BY Peter Demmon

Christmas before last, I purchased GUITAR HERO (PS2) for my son for Christmas. He tore it up. Soon my daughter was in there too, with a different guitar. The time ultimately came for me to step into the arena, pick up the guitar and attempt to play THUNDERHORSE by DEATHKLOK. I was horrible. I couldn’t do it. There was a level of elitism and consciousness with this game that escaped me.

Ultimately, I dismissed the Guitar Hero video game phenomenon as something that just wasn't for me. I would stick to games that I knew, and wouldn't hold up another guitar/joystick again...it was too humiliating.

Then something else happened. Jada Toys released their GUITAR HERO Air Rocker. I was amused. My interest was piqued. I'd been beaten senseless on the PS2 versions of it at home by my kids, and I was up for something new.

So I got my mitts on one. I hooked it to myself sheepishly a few times and worked my way through DEEP PURPLE'S SMOKE ON THE WATER and SABBATH'S IRON MAN a few times. There was a constriction somewhere within me. I couldn't just let loose with the air guitar antics that I needed to let loose with. I was working the guitar pick over the belt buckle like it was a real instrument that I needed to concentrate on.

In this process of working my way through the Air Rocker's tunes, I found that my playlists for my car and my laptop were altered. I was listening to BOSTON suddenly and not just MORE THAN A FEELING. I was sucking up all of these old school riffs and basically enjoying an era of music that wouldn't have been enjoyed without a prod from this toy.

One night, I hung out with my friend Matt in a neighboring town. I told him about the Air Rocker and I happened to have it in my car with me. His eyes lit up maniacally and he told me to go get it.

I plugged him in, showed him how to hold the pick, and Matt was gone, gone, gone, gone. He was transported to the stage of some massive metal festival from the late 70's and he was onstage letting it rip for one hundred-thousand sweaty longhairs. He closed his eyes, leaned back ever so slightly, planted his feet far apart, and made the fiercest air-guitar pose I have ever seen. His hands became forged weapons of unbelievable sonic violence, and he ripped through MOTORHEAD'S THE ACE OF SPADES like he was showing Lemmy how it was supposed to be done. A key part of the ACE OF SPADES track on the Air Rocker is a bridge of high notes that actually breaks up the rhythm of the track itself. Matt dug into those notes, slowing down his performance to a slow crunch as he delivered each note, piecing it out with brutal flicks of his wrist. Each part of the riff was held in control and abused, hanging in the air like a concept that could drive a man insane and then blotted out by the next. It was like he had truly fused with the concept of the Air Guitar and all that it represented. Matt was lost in a world where it didn't matter if people saw him grimacing like a gargoyle as he churned out the forbidden sounds of the power-metal of yesteryear. His self-consciousness was simply the fact that he truly was a metal god on a stage, bigger than any metal god that had ever been comprehended. Matt became kind of ruthless guitarist that people lay their lives down for. Why? Because for that specific moment in time, Matt was not just Lemmy, he was not just MOTORHEAD either, he had tapped into a primal space that all humans have and he was exploiting it, like any number of rock stars of the past have tried to do.

After this ridiculous, over the top performance (in his kitchen) he hazily opened up his eyes and looked at me.

"I have to get me one of these things." He said, softly. The smoke cleared, and I realized that the experience of all-out hard-rocking fervor was actually the result of this toy he had hooked to his pocket and his belt. Matt had released a forsaken dimension; it was like unlocking Pinhead's cube, or stepping into Dr. Who's Tardis. Matt had cracked open a different world with that performance.

Since that revelation, I now cut loose on the Air Rocker. I now command a stage that only the most elite of all humanity can command. Bodies thrash beneath me as I deliver notes that rip through the skin and souls of men. The power, the lustful destructive force of all things metal are mine to deliver at will, and if I close my eyes during the experience, the colors swirl and the reality that I now know fades into one of black leather, spikes and an unchained rage that would surely drive a normal mortal completely insane. I am going to have to tell you more once I get my hands on Jada’s upcoming expansion packs for the GUITAR HERO Air Rocker. RATT'S ROUND AND ROUND and JUDAS PRIEST'S YOU GOT ANOTHER THING COMIN' are two tracks that I can’t wait to present on a massive stage somewhere, on some higher plane of consciousness that only the elite can experience.