Music Discovery via Rock Band

I remember playing the first Rock Band back in 2007 at my in-laws house. I loved going over to their house because they were teenagers who had all the coolest video games. A year or two earlier they had introduced me to Guitar Hero and I had fallen love with it. I didn't have any fancy video game systems so I bought a wired Guitar hero controller and started playing a free open source guitar hero clone called Frets on Fire (FOF) on my pc. The music library was extensive but inconsistent and by the time Rock Band came out I wanted nothing but its multi-instrument appeal. I'm a sucker for Karaoke and can carry a tune so I fell in love with it. Everybody else wanted to play drums or guitar so I was always guaranteed a spot in the band.

I wanted Rock Band so badly. It didn't help that every time I went to church the kids in the youth group were playing it in the lobby on the big tvs. It also didn't help that they were constantly playing one of my all time favorite songs, "Say It Ain't So" by Weezer.

I finally got Rock Band a few months later. It was glorious. In the back of my head I was convinced that I was rock star material. I was singing at expert level in no time. I was playing guitar at expert a little later. My drumming was nearing hard level and I was sure that my "pretend" drumming would translate itself into "real" drumming soon. It was even more fun when I could get my wife to play or when I had friends and family over.

It's been a few years now and I still play Rock Band but now I'm playing the 3rd version of the game; Rock Band 3. Kim doesn't play that much anymore and I'd love for friends and family to come over more but it seems that the novelty has worn off. I've kept up with most of the Rock Band games except for the Beatles version and I'm waiting for the Green Day one to go down to about $10 before I buy it. I always pay the extra few bucks to export my old songs into the new rock band game and I'm a little addicted to buying downloadable content or DLC. Each song is usually $2 and when you add up all the songs from the 3 Rock Band games, Lego Rock Band, the AC/DC track pack and all the DLC songs I have a little over 400 songs.

I've found some really good music through Rock Band and I'd like to list those here. These are songs I was unfamiliar with until Rock Band that made their way onto my iPod.

Songs from Rock Band 1:

Welcome Home by Coheed and Cambria

I was familiar with the band but had not heard this song yet. They're a great band who base their songs on a space opera that the lead singer wrote which makes for some odd lyrics.

Reptillia by The Strokes

Another band I was familiar with but I just had never heard this song until Rock Band.

Songs from Rock Band 2:

Almost Easy by Avenged Sevenfold

Bat Country and Beast and the Harlot are favorite songs of mine so I was pleased to find that this band had more good songs. I wouldn't be surprised if the song writer eventually becomes a Christian as his lyrics make it seem that he's searching for God.

Aqualung by Jethro Tull

I had heard the main hook to the song on those infomercials for classic rock but I liked the whole song. Weird lyrics though...

The Trees by Rush

I don't like a whole lot of Rush this and Tom Sawyer are probably the only ones I like.

Psycho Killer by The Talking Heads

I instantly fell in love with this song and this band. I love, love, love this song it's got to be one of my all time favorites.

DLC, songs I listened to a 30 second preview and decided to pay $2 for.


Afterlife by Avenged Sevenfold

Another good song from this band. Songs like this further cement my theory about them converting, if they haven't already.

Still Alive by Glados

It was free but I would have paid for it.

Skullcrusher Mountain by Jonathan Coulton

It was only a dollar but I was hooked after hearing how funny it was. This kind of Started a Coulton landslide for me. I had to find everything he ever did and I like a good portion of it (I later found out he was responsible for the song before this one on the list).

Hysteria by Muse

I already liked this band and a 30 second preview convinced me that I had to have this. One of my favorite Rock Band songs as it's catchy and smart and very challenging. One of the most fun bass parts to any song if you can master it.

Don't Look Back in Anger by Oasis

When Oasis first hit in America in the 90s this song wasn't on the radio for some reason, BIG mistake. I love this and had never heard it before.

I.V. by X Japan

Was very surprised to like this song but it's great and has one of the best vocal parts.

Growing older every day with The Insyderz

In 1993, when I was 11, Jeff Foxworthy released a comedy album called "You Might Be A Redneck If...". My mom bought it for me that Christmas and I must have listened to it a million time on my off-brand walkman. The "You might be a redneck if..." jokes got worse with every listen but there were parts of his comedy that stuck with me over the years. The first one is was the bit about redneck abbreviations, I use g'eedyet(did you eat yet?) and yumptoo(do you want to?) all the time. But the bit that stuck with me the most was just kind of a throwaway joke about the fashion train. Jeff theorized that we're all riding on the fashion train until one day when we decide it's our stop and the train keeps going while we stay in the same spot becoming more and more irrelevant to youth culture.

I turned 29 recently and I wonder sometimes when my stop on the "fashion train" will come up. When will I draw my line in the sand and proclaim that I've had enough with all this new stuff and things were better in my day!? Will I ever be the disapproving old white guy at the conservative by everybody else's standards church.

A few years back our worship leader tried something new at church and I felt like what the old people must have when they turned down my electric guitar during worship back in college. We had just started going to Lifechurch.tv and we loved the worship. It was a breath of fresh air to find a church that sounded like the music we listened to in the car and on our iPod. It wasn't the normal setup this Sunday. It wasn't 2 guitars, drums, a bass, and some BGVs it was 2 macbooks, 2 keyboards, an electric guitar, and I think a vocoder. I stood there with my arms crossed finally relating to how those stuffy old people must have felt when I was told not to play penatonic scales in church. Sure it was wierd but I later listened to the recording of that worship set and it sounded great.

I've done my best to stay relevant. But I don't want to ever be a slave to it. Every few months or so I'll listen to the most popular songs on Grooveshark.com just to see if there are any diamonds in the rough. But most of the time I live my life in the fringe, the outer limits of what people find acceptable in music and entertainment. I used to pride myself on that when I was younger. Now sometimes I'd rather relate to people than be an oddball or a hipster of any kind.

Ska was relevant for a very brief period in the mid 90s Christan Rock scene. The Insyderz were never the best or most popular in my opinion. The one thing they had going for them was they played a genre of music that I found very enjoyable at a time when Ska was scarce. And they covered a Keith Green song. The Skallaleuia cds were the shining moments in the Insyderz discography.


I once got caught singing this version of the O Lord You're Beautiful in what was meant to be a private moment between me and GOD in our cabin at the family reunion. Definitely on my top 10 most embarrassing moments list.

I'm done with talking about Ska, I've learned I really don't like it anymore. I've grown out of all of it but Five Iron Frenzy. Tomorrow (who am I kidding lol)I'll cover songs that I fell in love with while playing Rock Band.

Supertones. Good but not Great.

I've been struggling for a few days with this topic. I want to continue talking about the Christian Ska but the more I think about it the more I realize that the only ska band that stands the test of time is Five Iron Frenzy. Supertones will do in a pinch though. The way I see it there are four good Supertones songs: Adonai, Blood Washed Pilgrim, Unite, and So Great a Salvation.


Adonai is off of their first CD; Adventures of the O.C. Supertones. You gotta love that album art. The lyrics are solid and after listening to it for the first time in probably eight years it's still pretty good. Lots of horns in this song and kind of a wierd Beck shoutout in the second verse.


This was my favorite on their debut cd. I feel real stupid, I had no idea this was hymn until searching for the song on youtube. My wife is laughing at me now. My church didn't do hymns, we did what we called choruses. I like the Supertones version about a million times better.


My best friend and I would rock out in his Volkswagen GTI to this song back in the day. It's a great message about Church unity that really struck a chord with me.


This is a great acoustic song that I really related to. The line "and I asked God for a wife" really struck a chord with pre-married me. This was one of the first songs I figured out how to play on my guitar without looking it up on the internet. I love the lyrics. I played this many times as a prayer to God.

Tomorrow we'll wrap up the Christian Ska segment with a look back at The Insyderz.