Jack White and Jimmy Page, representing two generations of innovative guitarists,  joined a chorus of lesser known musicians expressing dismay over the explosive popularity of Guitar Hero.  Condemning the rhythm game and its counterpart Rock Band has become the du rigeur interview drop-in for virtuosos of popular music, usually touching on the same themes.  Jack White took issue with the format:

It’s depressing to have a label come and tell you that [Guitar Hero] is how kids are learning about music and experiencing music.  [I]f you have to be in a video game to get in front of them, that’s a little sad.

Jimmy Page went on to lament the game’s extraneous connection to learning to play an instrument:

You think of the drum part that John Bonahm did on Led Zeppelin’s first track on the first album, “Good Times Bad Times. “  How many drummers in the world can play that part, let alone on Christmas morning?

First of all, the drums on “Good Times Bad Times” are not that hard.  Secondly, what’s sad about getting introduced to good music through a video game?  What is it about the format of Guitar Hero that tickles the pretension of world class musicians?

It’s equal parts confusion and nostalgia, the former willful and the latter incurable.  No one playing Guitar Hero or Rock Band is under any illusion that they are learning how to play an instrument.  Even 12 year olds can comprehend the difference in complexity between five buttons and one trigger to six strings and 24 frets.  Any one can hear immediately the distinction between what the trained singers they see on American Idol and the drunken wailing they hear coming through the TV on “Sabotage.”  To suggest kids aren’t aware of the distinction between playing Rock Band and playing in a rock band is silly and condescending.

Further, Page’s conclusion that kids aren’t learning anything valuable about playing music through these games is wholly inaccurate. They are learning rhythm to machine perfect and consistent metronomes, a skill many touring drummers neglect.  They get the connection between rehearsal and success that is the backbone of good muscianship as well as on-the-fly association that will be useful later in sight reading.  And, most importantly, they learn the pain of fucking up, capturing perfectly the string slips, stick cracks and rowdy boos that come with being unprepared at the show.   No one is learning notes and scales from Guitar Hero, but suggesting they aren’t learning anything is willfully ignoring what these games do right.

While the confusion can be corrected by careful observation of these games, the nostalgia sadly cannot.  This pervasive pining for the “good ol’ days” of rock and roll seems central to the identity of the Jack Whites and Jimmy Pages of the music industry, stodgedly refusing to accept the now.  The age when music lovers figured out what to listen to next from magazines and radios and record store clerks is over and it’s never coming back.

The quiet secret about their nostalgia is that it is self-serving.  The idolatrous guitar player knows how to convince the critic and the DJ and store owner that he has the “It” factor.  He knows how to look bitchin’ on the cover and in the music video, how to make the fan feel recognized at the in-store signing.  The rusty, aging marketing machine of cool is something that the Jack Whites can leverage to squirt out credibility, fame and fortune.

But how does Jimmy Page look cool in a video game?  How does Jack White impress a search engine?  Real artists should be celebrating the shift of music distribution from gatekeepers to street sweepers. From channels governed by the tastemaking elite to crowd-sourced engines of customized recommendation whose trends fuel the curation of games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band.

Only those who survive through the photosynthesis of spotlight stand to lose.