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My review of DJ Hero: It's a whole new group o' muscles. Using the right hand for clicking feels very different, even if it is only 3 fingers. Plus imagine playing guitar without being able to brace the neck with your left thumb. It takes some getting used to to scratch but not lose your orientation of where your buttons are when you move the record. Cross-fading with the left hand is cool. There's a left, center, right setting which controls if channel 1, both, or channel 2 is playing. She's not a strum bar though, so you have to get used to not muscling it to get it back to the middle. There's also a button that lights up (at least on Renegade edition) for overdrive and a twisty knob that allows you to fade the bass or treble at certain points. That's just the instrument. The interface is fine. The note chart is interesting enough. There are a fair amount of little things to get used to. (Like when you can fill in your own effects or alter the bass/treble, or spiking the cross-fade real fast.) The sound track is OK. It feels like they bought rights to 60 songs and tried to find as many good mash-up combinations as possible (and some not so good ones). There are some songs you keep seeing over and over... Very hip-hop focused although I expected this. There are a few rock mash-ups but I don't actively follow most hip-hop/rap and it's always more fun when you know the songs. But tell me "Ice, Ice Baby" and "Can't Touch This" isn't the greatest guilty pleasure ever... If only they could do a 3 song mash-up and add in “Informer” by Snow. There are a few cool touches. With a few sets, you can have a friend play guitar while you DJ. Also, no more bomb-outs. If you suck, "NO STARS FOR YOU" but you can play all the way through the song. Rewinding is oddly fun. If you max out multiplier for a time period, you can rewind by doing a 360 backwards spin and the game literally rewinds the song 10 seconds or so and doubles your multiplier. It definitely strikes me as having potential and is quite fun. Not quite the party atmosphere of Rock Band, but still fun. Plus you look like an expert after playing for only an hour since the instrument and interface look a bit intimidating... I could stand some DLC that dives deeper out of rap/hip-hop territory. I wish Harmonix released it because then I'd have confidence they would support the DLC. (There's a couple downloads out so far and they're $3 each song.)
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So I attended a seminar with one Phil Cardella yesterday. He’s an interesting guy. He’s a Relson Gracie Brazilian Jiu Jitsu blackbelt with a 13-2 MMA record (and upcoming WEC fight) and an impressive grappling record. He also has lots of great stories. I think my favorite story was when he was struggling to keep an enormous BJJ school open in Texas and Relson came to visit from Hawaii. During the visit, while Phil was passed put exhausted in his apartment, Relson Gracie, (one of the highest ranking Brazilian Jiu Jitsu masters in the world) cleaned Phil’s apartment.
It was very interesting to see his perspectives on moves all of which felt very "Relson" but were somehow different. At one point in the seminar, Phil was demonstrating a series from sidebody (you attack an opponent laying on their back, chest to chest, legs to the side of their body). He showed a few basic moves and they asked casually "There’s another move I love from here but you have to be a rubber band to do this. You probably don’t have any super-flexible students, do you Mark?" Everyone looked down at their feet at this point. (BJJ practitioners tend to be a bit proud [something to do with never "tapping", the grappler’s equivalent of "saying 'uncle'", is my guess as to the root cause].) One of our purple belts responds "Well – where’s Todd?" Everyone in the class turns to look at me. Phil looks at me skeptically. People don’t typically expect a 6’ 3" scrawny geek to be as limber as a cosmic ray laden Reed Richards. He asks "You’re flexible? Really flexible?" Mildly embarrassed, I mutter "That’s what they say" under my breath. Phil goes on to have me perform a neck choke on him in front of the whole class which involves putting my foot about 8" from my own face, rolling and choking him out. I will admit to being mildly concerned when right before I performed the roll, he warned the rest of the seminar attendees "Don’t try this move if you aren’t made out of rubber. You’ll feel A LOT of pressure in your hamstring and can hurt yourself during the roll." Turns out I am pretty flexible. It’s good to know the years and years of stretching were worth it. Man, I can’t wait to start using this move...
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So. Observations from a concert featuring a fictitious cartoon Death Metal band (Dethklok from Metalocolypse).
* Did the opening band realize that they were opening for a parody of themselves? Seriously – complete with leaning over long hair circles…
* The second band, Chimaira was pretty impressive. The drummer could basically keep 32nd notes going on double bass drums for the entire length of the song. Yet somehow he didn’t overpower the groove established by the rest of the band while doing this. As a hack pseudo-drummer (hack defined as fairly proficient at Rock Band drums), I know enough to appreciate his skills and to know that there’s no freaking way that their songs could be translated to Rock Band. Even if Harmonix came up with a drum set with two pedals, the incidence of snapped pedals would be off the charts…
* Final note on Chimera’s drummer – I particularly enjoyed how he made the show a tactile experience as well as sonic. You could seriously feel the bass drums reverberating through your body in a non-stop barrage. The effect was hypnotic. This is probably typical of the death metal genre in general, but this guy was clearly the best of the 3 drummers who played that night.
* Notes to sweaty guy #1 – So, Mr. Huge, Sweaty Mosh Pit Guy… Using your sweat drenched body to jam against me in an attempt to usurp my premier “fence” spot won’t work. Seriously – your nastiness is not grossing me out. I roll around with guys 10 times sweatier than you twice a week. For fun. And I pay to do it. You might start to gross me out if you were to sweat in my eyes or mouth though… (Yes – I’ve had both happen).
* Notes to sweaty guy #2 – So, Mr. Bald, Shirtless, Five Foot Zero inches tall, Most Pit guy… OK. You do freak me out. Every time you slammed against me in your masculinity reinforcing mosh pit antics, I felt like some albino, mutant human weasel was thrashing against me. Just saying.
* I haven’t been to a metal show in a while and forgot the red-neckery that goes on. (As a descendent of a long line of proud red-necks, I feel ethnically permitted to make observations on red-neckery.) You might be a red-neck if… You wear a mouth piece into a mosh pit. It actually makes sense though. If you intend to try to knock people’s teeth out in a mosh pit, it’s only fair to assume they will try to return the favor. And everyone knows them dentists is all perverts who just want to get like your Uncle Hank on a bender once they give you that knock-out gas…
* Best moment of the night – asking a group of teenage goth kids if the intro video playing on the screen before the bands started was “the Metallica cause you kids watch the MTV right? and my buddy and me have a bet.” Their reaction was priceless. It was sort of a mute “Why is this old weirdo talking to us? About things we hate even? Is he trying to sell us drugs?”
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