list and of course some incredible ax-masters. Being an older-fart I got to see a lot of great music over the years. I saw The Yardbirds with Eric Clapton then later on with Jeff Beck, also think Jimmy Paige played with them once or twice – here’s a pic http://www.smollin.com/staples/arc/e-yardbirds-tea.htm. I did some server work for Todd Rundgren and during that time he made a blazing version of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”. Any how this is your blog post not mine.
You know there’s a RHCP song in co-op mode of GH3, right? It’s “suck my kiss” so not quite what you were hoping for but still fun to play.
I’m sure some (if not all) of your requests have been given note tracks in Frets On Fire – and you can use either the 360’s guitar via USB or even the wii guitar using a Bluetooth adapter. Generally you can supply your own MP3 and download the note list for any number of songs – because the note lists don’t count as copyright infringement.
I found someone hosting the GH1 tracks along with a Guitar Hero skin for FOF and have had a lot of fun with it. Let me know if you need help setting anything up ;)
@shyboy: I’m not really a big Van Halen fan, but “Eruption” might still be fun to play.
Hey,
this could be quite interesting too. http://gizmodo.com/352800/guitar-rising-for-real-guitar-heroes
Hey Nick! I was surfing around looking for a decent CSS editor and remembered TopStyle. I didn’t realize you had moved on as much as you had. Are you still doing development work in Delphi? You gave me some key advice back in the day when Homesite was your primary product and I was just starting up WebSurveyor. I hope all is well with you!
When you find Comfortably Numb, tell me and I’ll fly to your house and play it with you.
@DavidA: yep, believe it or not, I’m still working in Delphi :) Looks like WebSurveyor did well for you – congrats!
@Brad: it’s a deal :)
@Nick: yeah – off starting the next one now. Having to build web based solutions in .NET is painful – funny how dev tools have actually devolved since the Win32 heyday. Nice to see you’re still making great software man!
Hi, is the guitar from rockband compatible with guitar hero ?
Thanks in advance
@densleonis: no, the RB guitar won’t work with GH (but the GH guitar *will* work with RB).
Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Little Wing is by far the best version of the that song. If that were available, I might actually let my husband clutter up our house with Rock Band/Guitar Hero. Throw in a little Allman Bros. and I guess I’d have to go with Rock Band so we could do the drum and keyboard solos as well :-)
Laurie
Hey, considering buying Rock Band but can you play just guitar hero with the guitar if you wanted to? Ya know use that guitar but with the guitar hero disk.
Nice post. I like the top 10 songs. I think I’d have to agree with you