Rock And Roll Animal

"Some cereal. 'sposed to be good for you." - Mikey's Brother
There I was, relaxing on the couch after yet another heroic bout of Rock Band with my younger brother, flipping through all the downloadable tunes that were available to add on to our pretend-music experience. Much in the same way that we pondered each additional song as we generated our playlist for the marathon set we had only recently finished, each title was considered before moving on. Did it rock hard? Would it be possible to sing in the mucho gusto style to which my brother constantly aspired? Were there some wicked licks for me to shred on my plastic guitar? To give you some sense of our general outlook, we were using Motorhead's "Ace of Spades" as our litmus, though we weren't afraid to slow things down a little with something like Dylan's "Tangled Up In Blue."
Our tastes were, to put it mildly, eclectic. Which is why I was surprised when flipping through the songs we might eventually add and I came to Joe Satriani's "Surfing With The Alien," I got a mildly adverse reaction from across the room. I asked my brother what he meant.
"I know, we're supposed to like it because he's like an amazing guitarist, but who really listens to that stuff?"
"Yeah," I sniffed, choosing not to mention that it was one of my favorite albums from back in the day, partly because of the Marvel Comics-inspired cover art, but also because of the perfect storm of fretwork by Maestro Satriani. Before I ever had a plastic guitar with buttons on it, I played along with the air to the maximum: eleven.
"It's like jazz," my brother continued, making a small confession of his own, "I know we're supposed to like jazz, but when do you ever really listen to it?"
I got his point. He is, after all, my brother. In spite of the fact that my son gets up every morning to go and play in his middle school's jazz band, I could not remember the last time I pulled out my Dave Brubeck CD, or turned up Dizzy Gillespie when I heard him on the radio. We were both raised to appreciate all kinds of music. We listened to opera, played classical piano, and various other instruments, including a brief sting on the accordion. But we were products of our generation. We ate up the popular music of our age and now we spit it out. Both of us came to the realization that we had arrived at the point in history where we were the dominant demographic. Halftime shows and commercials now feature music from our formative years, and even though my younger brother owns and plays his own guitar, he still enjoys dropping by my house on occasion to channel his inner rock star. And I'm only happy to be his axe man. Even if he doesn't go big for those all-instrumental tracks.