My Rockin’ Family

by Kelly

Remember the summer? Summer is the best time of year for building family memories, at least it is for my family. We’d stay up late and be outside on weekends. We roasted more marshmallows than I could imagine, twirled glow sticks on long strings, and caught fireflies. Then it got colder and the family fun we looked forward to every weekend evaporated.

So my husband and I started “Game Night.” Every Friday we would haul out Monopoly and play until my 5 year old fell asleep in his chair. We’d leave the board exactly as it was and resume the game in the morning. We loved it! We had so much fun, and aside from my butt falling asleep from sitting for so long on our wooden kitchen chairs, it was just perfect.

After a few months, though, our super-fun family night was getting a little stale. So my technologically-addicted husband came home with an XBox 360.

Needless to say, the boys all had a great time with the variety of games that also came home with the Xbox. The problem was that there wasn’t a game that all 4 of us wanted to play together. I’d play Marvel Ultimate Alliance with the boys while my husband would play The Bigs and Halo3 with them. Our warm and fuzzy Friday nights had deteriorated into the kids determining which parent got to play with them.

About a month ago, I escorted my 7 year old to a classmate’s birthday party. They too had an Xbox 360. The game they were playing was just plain cool! It was Rock Band, a game created by Harmonix Music Systems, Inc., an MTV Networks company.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Rock Band, it comes with a drum kit, guitar and a microphone. The goal is to work together with someone on each instrument to complete a song with high accuracy. The screen during the selected song has designated areas for each instrument to follow including a lyric track for the singer.  You can even customize your member of the band, complete with hometown, hair color, body art and clothing.

Now on Friday nights you’ll find my husband on guitar, me on the drums, and the boys take turns belting out songs that are like old friends to my husband and me. My 5 year old sings “In Bloom” by Nirvana, and my 7 year old sings “Roxanne” by the Police. He also nailed “Tom Sawyer” by Rush, which we got as part of a downloadable content pack. My 5 year old blew us away with “Learn to Fly” by the Foo Fighters. “Vaseline” by Stone Temple Pilots and “Buddy Holly” by Weezer are other popular choices at home. My Dad comes by occasionally to sing “Margaritaville” by Jimmy Buffett and attempt the Roy Orbison downloadable content pack.

After we get the kids to bed, my husband and I use the game like a karaoke machine and butcher popular songs in the convenience and comfort of our own home. Good times!

Evidently our family Rock Band nights aren’t that unique. It’s pretty natural that Rock Band has caught on with families; take this technology author’s story on NPR, for example. 

Families have been rocking out for decades when you think about it. There are the Osmonds, the Jackson 5, the Partridge Family (OK that last one is stretching a wee bit huh?), but, you get the idea.

On a related note, my sons begged for, and are now taking, guitar lessons because of this game. They badger their teacher to show them how to play songs they hear and like. They’re working on “Iron Man” by Black Sabbath right now. They heard it in the movie this past summer and since it’s not in the game, they’re learning it on the guitar for real. Who would’ve guessed Rock Band could prove to be educational? It had inspired a love of music from many decades as well as from a large variety of genres for my kids. Thank you MTV!

We really look forward to the winter weekends this year, especially since Santa brought us Rock Band 2 for Christmas. We still miss warm summer nights, but Rock Band has taken the chill off the mid-winter blues.

Now if we could only agree on a name for our band.