By Jed Gottlieb / Music, Boston Herald
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Video game dorks and rock stars never had much in common. But that may be changing.
Last night Salt Lake City’s Eric Miller parlayed his talent for joy-stick jockeying into a full-on rock star experience, playing “Sweet Emotion” center stage at Boston’s Hard Rock Cafe and hobnobbing with Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler.
Looking more like meditating monks than guitar shredders, Miller and three other regional winners competed in Guitar Hero: Aerosmith Rocks the Hard Rock Finals before a crowd of a couple hundred.
If you’re not a “Guitar Hero” enthusiast, the game allows players simulate the real thing using a guitar-shaped controller with fret buttons that corresponded to notes that scroll on the screen. It’s difficult, pretty addictive and massively popular.
“I thought it was kinda dumb the first time I saw it,” said Miller, after besting Orlando’s Joe Ostrom during final tune “Love in an Elevator.” “I didn’t even want to try it, but a friend told me it had (Ozzy Osbourne’s) ‘Bark at the Moon’ in it, so I gave it a try.”
As champion, Miller took home a custom “Guitar Hero”/Hard Rock Cafe Red Wing motorcycle, which Tyler was nice enough to sign for him. Not bad for a 24-year-old plastic guitar slinger.
“I came here thinking I’d lose,” he said. “I was just in for the free trip to Boston.”
Helping to blur the line between real and simulated rock, both Miller and Ostrom play music and say there’s an overlap in the coordination used in the video game and actual guitar.
“I’m a keyboard player with a degree in music,” Ostrom said. “There’s definitely a link between the two.”
It was easy to believe the two guys, watching them rock out on the big screen TVs. Then Tyler and Joey Kramer took the stage with a few friends, and suddenly the game was dwarfed as the band plowed into some loud, dirty, hard-thumping Aerosmith classics.
Comfortable in the Hard Rock’s intimate Cavern Club room, Tyler led the ad hoc group through early, gritty tunes including “Walkin’ The Dog” and “Last Child.”
Both the Guitar Hero finals and the Tyler/Kramer performance were part of a charity event held by Boston for Africa 2008, which benefited organizations working to end the cycle of war and poverty in many African nations. In addition to two Bad Boys of Boston, former Doobie Brother and Steely Dan guitarist Jeff “Skunk” Baxter and Dropkick Murphys leader Ken Casey pitched in.
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