Guitar Hero 5

For a week now, I've been reading articles about Courtney Love's dismay (to put it politely) over late husband Kurt Cobain's avatar on GH5 "singing" Bon Jovi and other artists. I dismissed it as "yeah, whatever, if this is the biggest thing you have to worry about, then you're pretty damned lucky."

Now I see that JonBon is "supportive" of her anger. C'mon, now. You DO know this is only a game, right? Granted, the latest in one of the most successful, if not the most successful game franchises in gaming history, but that's just until GH6 comes out, and everybody forgets about this one.

Jon went on to tell the BBC that he had declined the offer to appear as a playable character in Guitar Hero.

"I had the paperwork, they wanted me to be on that game and I just passed," he said. "But no-one even broached the subject with me that I would be singing other people's stuff. I don't know how I would have reacted to that. I don't know that I would have wanted it either."

By "the paperwork", do you mean an actual contract? Or an email saying, "Hey we wanna pixelize you"? My bet would be the latter. Any contract sent, had Jon intended to take it seriously, would have been scrutinized six ways to Sunday, and any "missing clause" explored and every "loophole" firmly closed. Call Jon what you will, but nobody can argue that he has shrewd lawyers and is very, VERY careful about what he puts his name and likeness on (crappy pens notwithstanding).

Jon, I submit that you absolutely don't want to be a cartoon character (being anime on a slot machine in Japan is different). Not because, in your words, "To hear someone else's voice coming out of a cartoon version of me? I don't know. It sounds a little forced," but because your avatar would probably suck at lip synching just like you.

Oh come on, reader. You've seen it. I know you have. That horrid TV appearance when Jon couldn't manage to get his lips to match the studio track. (I'm sure at least one of you have the YT bookmarked, I can't seem to put my fingers on it this morning).

We all know, I know, that Jon is a fantastic singer. A phenominal frontman. A veritable force of nature when he's on stage. But he can't lip synch his own stuff never mind someone else's. I could just see someone at Activision playing that up.

That would be hysterical.

Almost as funny as grungemaster Kurt Cobain singing You Give Love a Bad Name, Stevie Wonder's "Superstition", Dire Straits' "Sultans of Swing", Elton John's "Saturday Night's Alright (For Fighting)", No Doubt's "Ex-Girlfriend", or any of the other non-Nirvana tracks on the game's soundtrack.

As an aside, note that Richie didn't seem to mind being a Lego character and having his little avatar dude "air guitaring" to someone else's stuff. No lawyers, no lawsuits, no f-bomb-laden tweets.

I respect Courtney's right to be pissed off. I support her right to deal with that in whatever non-violent way she sees fit. I even get Jon jumping in -- I mean, any publicity is good publicity, right? With the new record coming out, getting his name out there on as many RSS feeds as possible can only do good things. But:

It's....

Only....

A....

Game....

People!

Besides, the more you complain openly about it, the more people want to buy it just to see what other tricks they can make Kurt do.

~ Hath



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