132: Music Knowledge

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Music Knowledge

Title text: When Guitar Hero 2 comes out I'll have fresh conversational material for MONTHS.

Explanation

The punchline of this comic is that just by naming bands from the game Guitar Hero, you can sound pretty knowledgeable about music without actually knowing anything about the bands you are naming. This is further emphasized when Megan mentions Metallica, a very famous band that mostly everyone can be assumed to have heard of, and Cueball has no clue who they are, because Metallica is not featured in Guitar Hero (at the time of this comic writing). A similar premise was demonstrated in 1859: Sports Knowledge.

Guitar Hero is a music rhythm video game developed by Harmonix and published by RedOctane for the Playstation 2.

In the title text, Cueball (or possibly Randall) is just hoping for a sequel to Guitar Hero to get more, and newer, conversational material. By 2015, there had been 6 main sequels to Guitar Hero, with numerous other spinoffs and expansions to the Guitar Hero series.

List of bands mentioned

Classic Rock

• Boston is an American rock band from Boston, who had their most success in the 1970s and 1980s. Their song "More Than a Feeling" is featured in Guitar Hero.
• Queen is a British rock band from London, formed in 1970, with many major hits. Their song "Killer Queen" is featured in Guitar Hero.
• "Bowie" (David Bowie) was an English singer and songwriter. His song "Ziggy Stardust" is featured in Guitar Hero.
• Joan Jett is an American rock singer. She is best known for her work as the frontwoman of her band, Joan Jett & the Blackhearts. Their version of the song "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" is featured in Guitar Hero.

Newer stuff

• Franz Ferdinand are a Scottish rock band formed in Glasgow in 2002. Their song "Take Me Out" is featured in Guitar Hero.
• The Donnas were an American rock band formed in Palo Alto, California in 1993. Their song "Take it Off" is featured in Guitar Hero.
• Audioslave was an American rock supergroup formed in Los Angeles in 2001. Their song "Cochise" is featured in Guitar Hero.

Other stuff

• Arcade Fire is a Canadian indie rock band founded in 2000.
• Postal Service was an American indie rock band founded in 2001.
• Freezepop is an American electronic band from Boston. Their song "Get Ready 2 Rokk" is featured in Guitar Hero, as a bonus song. This is the first giveaway of Cueball's source for his music knowledge; Freezepop is a fairly obscure indie band best known for their placement in Guitar Hero and other rhythm games.
• Metallica is an American heavy metal band. The band was formed in 1981 in Los Angeles, California. Metallica has won 9 Grammy awards and received 23 Grammy nominations. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2009.

Interestingly, neither Arcade Fire nor Postal Service (mentioned by Megan) are featured in Guitar Hero, so Cueball should not have any knowledge of these bands. Perhaps he brought up Freezepop as a distraction, since Megan mentioned that The Postal Service also has electronic music.

Transcript

[Megan and Cueball converse.]

Megan: What kind of music do you listen to?

Cueball: Oh, a mix of things. Some classic rock like Boston, but then of course Queen and Bowie, Joan Jett...

Megan: Definitely, we need more of those sounds.

Cueball: But there's some great newer stuff too, like Franz Ferdinand, The Donnas, and Audioslave.

Megan: Sometimes they're a little much for me. I go more for things like The Arcade Fire, sometimes mixing some electronic sounds like Postal Service.

Cueball: Oh yeah—have you ever checked out Freezepop?

Megan: Mhm! Synth pop can be fun, but at the same time, I agree that sometimes you just need to blast some Metallica.

Cueball: Who?

Megan: ...Metallica.

Cueball: Are they new?

I sound pretty knowledgeable about music until people figure out that I'm just naming bands from Guitar Hero.

Trivia

• In his Google-speech in late 2007, Randall expressed some form of dissatisfaction with Guitar Hero III (coincidentally the first edition in the series to include a Metallica song).
• In 2009, three years after this comic was released, Metallica eventually got a game Guitar Hero: Metallica.

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Discussion

It may be worth noting that much of Freezepop's popularity comes from one of the band members being the music director for Guitar Hero and related games and slipping in their own songs. This got them an audience way beyond most synthpop bands (and I'm sure endorsements by people like Randall didn't hurt).

Of course the rest of their popularity comes from the fact that they wrote great music, made cute videos, and put on a fun live show. And that synthpop is just better than whatever you listen to. 162.158.255.69 23:37, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

He's not endorsing them, he's saying the name because he doesn't know how else to respond to the character's comment.—Kazvorpal (talk) 01:57, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Oh, please. Queen, Bowie, and Joan blow Freezepop out of the water

^agreed.

This comic reminded me of the "technical school mathematician incident" in China. The student's "math knowledge" (similar to the "music knowledge" in this comic) was questioned. ConscriptGlossary (talk) 11:34, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

You sound like we should know all about this. Maybe I'm an exception, but I can only very roughly guess what you're alluding to. (I'm guessing you're in, or from, China and it was huge national news there?) 172.71.26.61 14:01, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Just now I found that her name was blocked by the search engine. The student made a lot of mistakes in her handwriting. It's not blurry - it's clearly wrong. The latest piece of news about her came out on November 3. ConscriptGlossary (talk) 08:50, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I hear that there can be "keyword filtering" over there when deemed necessary. Of course, we're probably more likely to hear about naval. incidents (or at least more likely to see documented cases about which ships nudged which other ships, etc) or what's happening to certain ethnic minorities, than the kind of thing you must he refering to. (For the sake of not making it troublesome for you, I'll avoid mentioning directly the more specific names/places/dates that might trigger the Great Firewall and/or deplete your 'social credit' if you're not already taking precautions against such scrutiny.)

I did a bit of searching for stories about this kind of thing, but could only come up with more generic recent problems (e.g. withdrawl of Advanced Placement results, for whole swathes of students), on top of several years of similar concerns that the system wasn't really consistent/satisfactory in the 'oversees' academic world. Sometimes it was seen as the parents(/students) trying to dodge the system, sometimes it was a 'higher up' systemic misrepresentation (achievement targets and quotas trying to be met?). Obviously it won't be in isolation, and not be uniquely one thing (nor internationally the only such problem spot). And no wonder that a more specific case of cheating(?) just doesn't notably pop up on our radar, here. I'm sure it's a fun story, but we'll just have to use our imaginations! 172.70.162.39 11:39, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

her initials are jp 172.71.26.100 12:01, 9 November 2024 (UTC)
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