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The new generation of music games are sounding a widdly-widdly death knell for rock 'n' roll, argues MOJO's Mick Farren.

Saturation yuletide advertising has finally convinced me that virtual music games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, in which participants attempt to "play" classic metal solos by following flashing light sequences on guitar-shaped plastic peripherals, pose an even greater threat to the future of rock 'n' roll than Simon Cowell.

For confirmation that these games are an unpleasant victory for short-attention commercial exploitation, we need look no further than a South Park episode titled "Guitar Queer-o," in which Stan and Kyle become Guitar Hero heroes, and, when Stan's dad attempts to teach the fourth graders to actually play a real guitar, Cartman scathingly responds that "real guitars are for old people."

What's being exploited here is as old as rock 'n' roll itself. Few of us have not, at some time in our lives, or perhaps as recently as this morning, played clandestine air guitar or posed in front of a mirror pretending to be Elvis, Jimi, Joe Strummer, or even Joe Satriani. But the global electronic game corporations who have co-opted this youthful narcissism into a competitive game of manual dexterity, with plastic reproductions of Gibsons and Fenders, are having a negative impact on music's future. OK, so we tolerated Tom Cruise dancing around in his underwear to Bob Seger in Risky Business, but enough is, culturally speaking, enough.

Guitar Hero and Rock Band broaden the perceived gulf between performer and audience by pandering to the most juvenile extremes of rock 'n' roll idol worship. Worse than that, they betray the great populist promise of rock 'n' roll--which has held good from the days of The Shadows--that any garage band with a set of cheap instruments and perfunctory chops can achieve icon status if it gets the breaks and is sufficiently relentless.

Equally unpleasant is the unseemly rush by many of our current guitar "heroes" to lease their music for inclusion. Among the shameless are Aerosmith, Metallica, Motorhead, AC/DC and the Sex Pistols, while The Beatles and the Jimi Hendrix estate are reportedly ready to deal. Whether or not this is more heinous than flogging one's songs for TV commercials is open to debate, but the basic absurdity is underscored by the song "Thunderhorse" by DethKlok--the fictional death metal band from the U.S. TV cartoon show Metalocalypse--being incorporated in Guitar Hero II.

At a time when musical education in schools has become a cause célèbre, the promotion of video games that offer nothing more than a closed loop of virtual experience, devoid of creativity, does nothing to help. A spokesman for the game makers has claimed that they teach "sensitivity to rhythm, as well as develop the dexterity and independent hand usage necessary to play the instrument," but this seems disingenuous when the games do nothing to impart the real fundamentals of music.

And just to add injury to insult, an outfit called Mad Catz in San Diego, California will retrofit a perfectly good Fender Stratocaster, replacing strings, pickups and fretboard with the input controls for Rock Band.

Is nothing sacred?

Commune with fellow music maniacs at MOJO4music.com. Mick Farren blogs at Doc40.blogspot.com.