I recently ran through the Kotaku.com frontpage and came upon an article that mentions the announcement of Roy Orbison DLC for Rock Band. And hey, guess what? I seem to be in good company in thinking that the lack of black artists in RB was a bit suspect. Of course, there are just as many claims being made in the comment section to the opposite, but face it, naysayers, it does look bad.
Even the recent announcement that some Lenny Kravitz tracks (finally) are making their way to RB doesn’t do much to abate some people’s suspicions that rock history is being “whitewashed” through RB. See, for instance, comments made by one, “etchasketchist”. He makes a few points in regard to the situation that well, can’t be denied, unless you want to simply retort in ignorant anger toward him.
And the interesting part? Well, he’s white. A white guy who is simply sick of the kind of crap that spawned this debate to begin with. And I have to agree with his opinions, what’s right is right, and this situation stinks. Hit the link on the sidebar to get a taste of the convo as it happened.
I felt a little bad. I really like Roy Orbison. Whenever my Rock Band boycott ends, i’m totally downloading those songs. But whatever. The defensive reaction I got from fanboys was fascinating to me. They had to really twist my position into some weird I Hate White People version in order to argue with my point. There’s this common perception that for Harmonix to deserve any criticism of any kind, they would have to have a published “No Blacks Allowed” policy somewhere. People seem to think that because the overt, conscious, legal racism of the Jim Crow South is (for the most part) a thing of the past, then the whole phenomenon of racial preference and bias has either disappeared, or doesn’t really matter any more. And if you complain about something like zero black artists being represented in the most popular music-based video games, unless you have photos of Harmonix devs in Klan-hoods, they get a complete pass and their fanboys get to shit on you and call you a race hustler. I love white people music. This summer I saw Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, R.E.M., Radiohead, and David Byrne. I don’t want to turn Rock Band into Rap Band or R&B Band. If Rock Band stays predominately metal/punk/whitepeople music, I’m cool with that. I just want a little representation. A little shout out to the history of the music. A little Chuck Berry. A P-Funk song pack. Funky Drummer. Something. Anything. Then I swear I’ll shut up and we can all enjoy Rock Band without guilt or shame.
Theres probably going to be a black history week track pack. It seems likely, seeing as they had the holiday track pack.