Rock Band?

[andygates]

The arch grand duke of rhythm games has broken its waters and is crowning, but is it awesome or is it cringe?  Rhythm games are fun; party games are fun; you look at the people playing or blogging about Rock Band and it looks like the best of fun.  It ought to be: it's karaoke and air guitar with a next-gen console sound-and-light show.  And it's easy to have fun (an important aspect to party games: they should be easy to pick up so everyone has fun). 

Every time I pick up a real instrument, I twiddle, then I suck, then I sell it on ebay.  This is not the rockstar dream.  This is why in virtual bands, I'm the roadie.  Y'see, I'm so unmusical that I can't even pretend to be musical but I'll pick up a hairbrush (or hammer) and bellow into it, and I'll drum on my steering wheel, and I'll pick out a bassline on the cat. 

She doesn't like it.  Especially a funky Jamiroquai slap bass.  She really hates that.

Seems to be Rock Band is a weekend game-party rental classic.  What do you real musicians feel about it? 

(Half of me wants to play it lots; the other half wants to buy a secondhand bass and a practice amp and is shouting lalala I'm not listening at anyone who points to my track record - if my sampling of the zeitgeist is correct, the Rock Band backlash will be a wave of DIY low production values filthy garage noise)