September 7th, 2008 – Day 8

So it’s been a while since I made a post. On September 4th we played a few songs:

Nightmare

Rock ‘n’ Roll Star

Sex Type Thing

Then there was Snow (Hey Oh). A song so crazy that we were 200,000 points from gold stars on our best run.

Needless to say, we decided to skip it and come back when we were… better.

Then my bass pedal crapped out on me. It got to that bendy point where you can’t hit double bass anythings. And Cookie’s guitar also decided to stop working. His drum set’s red pad is also screwed up beyond belief. Today, Cookie got his guitar working. I knew I had to find a way to fix my bass pedal. Which brings us to the star of today’s blog entry. I give you:

THE BEST BASS PEDAL ON THE FACE OF THE PLANET EVER

 

Specs:

- Stock pedal reinforced with 6 plastic butterknives!

       – 2 orange halloween knives left over from 3 years ago

       – 2 unidentified plastic knives

       – and 2 Wendy’s knives still wrapped on underside

- Flat top surface for extreme pedal action!

       – Top half evened out by two useless CDs and a birthday card I got from my friend last year

       – Bottom half smoothed by 10 tickets I was saving for that big stuffed teddy bear I’ll never win

- Features 2 “Stabilizers,” one on each side!

      - Right side stabilized by a pen that’s out of ink

        - Left side stabilized by a pencil advertising a psychic medium named Jamie Clark

Alternate angle shots:

Top View

Side View Left

Side View Right

With my tricked-out bass pedal, I was ready for anything. Unfortunately, we only got to play two songs because Cookie had to call this girl he liked even though he already has a GIRLFRIEND! I know, right? Anyway here are the two songs:

You’re All I’ve Got Tonight

My Curse

Hopefully we’ll be able to get a good block of songs in tomorrow. I want to get as many done as possible before Rock Band 2.

September 4th, 2008 – Day 5

Snow blows. More information tomorrow after I get less pissed off.

September 3rd, 2008 – Day 4

Not much of anything to say about the songs gold starred today. Hey that rhymed! Awesome.

Anyway, we started where we left off last night and breezed through 11 songs, getting stuck only once on Synchronicity II.

Synchronicity II

Wonderwall

Don’t Cha Stop

You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’

Last

3′s & 7′s

The Collector

Day Late, Dollar Short

Hard to Handle

Learn to Fly

My Sharona

There were a few points that made me kind of mad tonight. One was when Cookie missed only 2 notes on The Collector, screwing up what would have been a double-FC. Then on 3′s & 7′s, Wonderwall, Learn To Fly, You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’, Last, and Hard to Handle, I missed only one note. Which I guess is good since -1 runs are still really awesome, but it was frustrating because on every one of thos songs I missed a really easy part.

Septermber 2nd, 2008 – Day 3

We started playing tonight thinking we wouldn’t accomplish much. We tried at Crackity Jones a few more times, but still no luck. After getting severely aggravated once again at The Pixies, we decided to backtrack and gold star the 3 PAX songs released today:

Livin’ at the Corner of Dude and Catastrophe

Skullcrusher Mountain

Shhh….

We did all 3 in 1 try, and then went right back to Crackity Jones.

The problem with Crackity Jones was that Cookie cannot alt strum, and his drums are also damn near broken. So if he played on guitar, he got 95 percent, and if he played on drums, he got even lower. After about 10 more tries, we finally broke 200,000 points. We only needed about 20,000 more.

Then out of nowhere Cookie pulls an awesome run, hitting all the unison bonuses. We got the gold stars about 30 seconds before the end of the song, and we probably would have gotten the first place score on Scorehero if we weren’t screaming with joy.

After rejoicing for a few minutes, we realized that now Crackity Jones was done, we could do anything!

We could climb Mount Everest!

We could beat up Mr. T!

…Or we could just Gold Star more songs, which is exactly what we did. We went on to gold star 11 more songs tonight without ever having to do a song again:

Dead

Don’t Look Back in Anger

Girls on Film

Live Forever

Roam

This Ain’t A Scene, It’s an Arms Race

Wanted Dead or Alive

Gimme Three Steps

Girls Who Play Guitars

Juke Box Hero

N.I.B.

We even would have gotten two double-full combos, but Cookie made a creative choice and decided the solos in both songs would sond better if he missed just one note. I have to say it was incredibly satisfying finishing off the night without being stuck on a song, and the really cool thing is that I did all of this after getting only about an hour and a half of sleep last night. In fact, what am I still doing up?

I’m going to sleep. goodnight.

September 1st, 2008 – Day 2

Today was an interesting day in Rock Band. We actually spent a good portion of the day playing Mercenaries 2, but we eventually got around to tackling Leaving Here. Last night, I had gotten 92% on drums. I tried one more time today and then Cookie decided to try. He ended up getting 98% after a few tries, which was friggin’ crazy. After screaming with joy over finally gold starring that song, we went on to gold star 6 more songs:

Moving in Stereo

Real Good Looking Boy

(Take These) Chains

Call Me

Shake

Bullets & Guns

All of these were very easy to do. Then we hit a major snag:

Mother fucking Crackity Jones.

It’s safe to say that both Cookie and I despise this song with all our hearts after tonight. Short, fast songs are pretty much the bane of our existence. There are so few notes coming at you so fast that if you miss just a few, you’re screwed.

We loaded it up with Cookie on guitar, me on drums. Cookie missed a few notes at the beginning and then I missed the unison bonus.

We got about 160,000 points.

We checked Scorehero to see the cutoff. The people with the lowest gold star score had about 180,000.

So we tried over and over with me on guitar and Cookie and drums and vice versa. Finally, FINALLY, our score improves. We get 193,000 points.

No gold stars.

Those lying bitches on Scorehero got our hopes up for gold stars and then crushed them. Crushed them like a meathead jock crushes nerd’s faces. After this, we continued trying at the song, though we were visibly more angry. Things exclaimed while playing included:

“SHITFUCK!”

“I’MA PUNCH THIS SONG IN THE FACE!”

Maniacal laughing from Cookie

“I’MA KICK BLACK FRANCIS IN THE BALLS!”

Weeping from Cookie

After an hour (Yes, a full hour of Crackity Jones), I found that I could alt strum much better when the TV was muted. I started getting 98 and 99 percent, which was great. Except at that same time, Cookie’s scores on drums dropped from 99 and 100 percent to 96 percent, which put us in the same place we had been before.

After one more scream from Cookie proclaiming his hatred of The Pixies, we turned the game off for the night. Tomorrow we will regroup and probably get gold stars the first or second time we play it, which will be really stupid.

August 31st, 2008 – Day 1. Sort of.

Today is the first day that I will document our quest for a lot of gold stars on Rock Band. We have already spent months gold starring the first 3 tiers. We had gotten stuck on Sprode for the longest friggin’ time, because I wasn’t good enough at drums to get down the chorus.

Yesterday, we finally gold starred it, and today we continued into tier 4. We completed 7 songs tonight, 2 oxen drowned in the river, and Mary died of typhoid. The 7 songs tonight were:

Down At the Whisky

Teenage Lobotomy

Blood Doll

Amazing Journey

Baba O’Riley

Behind Blue Eyes

Eminence Front

Baba O’Riley and Behind Blue Eyes were surprisingly difficult. They each took about 5 tries. Maybe it was because of the lack of notes and the massive amount of organ solos in Baba O’Riley. After a little frustration, we got them done. At leas it was nothing like the frustration of Ever Fallen in Love or Sprode.

We hit a road block tonight at Leaving Here, because Keith Moon was an inhuman monster and that song is impossible to keep up with on drums and makes me very angry. Cookie and I tried it 2 times, at which point I got very angry and gave up. My highest percentage was 92%. I need 98…

We’ll see how that goes.