The Day the Music Died: An Ode to Rock Band

Don McLean’s “American Pie” is now available on the Rock Band Music Store. It’s a hugely iconic track but, on its own, that’s not particularly noteworthy. Harmonix has been releasing new songs every week for the Rock Band series for over five years. Every week until now, that is.

The release of “American Pie” signals the end of a 281 consecutive week run of Rock Band DLC that has culminated in an enormous catalogue of more than 4,000 playable tracks from over 1,400 artists. Since its launch more than 130 million songs have been sold through the Rock Band Music Store.

Regardless of your thoughts about music games, that’s impressive. This is the legacy Rock Band leaves behind. It was the music series that was always about the music. It was never about one game; it was a platform.

It wasn’t especially easy being a Rock Band fan in Australia. By easy, of course, I mean in relative terms. Compared to, say, grooming a burning honey badger it was fairly simple. Of course, that’s kind of an extreme comparison. I don’t know why I brought it up.

What I mean is that the process of devoting oneself to Rock Band wasn’t exactly as straightforward down here as it was across the pond. Rock Band’s shaky beginnings down under made it a difficult series for antipodeans like us to fall in love with. There were delays. There were no-shows. There were hoops we had to jump through.

It was difficult, but not impossible. Assuming, of course, you were dedicated enough to make it work.

Over the course of the PS2’s lifespan Harmonix’s music games had firmly wedged themselves into my personal library. First FreQuency and Amplitude, then Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero II. I wondered when a team would combine the likes of Guitar Hero with something like SingStar or Drummania, or both. And then one did.

I watched with envy as the original Rock Band released in North America in November 2007. It was a long-distance relationship, at first. The months ticked slowly by while I ached to play it. Rock Band teased me from across the Pacific while I struggled to justify the incredible freight cost to import it.

EA’s Sydney office eventually got a bundle for internal purposes and I spent a glorious afternoon playing it with several former colleagues. I had been smitten from afar but now I was infatuated. It was a quantum collision of same-screen multiplayer gaming, listening to music, and playing music. It was a trinity of some of my favourite pastimes distilled into a box of plastic buttons, metal tubes and a microphone.

Rock Band would eventually release in Australia almost a full year later, in November 2008, but I gave up waiting some time before that. I took the opportunity while visiting a THQ showcase in San Francisco to lug a bundle home on the plane with me. I dragged that box all the way across town and left it at the mercy of the SFO luggage squad, wrapped in a black garbage bag and bound in tape. I found it waiting for me at the oversized bag desk in Sydney, beneath a surfboard and a baby carseat.

I came home with a second guitar from another press commitment in the US; this time for Midway. I’ve just realised each of the publishers that provided me the excuse to buy Rock Band paraphernalia are defunct. But I digress.

The problem I had now was that I was committed to the NTSC version of Rock Band. I wasn’t able to download additional tracks from the AU PlayStation Store (something I only discovered after shelling out for the entire Foo Fighters album The Colour and the Shape). I needed to download tracks from the US PS Store. That meant prepaid credit cards, or PSN bucks bought over the web. I’d have to import any sequels too, if I wanted to export the tracks to my PS3 to function in other Rock Band games.

Considering Rock Band 2 was never actually released in Australia, it was kind of a given anyway.

AC/DC Live: Rock Band, LEGO Rock Band, The Beatles: Rock Band, Green Day: Rock Band and, naturally, Rock Band 3 all followed, and I imported them all. Over the years I’ve stalked the web for the weekly DLC updates and downloaded hundreds of tracks. Rock Band Blitz too. I've quietly lamented the Pearl Jam: Rock Band game that never was, but music projects are tricky business (you can read about the incredible complexity of Harmonix's music licensing here).

I’ve carved through the solo in “Alive” and endured through the relentless drums of “Everlong”. I’ve discovered there’s never a bad time to slosh through “Don’t Stop Believin’” and nothing brings a room together like some good, old-fashioned “Killing in the Name” cursing. My Rock Band box is scuffed, bent and torn after years of being dragged into and out of the laundry cupboard. In video game terms, five years is a long time.

In fact, five years can be a lifetime. I remember drumming along with my baby son on my lap, helping him clutch the sticks in his tiny hands and bashing away at the pads while he laughed. Now he’s nearly five and doesn’t want my help anymore. He wants to play by himself. He’s terrible, but he doesn’t care. That’s what no fail mode is for.

And now I have a two-year-old girl headbanging in the corner to “Whole Lotta Rosie”. I should thank Harmonix for my kids’ good taste in music.

“American Pie” is McLean’s recollection of the day, as a 13-year-old delivering papers, he learnt of the 1959 plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper: The Day the Music Died. It’s a poignant track to save for the final piece of DLC for Rock Band but the music isn’t really dead. Though today marks the end of new weekly DLC releases Harmonix plans to continue support for the thousands of still-active Rock Band fans through ongoing Rock Band Network releases, server support and back-catalogue promotions. Rock Band, Harmonix promises, will keep rocking for years to come.

It’s a welcome sentiment to hear, because just because Harmonix has reached the end of the road for Rock Band’s weekly DLC doesn’t mean I’ll stop playing it. If anything, I’ve been feeling I should be playing it more often. It’s been quite an investment. I should make the most of it.

It’s sad the arse fell out of the rhythm game genre’s trousers. It was revealed last week that venture capital firm The Foundry Group has invested in Harmonix after being impressed with several new game projects the team is reportedly working on, so I look forward to what Harmonix has in store. Until then, if it’s a choice between a co-operative game that celebrates the joy of performing and the culture of rock or a competitive splatterfest that encourages nothing but victory and destruction, I know which I would rather be on in my house.

I think as long as our plastic instruments can keep on surviving the onslaught, it will be.

Luke is Games Editor at IGN AU. You can find him on IGN here or on Twitter @MrLukeReilly and share his joy that at least one Midnight Oil track made it to Rock Band. Failing that, you can chat with him and the rest of the Australian team by joining the IGN Australia Facebook community.

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