Guitar Hero

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Preview: Love and Robots in Death and the Powers: The Robots' Opera

A third of the way through the opera Death and the Powers: the Robots' Opera , the leading man becomes a machine.
In Tod Machover's new opera, Death and the Powers , high technology meets high anxiety
By CHRIS DAHLEN | March 18, 2011

Soundgarden | Telephantasm

Aside from an unfortunate crop of John Graham art making the cover look like one of those three-wolf-moon T-shirts, Telephantasm is a solid retrospective for a Seattle metal band who got wrapped up in flannel.
A&M Records (2010)
By MICHAEL CHRISTOPHER | October 08, 2010

Review: Green Day: Rock Band

Activision has pumped out rhythm games centered on a single band — Aerosmith, Metallica, and Van Halen have all had their own Guitar Hero . Harmonix has offered only The Beatles: Rock Band . Until now.
Repeat, repeat
By MADDY MYERS | June 25, 2010

Greatest video-game tragedies of the last decade

Here are some of our favorite anti-victories of the past 10 years, in rough chronological order.
Zeroes from the Aughts
By LASER ORGY | January 15, 2010

Sexiest video-game studs of 2009

Video-game characters get more realistic all the time - and by more realistic, we mean sexier. This year offered a plethora of digital delights and graphical innovations, and although developers don't cater to their straight female and gay male audience
The cream of the crop
By MADDY MYERS | December 18, 2009

The Big Hurt: 10-year glitch

It boggles the mind that as recently as a decade ago, if you wanted to hear "Knockin' da Boots" by H-Town (and you did, believe me), you'd have to perform a primitive prayer ritual: you'd call some creepy guy with a really deep voice and beg him to play
The Big Hurt: A major decade for music — minus the music
By DAVID THORPE | December 18, 2009

Tech Support

"Lo! Men have become the tools of their tools." So wrote Henry David Thoreau, a long time ago, in Walden .
Stereo equipment is so passé. This year's unnecessarily awesome gadgets will stir coffee and turn T-shirts into guitars.
By MIKE MILIARD | December 11, 2009

Review: DJ Hero

Shortly after DJ Hero ’s release, a couple of craiglist ads popped up from gamers claiming they’ll plug in and play the game at your party for $75 — all you have to provide is the TV and the speakers.
Hit the decks in DJ Hero
By MADDY MYERS | November 13, 2009

Rock Band ... with a flute?

Here's a little gamer innovation (courtesy of Co-Optimus). This young flutist discovered that she could ace Expert Mode on Rock Band not by singing, but...
By Maddy Myers | November 10, 2009

Review: Couples Retreat

This movie has the power to make any date feel as endless and soul-sucking as the lifetime’s worth of defective, hateful marriages that doom the film’s protagonists.
Couples (and everyone else), retreat.
By SHAULA CLARK | October 16, 2009

Updating a previous item: Courtney Love claims she didn't agree to allow Kurt's likeness to be playable in Guitar Hero 5, Activision says otherwise. Grohl and Novoselic also respond.

By now you've likely seen the video of the late Kurt Cobain's likeness being used as a playable avatar in Guitar Hero 5 (and playing...
By Ryan Stewart | September 11, 2009

Review: The Beatles: Rock Band

Can we agree that the music-game market is saturated? To stand out in this crowd, you'd need something special. You'd need the Beatles.
Don't meet the Beatles — be them
By MITCH KRPATA | September 11, 2009

Review: It Might Get Loud

Some guitar teachers will tell you there’s a right way and a wrong way to play the guitar. But Davis Guggenheim’s rousing new documentary, It Might Get Loud, reminds us that that’s not true at all.
Davis Guggenheim films his essay on the electric guitar
By MIKE MILIARD | August 28, 2009

Players only

Jessica Smith has spent years booking death-metal shows around Boston. On top of loads of meat-and-potatoes nights at O'Brien's in Allston and Dee Dee's in Quincy, one brutal Sin of Angels show of hers actually sold out the Middle East downstairs. You li
A peek inside the world of Harmonix
By MATT PARISH | August 21, 2009

The Big Hurt: Broken bones and stripper poles

Only a few weeks ago, I was making fun of Aerosmith for their inability to present Aerosmith in their Guitar Hero: Aerosmith Presents Aerosmith tour.
The Big Hurt: Music news in brief
By DAVID THORPE | August 21, 2009

The Big Hurt: MJ murder mystery, Aerosmith injuries

Much as I hate to bring up Michael Jackson again, I was intrigued by sister La Toya's allegations that he was knocked off for his publishing assets.
Music News in Brief
By DAVID THORPE | July 24, 2009

Review: Guitar Hero: Smash Hits

When evaluating a new Guitar Hero — or any music-related game — it helps to picture a Venh Diagram consisting of three circles: "Good Songs," "Challenging Songs," and "Songs that are fun to play on plastic instruments."
Guitar Hero does its greatest hits
By RYAN STEWART | July 17, 2009

Guitar Hero bands go on tour

I have discovered why REO Speedwagon, Styx, and .38 Special would go on tour together. (Well, really...
By Jeff Inglis | June 26, 2009

Guitartyrs?

From the late '70s to the late '80s, Anglophile guitar rock went through a strange period of adjustment following the Year Zero history eradication brought on by capital-P Punk and its subsequent slaying of the Guitar Hero.
Some unsung Brit guitar heroes
By DAN BROCKMAN | June 26, 2009

Revival of the fittest

While we all snoozed on eggnog during the 2007 holidays, Jeff Prystowsky and the rest of the Low Anthem were shacked up in a rickety old house on Block Island, a deserted little hamlet full of empty summer cottages off the coast of Rhode Island.
The deep, dark Americana of the Low Anthem
By MATT PARISH | June 12, 2009

Review: Buckethead, Wolff at Asylum

Little is known about the masked maniac called Buckethead. According to his mythology, he was raised in a chicken coop next door to a drive-in theater, and the bucket he wears on his head contains cursed chicken bones that give him his supernatural guit
Buckethead and Wolf, live at Asylum on May 27, 2009
By DAN CLARK | June 05, 2009

Inventing the Future

Has Boston found the new Eric Clapton? A shimmying, face-contorting successor to Yngwie Malmsteen? Not exactly.
At MIT's fabled Media Lab, some will change the world with robots and computers, others with . . . Wii guitars
By ABIGAIL JONES | May 15, 2009

Into the darkness

The new release from Route .44, This is My America (Blue Radio Records), provides further insight into lead singer Ian "Lefty" Lacombe's affinity for the dark side, as the enigmatic southpaw guitarist delves even deeper than on the acclaimed 2'07 deb
Riding shotgun on Route .44's lonesome highway
By CHRIS CONTI | May 08, 2009

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