Come Together

We've just finished playing along with the song Back In The USSR. I glance at the clock, it's 1:28 am. I suspect my brother, Eric, hasn't been up this late in the since my nephew, Anders, was an infant. But here we are, sharing a look and a nod that we're going to keep playing. I want to stress the word play because I feel it's relevant in so many ways when describing our night with The Beatles: Rock Band. We'll get to that in a little bit, first: a little context. 

Let's go back 25 years to when I was 5 and Eric was 8. This was the first Christmas that Eric placed a drum set firmly at the top of his wish list. To emphasize that he wanted the drum set more than anything else, he left the following four lines of the notebook paper blank before listing his second most coveted gift, which, if memory serves, was an ice fishing pole. While my parents love us more than anything in the world, their love of peace and quiet, if they were to list it on notebook paper, would be less than four lines beneath us. So Eric got an ice fishing pole that year, he also got a keyboard. 

The next year, thinking that maybe he'd not done a good enough job of getting his point across the year before, Eric left an whopping six blank lines between his number one choice of a drum set and his second choice, a guitar. That Christmas Eric got a guitar. It was the kind that was full size, it had the speaker built into it. Though it wasn't a drum set he was happy kid that year. 

The next year, still happy with his guitar, Eric tried to sell the idea that, with a drum set, he and I could start a band together. It didn't work.  

The next year, aided by lessons, Eric had become a pretty decent guitar player. This led to him getting bored with the guitar. Not that he'd stopped playing it, as he knew my parents would use this against his renewed campaign for a drum set. So he played his guitar every day. This was also the year Eric went for broke. When it came time to make his Christmas list it was once again topped by a drum set, followed by an unprecedented twenty blanks lines separating it from his second choice. My parents, firm in their resolve, once again refused to get him the drum set. Years later I learned that this was the Christmas that my aunt, Mary Ann, had purchased a drum set for Eric that my parents made her return. I don't remember what Eric got for Christmas that year, but I remember that I got The Legend of Zelda for the NES. 

Eric never got his drum set. As a young adult he lived in apartments, a drum set would not have been practical. When he and his future wife, Shawna, bought their first house there were more important things to spend their money on, and when his son Anders was born, the dream was gone. 

Fast forward to a year ago, Eric and I were in Toys R Us looking at gifts for his son. I led us to the video game section to see if there was anything that caught my eye. As he waited for me, Eric, who had been at his peak of interest, a casual video game player, saw a demo drum kit station set up for Guitar Hero: World Tour. He grabbed the drum sticks and played along with a song. "That was pretty cool." He said, as we left the video game section of the store. A seed was planted. 

As I mentioned earlier, Eric has only ever been a casual fan of video games. When I would visit him, I would bring my PS3 and he and his wife would play a few rounds of Hot Shots Golf or a few levels of Little Big Planet. This Thanksgiving, I introduced Eric and Shawna to Peggle which they loved. I showed them how the PS3 could stream Netflix in HD and they were already interested in Blu-Ray movies. Suddenly they were interested in purchasing a PS3. What cemented the purchase for Eric was a Black Friday deal Walmart was having on Rock Band. For $50, you'd get the game and full band kit. 

For Christmas, I bought Eric and Shawna The Beatles: Rock Band. Though I'd say that I love music even more than I love games, I've never had any interest in music games. The idea of tapping on plastic instruments in time to a tune just didn't excite me. I hadn't played any music games aside from Parappa the Rapper and Space Channel 5. After we exchanged presents, we left my parents house and traveled to Eric's house to play with his new gift. 

I'm a huge fan of The Beatles, I have been for over a decade. Eric, on the other hand, aside from their hits wasn't too knowledgeable of their catalog until I had given him some of their music over the summer. Now he was a fan. As we started up the game we watched the entire introduction that was shown during the E3 conference. I asked if we should skip it, but he wouldn't let me. This made me smile. Eric is the best kind of person to give a gift to, because Eric doesn't like things, he loves things. We decided to  play a quick song to warm up. He situated himself behind the drums and handed me the plastic guitar. I chose to play the bass part because I figured if I'm going to be tapping along in time to a song, aside from drums, bass would be the most satisfying.

As we played along with I Saw Her Standing There I thought my part sounded really odd. I kept at it, hitting the buttons on the neck of the guitar in sequence to what I was seeing on the screen. When the song was over it displayed our scores. Eric scored a 78% on drums and I scored a 0% on bass. I told him I didn't understand how that was possible. My rhythm isn't that bad. "Are you strumming when you press the buttons?"he asked. I shook my head at my own stupidity. It's odd how when I get around my family I tend to fall into the "little brother" role. We did one more warm up song, I played along correctly, finishing in the 70% range when we were ranked. 

We then jumped into the Story Mode and started playing. All my snobbish apprehensions about playing music games quickly fell away as Eric and I played song after song, singing along, even though we didn't have the mic plugged in. Though we'd played games cooperatively in the past, it never brought about the feeling of cohesion that we were feeling that night. We'd pause in between songs to talk about the parts we'd just played or the song in general. I was really impressed by how the game made me appreciate Paul's bass lines more than I ever had before. Eric thought that Ringo was an underrated drummer. We end up stopping just short of finishing the story mode, not because we're too tired to go on but because we don't want the experience to end. 

This brings me back to the word play. With The Beatles: Rock Band I was playing along with some of my favorite songs of all time. Eric's playing on a plastic drum set, I'm playing a plastic guitar but it doesn't matter, we're not making music, we're using our imaginations, we're having fun. I was playing with my brother like when we were kids, transporting us back to a time when we saw each other every day, a time when we shared a room, not because we had to, but because we wanted to, a time when my parents were young and energetic enough to play with us, a time when we worried less and laughed more, a time when even if we didn't get exactly what we wanted for Christmas, we always had each other to play with. 

Though I was the one who gave Eric the game for Christmas, through his enthusiasm and energy, his appreciation and inclusiveness, he'd made it a gift for us both, and a memory that I'll always be fond of.