Rockband used to be the staple of our Thursday night large groups. I remember the golden days of rocking out into the wee hours of the night along with three other instrumental maestros grooving along to color coated notations. I was king just for three minutes at a time, but in those three minutes, the world was my domain. My rule extended beyond the walls of the apartment past the Berkeley city limits and beyond the confines of this known universe. I was amazing. The drums were my specialty but any instrument would do, so long as i could rock out and be a man. Rockband had the power to captivate, yet after a few months, we abandoned Rockband for the next new fad . . . Bang! or Settlers or Halo or whatever.
There Rockband sat for many countless months. the drumheads collecting dust. The bass peddle cracked and taped over with duct tape. the grease stains on the guitars drying up. The spit on the microphone completely evaporated into lost times of grand adventure. Rockband was forever lost in the sea of our own short attention spans. We spent the same amount of time hanging out, but Rockband sat neglected next to a couch making it hard for people to plug things into a power strip located directly underneath the drumset. I had purchased Rockband for the PS2, so the resale value was near next to nothing. In the back of my mind, i figured there would be a time that i would feel like playing it again. Maybe when i had kids. Or maybe when those kids had their own kids and they wanted to play some old vintage game that swept the nation and held its attention for a total of eight weeks.
But no. Last night, we turned to the Rockband. I wiped the dust off of the drumheads. Changed the batteries of the wireless guitars. Plugged the PS2 into the back of the tv. Everything was in place for this one night revival. We would bring the dead back to life.
After a minute of load time and a reacquaintance with unfamiliar feelings, we recaptured the night. Everything and anything under the sky was ours as we, the Experts (our band name because everyone played on expert, clever huh?) drummed, picked, and slapped our way into eternal existence. An eternity that would last a little over three minutes.
