Fake Plastic Weez

A Special Guest Entry in THE WEEZER FILES: 'Buddy Holly' + 'Say It Ain't So' + Guitar Dreams + Video Game Screens + Great Expectations + Great Recession

In middle school I thought I had found an offramp out of my bland suburban-American hellscape: guitar. My plan involved standing on stage at a talent show, plugging into an amp, and riffing so hard that everyone fell in love with me, especially my attractive emo classmate with the Hot Topic wardrobe. My musical fame would lift me above the tedium of school, with its grades, unbelievable pressure, and horrible breakouts of acne. It was a perfect plan, except that I didn’t know how to play guitar.

Inspired, I enrolled in guitar classes. We learned “Hot Cross Buns” and “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” When that wasn’t enough, my parents hired a private tutor to coach me every other weekend. The guy had long, ratty hair and a beaten-up Camry, and he always gave off a sweat-and-copper smell that I would learn only later to associate with sex. He was a lovely teacher, but I didn’t care about his lesson plans. I wanted great solos! I wanted sweet riffs! I couldn’t see how blues scales and chord progressions would ever fulfill my life’s purpose of grinding with the emo girl at the school dance and getting an OTPHJ.

And then came the perfect solution, sold at every mall and GameStop across the country, with batteries included.

---

In 2007, the video game Rock Band was released. Players held a plastic controller shaped like a guitar. They pressed buttons on the plastic fret, aiming to match scrolling colorful dots on the TV. They sang into the plastic microphone. They bashed the plastic drum kit. It was a sensation. Suddenly, everyone in America wanted to pretend to be a musician. My parents bought our family the game, and it was a small revolution. What need did I have for a real instrument—and all the frustrations and calluses that came from trying to play it—when the shiny-smooth plastic version did what I wanted at the touch of a button?

Before Rock Band, I knew nothing of Weezer. But it was two of the band’s songs included with the game—“Buddy Holly” and “Say It Ain’t So”—that swept me up most immediately; to this day, they are the only songs that come to mind when I think of my Rock Band era. “Buddy Holly” had me hooked from the start.

(Woo-hoo)
But you know I’m yours
(Woo-hoo)
And I know you’re mine

That felt written specifically for me and my emo girl. I don’t care what they say about us anyway / I don’t care about that became my mantra, my philosophy, my North Star. I did not care about anything in my life except for learning the guitar, getting the girl, and sublimating my ennui into a video game.

I spent a large part of 2007 plunking the plastic keys and holding the o’s in “Say it ain’t sooooOooOoO”. It was innocent fun, at first. But by 2008, Rock Band had become a raging obsession. I had become addicted to the plunk-plunk of the plastic strumming tab.

Countless evenings, I sat at the desktop computer, scrolling early YouTube and watching hundreds of videos of people playing the game. I watched their fingers pressing madly on their plastic fretboards, studying how they moved through “Buddy Holly,” admiring how delicately they were able to flick the whammy bar during “Say It Ain’t So.” In my mind I was studying the guitar. I had earnestly come to believe that there were skills that could be transferred between a guitar-shaped piece of plastic and a real instrument with strings. My brain had been seduced by the game’s explosions of colors and animations of crowds dancing and swooning. It felt like the real thing. And then it eclipsed the real thing.

---

2008 was a wonderful year in the American suburbs. I was young, full of life, and rocking out on my plastic guitar. My summer quest was to nail the Weezer songs; the proof would be scoring 100% on both, even with the difficulty set to “Expert.” With each “set,” I got nominally better. The numbers went up. The applause of the fans grew slightly louder. I was playing with visions of glory in my head. Maybe I could film myself scoring 100% and somehow convince the emo girl to watch the clip. Yes, that would definitely work. I plucked and plucked away. Hours and hours, winter, spring, summer. I stood barefoot on the white carpet of the second floor. The world outside vanished. The guitar disappeared, and then the girl. I was playing only for the numbers, colorful dots, and praise of the screen. With the screen, I felt acceptance. I could stay inside forever and get all the validation I needed. I would never have to risk embarrassment or shame again. This was the future. Back then I still loved the future.

But then I was forced to go outside to school, football practice, and other places where Rock Band couldn’t go. I carried my iPod Shuffle and listened to music from the game. Weezer, suddenly, was no longer music from a video game, but actual music! I was hit with the first of what would be many sinking feelings after screen-induced binges. All summer long my friends had been frolicking, fucking, drinking, playing, forming bands—real bands—and booking sets at venues in Seattle, where city’s music scene had not yet been pummeled by the Great Recession and big tech. I had been inside, plunk plunk-ing on a non-guitar. I had spent so many hours of my life in front of that screen, and for what? Looking back on it, I felt dizzy. It was like a black hole was swallowing the whole summer, and I was realizing at the last minute that I had spun the void into being myself.

In the fall of 2008, it all exploded. “For Sale” signs went up in the neighborhood, including in our front yard. Most of them never came down. No one was house-hunting. No one had money. My parents were lucky; after many months, they somehow found a buyer. At the end, we had a final walk-through, checking for anything we had left behind. Our house was an empty shell, devoid of life. Alone for a moment in the living room, I rolled around on the white carpet where I had played so many hours of Weezer. I had a vision of our family gathered around me. We were all playing our plastic instruments, and I was hitting the whammy bar just right on the “Buddy Holly” solo. The summer was gone, the girl was gone, the house was gone, the world was gone. But I could still play my plastic guitar and sing Weezer slightly off-key. I am still trapped, I think, in that white room. I am strapped to the screen, attempting to replay something that never truly existed. The rest of the house is dark. I am dancing on the carpet, singing, almost screaming, awash in the glow. That world is over, but I say nuh-uh, not yet. Say it ain’t so. ✹

---

Michael Rance is a nonprofit worker-bee. He writes Three Chairs, a semi-regular newsletter. You can find him drinking espresso in the cafe at Seattle’s KEXP.

---

Subscribe to receive new TRACKS ON TRACKS posts. It’s all free, but you can help keep the lights on by BUYING ME A COFFEE.

---