Battle of the Rock Bands
We had a Rock Band Party on Saturday. Rather than just having people over and randomly picking songs off of Band Quickplay, we got all organized and stuff. Here’s what we did:
- Cool invitation, like a flyer for a skanky urban club
- Asked people to come as their favorite rock star
- Had two setups. One was on the home theater in the nerd hole, the other was in the dining room on a 26″ monitor. Both had two guitars, courtesy of GH3.
- Randomly sorted guests into bands of 3. This way, they could select around their least good instrument. Bands who could handle all four could determine whether they wanted the points from vocals or the overdrive from bass or whatever.
- Every band played the same 3-song set. Each player could choose their own difficulty level. Scoring was based on number of stars (in case of a tie, the actual points determined the winner). We selected easy songs for the first set, and subsequent sets got harder and harder songs. At the end of each set the band with the lowest score was eliminated, until we had two bands in the final set.
- Between sets we ate lunch and dinner, and had two sideline competitions. 1) Guitar Hero, where anyone could challenge me to a Tug of War on Hard. Songs were picked randomly from the tough songs with serious guitar solos. Whoever got the best score won the prize. 2) Beat the Wanker, where anyone could challenge the drummer (whose name is Wanker…I recommend naming an avatar The Meat for this one). The “Random Song” feature of the game picked the song, and the challenger could play on any level. Wanker played on no less than hard. Number of stars won; ties went to Wanker. It was not fair, but he almost bombed out on a Queens of the Stone Age song.
- We made t-shirts with a cool “God of Rock” design on the back and something on the front to designate what the person won for. In addition to the above, we had a shirt for whoever acted most like a rock star, and whoever managed to get the most 100% scores. The winning band also got silly little trophies from the party store.
After the contest, most people hung out for a another few hours, and we swapped people in and out on whatever instrument they wanted until the wee hours. It was good fun.
The next day, 3 of the guests went to buy Rock Band and an Xbox. One of them actually did plunk down the moolah, so that’s two whole kits we’ve helped sell by hosting RB days. We should buy stock in EA/Harmonix.
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