Rock Band does, in fact, rock
Last night, we went to the home of one of designdoc's coworkers for dinner and Rock Band. Take Guitar Hero, add Karaoke Revolution, add a second guitar and a drum set peripheral, and you've got Rock Band. It's a lot of fun. Unfortunately, I didn't know any of the songs. Fortunately, this didn't seem to matter much. designdoc was talking about how it's kind of challenging, because the game uses the album version of the songs, rather than the radio version, so there are bits where you don't know the words. I replied that was fine, since you don't need to get the words right, just the tones. "Yeah, but you don't have notes to work with, just these weird relative tone indicators. No one can read that!" "I can." He did not believe me. I'm not sure which surprised the guys more: my total lack of any knowledge of classic rock, or my ability to sing songs I've never heard before based on the tone indicator (it's just like the one used in Karaoke Revolution). Surely you've heard this one, they say, it's by the Rolling Stones! Nope. I might have heard it in passing, but I am not at all familiar with it. I checked the full set list, and there are only a small handful of songs on it that I can call up a vague tune in my head for. There are a couple more that I think I would know if I heard them, and two whose titles cause the songs to pop into my head, one of which I used to know all the words to.