Adventures of a Guitar Heroine. Kinda.

Here I said I was all about blogging and look what happens - not a peep from me in over 2 weeks! Truth be told, things have been extremely busy, but with good reason. The Iron-Man starts this Thursday and I am STOKED.

If you haven't heard by now, we have all sorts of events planned for this weekend. However, there's one event that I absolutely cannot wait for - Rock Band Battle of the Bands. I want to take part in this event. SO. BAD.

I'll admit. I'm a music junkie and I love Rock Band. I love Rock Band despite the fact in "my band," I always have to sing. I love Rock Band despite the fact that I spend more money downloading songs on XBL than I do iTunes. And I absolutely love Rock Band because I can play "Hysteria" over and over and over again, and pretend that I'm a bad ass as I shred my plastic guitar.

Now, as much as I love Rock Band, I really don't have the opportunity to play it that often. However, this weekend marked the long awaited reunion of Corey's Living Room's favorite band, Spruce (side note - when we named our band, we really didn't care WHAT it was called at the time, however, in hindsight, we probably could have picked something that doesn't sound like a 40-year-old man's aftershave).

So we were rocking out with the usual suspects - my younger cousin on drums, my older cousin on guitar, me on vocals...but this time we were joined by my younger cousin's friend on bass. The circle was now complete. AWESOME.

We get to the 11 song 90's set and I think, "This is gonna be GREAT," being a child of the early 90's and all. However, my younger cousin J and his friend looked apprehensive. After some reassuring from their bad ass elders (meaning myself and my older cousin, Cam) we launched headfirst into a set that was going to be absolutely epic.

So we're jamming hardcore, sailing right through Celebrity Skin (seriously Harmonix, there are a myriad of other better bands with female lead singers, ala Kay Hanley, than Hole), Say it Ain't So, and Sabotage when we land on Cherub Rock.

"What the hell is this song?" J cries frantically while searching for the pause button.

I almost drop the microphone out of my hand in shock. To pour salt in the wound, his friend adds, "Yeah, I've never heard this song before in my life."

Ok. Ok. It's only the Smashing Pumpkins. Granted they're 4 years younger than me, but come on....it's like being a grunge kid in 1994 and not knowing who Kurt Cobain was. So we muddle through and I write it off as maybe they were just living under a rock when Siamese Dream came out (to be fair, they would have been about 6). But it happens again when we get to In Bloom. And Creep. And when Black Hole Sun starts and they look at me with that same shocked look of "what the hell is THIS song," I halt the "tour" because there's some serious questioning that needs to happen.

"What do you mean you don't know THIS song. THIS song was...IS still everywhere," I try to calmly explain.

"When are we going to get to the Metallica," J's friend asks.

Suddenly, I'm having a startling revelation. Am I really that old? Well, that's debatable. However, as I'm about to school them on the finer points of how much I melt for Chris Cornell, I see the answer to my questions was right in front of me all along....on their Metallica t-shirts.

"...J, what else besides Metallica do you listen to?" I ask.

He responds with, "I like that one band that you like. That one we saw last year (Muse). Oh! And I like Velvet Revolver. They're pretty cool."

At that point, I wanted to inform him that his beloved Velvet Revolver was fronted by the same man who fronted the band who sang the song Vasoline....which he didn't know, either.

All I could do was smile and say, "We'll debate music later - we're only 2 songs away from winding this set up. Let's keep going."

Finally, we made it to the last song. And of course, as we're about to start our final number, and those hauntingly famous 5 notes play, I hear from J and his friend, "HELL YES! The song I've been WAITING FOR!"

And oh did that Sandman ever enter at a better time.