tbradshaw.net

I got the wild hair to change my desktop background today, and my favorite desktops are always those that span both monitors with a cohesive look. Here are some archives that I found that I liked:

• http://www.dualmonitorbackgrounds.com/
• http://mandolux.com/
• http://www.dualscreenwallpaper.com/

This Saturday The Bunker served as host to some of the most epic Rock Band I have ever had the pleasure of participating in. Jesse “jonypawks” Printz, Nathan Printz, Travis “maber” Mehlinger, and I tackled the Endless Setlist with everyone on Expert difficulty. The effort was tremendous.

The session has been a long time coming. We’ve been wanting to do the Endless Setlist for ages, but the immense time commitment (over 5 hours) has made it difficult to schedule. This was compounded by the challenge of finding a suitable fourth player for the power trio of Mehlinger, Printz, and myself. We’ve had great fun playing with Kuffs and Duncan both, but neither are quite as obsessed enthusiastic about the game as us three.

However, the stars aligned themselves this weekend, when Nathan–Jesse’s brother–came to visit for the weekend. Just that easy, on Friday afternoon during a delicious Fourth of July luncheon, we committed the four of us to tackling the most epic challenge in Rock Band.

We started at 11:00am on Saturday, after I returned from the grocery store with a twelve-pack of bottled water and some Rockstar energy drink. The Endless Setlist contains every single song on the Rock Band disk, all 58 of them, in order of difficulty, for a total of over four and a half hours without breaks. We wouldn’t be playing without breaks, however. In fact, to make the experience more enjoyable, we would be breaking the Endless Setlist up into a series of smaller sets while swapping instruments throughout.

We prepped a setlist in advance and scheduled our equipment changes. We also took the time to record our accomplishments in statistical glory.

For the first set, we warm up quickly with a seven song start. Nathan played bass, maber played drums, I started on vocals, and jonypawks lit up the guitar.

Song	Bass	Drums	Vocals	Guitar	Stars	Score
29 Fingers	97%	97%	91%	93%		597,335
Say It Ain’t So	99%	97%	95%	98%		837,942
In Bloom	98%	95%	97%	96%		899,311
I Think I’m Paranoid	98%	98%	97%	98%		622,464
The Time We Had	95%	92%	93%	98%		604,472
Mississippi Queen	99%	97%	84%	97%		505,711
Here It Goes Again	100%	98%	95%	99%		924,669

Notably, Nathan put the first 100% onto the scoreboard with his bass work on Here It Goes Again and Say It Ain’t So was (sort of surprisingly) our only Gold Stars from the set. Generally speaking, we attributed it waking up and starting to play so “early”. For a lot of us, it was the first thing we did this morning.

For the next set of six songs, jonypawks took over vocals, I moved to my only small set on drums, Nathan slide over to guitar, while maber held down the bass.

Song	Bass	Drums	Vocals	Guitar	Stars	Score
Creep	100%	90%	91%	95%		509,622
Bloody Doll	99%	92%	57%	95%		336,561
Wave of Mutilation	96%	80%	95%	98%		254,785
Should I Stay or Should I Go	98%	88%	84%	98%		437,467
Maps	99%	88%	85%	99%		363,099
Gimme Shelter	97%	92%	60%	97%		579,455

Well, this set was a bit of a disappointment. No one expected to go straight “fours” on only the second set, but it was easy to diagnose. Warming up to expert vocals is difficult, and jonypawks was coming in cold. While Bloody Doll is a bonus track that he had never sang before (and only rarely heard), Gimme Shelter is just really hard on vocals. Unfortunately, added with my lack-luster drum performance, it was just too much to overcome to get any 5 stars out of the deal. This is also the set where our “golden” drum set (the one of three that can do rolls on the snare fast enough to succeed on Run to the Hills) started to give. I definitely gave a 98% performance on Gimme Shelter, but dropped yellows kept me much much lower. Of note, though, maber did put up a four stringed 100% on Creep.

We decided to give it one more set before we broke for lunch. For the next session I moved to bass, Nathan took over on the skins, and maber moved to guitar while jonypawks held the mic stand up.

Song	Bass	Drums	Vocals	Guitar	Stars	Score
Brainpower	87%	92%	73%	81%		224,893
Sabotage	94%	97%	77%	96%		577,797
Blitzkrieg Bop	98%	97%	94%	97%		556,528
Celebrity Skin	99%	96%	89%	99%		722,118
I’m So Sick	97%	98%	74%	97%		517,902
When We Were Young	99%	98%	88%	98%		926,813
Black Hole Sun	99%	97%	88%	96%		842,229

This set went much better. I was on the “wrong guitar” for the Brainpower and put up a disappointing 87%. (Considering I’m supposed to be our “star” guitarist, 87% is embarrassingly low.) After swapping guitars things went nicer, although I was very disappointed to not get a single 100% on the board. I thought this was going to be my best (and probably last) chance to put up a 100% during our endless setlist, and I was already jealous of both Nathan and maber’s flawless runs.

It was Goodcents time. I printed off a copy of our stats thus-far and we chatted about it over lunch before heading back to The Bunker to finish out our epic journey.

The next set begins a massive two session odyssey with me on vocals. Of our four part band, only two of us have the pipes to handle expert vocals, and we were saving jonypawks for the last couple tiers of songs while I did git-fiddle duty. While I’m on vox, jonypawks takes a turn beating drums while Nathan plays six strings and maber plays four.

Song	Bass	Drums	Vocals	Guitar	Stars	Score
Wanted Dead or Alive	97%	94%	91%	92%		627,351
Learn to Fly	98%	95%	95%	98%		834,451
Seven	99%	98%	76%	96%		1,046,032
Orange Crush	97%	88%	99%	98%		575,675
Main Offender	98%	98%	86%	93%		501,304
The Hand That Feeds	99%	83%	91%	98%		611,259
Day Late Dollar Short	96%	90%	85%	96%		630,171
Epic	97%	94%	87%	89%		819,278
Suffragette City	99%	97%	87%	95%		707,104
Ballroom Blitz	97%	94%	93%	91%		1,109,287
Dead on Arrival	94%	85%	90%	93%		482,387
Pleasure (Pleasure)	97%	96%	97%	88%		748,847
Train Kept A’Rollin’	97%	94%	92%	89%		724,929

It was a long run to the end of this session, but it was a good one. Vocals continued to be our lowest scoring member of the band, with unfamiliar songs and talky parts alike putting some punishment onto me. Drums also took some hard times as the drum set that was annoying me became unbearable for jonypawks about halfway through this session. After some fiddling, maber ended up forking over the cash to buy a replacement set so we could continue rocking. We all languished about how much we wanted Rock Band 2 to arrive such that we could buy more reliable instruments.

The set ended up a particularly strong point when it was time for Dead on Arrival, Pleasure (Pleasure), and Train Kept A’Rollin’. Each of these songs have very difficult sections for drums, guitar, and guitar (respectively). It was a great band unity moment for us as we banded together to use our overdrive power to save and support the team member that was going to struggle. We passed all three, first try, and felt like more of a “band” for it.

The next session I continued my reign of terror on vocals while jonypawks moved his steady hands to bass, Nathan took a seat on the throne, and maber put on the fast fingerwork.

Song	Bass	Drums	Vocals	Guitar	Stars	Score
Are You Gonna Be My Girl?	93%	95%	95%	95%		931,327
Paranoid	98%	98%	100%	95%		800,317
Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld	90%	95%	80%	77%		228,817
Welcome Home	97%	99%	95%	97%		1,630,254
Go With the Flow	97%	98%	99%	98%		940,467
Dani California	97%	99%	98%	94%		1,457,076
Nightmare	98%	98%	96%	96%		655,633
Don’t Fear the Reaper	94%	94%	99%	97%		983,206
Reptilia	100%	96%	90%	97%		872,809
Electric Version	94%	97%	94%	98%		662,682
Vasoline	96%	99%	96%	94%		648,801

A slew of notables in this session. Jonypawks put up a four stringed 100% on Reptilia and we collectively surprised with a gold star performance on Dani California. Of extreme surprise was that I managed to get my own 100% on the board, but in vocals! The session was a blast, but I was incredibly glad to be done with vocals. After a much needed break, the first real problem with our session breaks presented itself.

All of the song groupings were arranged with a few heuristics. First, for the harder songs we tried to arrange things such that our band members were in the “right” place for the challenge. Second, we tried to give everyone as much variety as possible. Third, we wanted things to be in large blocks so that we were taking breaks and swapping instruments for more time than we were playing. However, I made a tactical error when I placed Detroit Rock City at the beginning of the next session. Jonypawks just didn’t know it at all. We failed our first song of the entire setlist and then I swapped jonypawks guitar for vocals for that single track.

For the rest of the session, we resumed our regularly scheduled arrangement of Nathan on bass, maber crushing the percussion, jonypawks on mic, and myself on guitar. This is our optimum arrangement, with maber, jonypawks, and I at our most skilled position and Nathan bring his very capable skills to lay the foundation on bass.

Song	Bass	Drums	Vocals	Guitar	Stars	Score
Detroit Rock City	92%	94%	92%	96%		525,864
Can’t Let Go	96%	96%	77%	92%		421,936
Next to You	92%	89%	84%	94%		463,774
Cherub Rock	98%	96%	93%	97%		1,276,721
Tom Sawyer	97%	95%	81%	97%		951,841
Enter Sandman	97%	98%	95%	98%		1,253,995
Green Grass and High Tides	87%	97%	72%	89%		1,346,898

Everyone really brought some great rock to the table. Other than challenges with expert vocals (which again, are our most difficult challenge for this setlist), a very solid presentation of 90%+ performances litter all of the songs. At this point, nearly everyone is playing a song that comes in the highest tier of their respective solo tour. Another great bonding moment came in the form of Green Grass and High Tides where I, a bit rusty, took on the longest solos in the game. Of course, I nailed the really difficult finger-work that I was nervous about only to butcher some simple four finger rolls later in the song. Sheesh. Still, an 89% on guitar with a four star performance overall isn’t too shabby.

And with that, we launched into the final section of our expert Endless Setlist:

Song	Bass	Drums	Vocals	Guitar	Stars	Score
Outside	96%	91%	90%	98%		823,094
Highway Star	92%	97%	87%	94%		1,491,713
Foreplay/Long Time	98%	98%	72%	94%		1,073,386
Flirtin’ with Disaster	86%	96%	94%	92%		1,181,707
I Get By	97%	95%	66%	95%		513,455
Run for the Hills	92%	85%	84%	89%		433,679
We Won’t Get Fooled Again	98%	93%	75%	98%		1,232,678

An incredible finish! Foreplay/Long Time gave us our second fail of the night, when the vocal “wankery” at the end took out jonypawks unexpectedly. (Not that we shouldn’t have been expecting a challenge there, but we didn’t.) We were so wrapped up in our epic instrumental performance that we had used a greedy overdrive path and left no overdrive for a save. The end of the song provided no overdrive opportunities to correct and we were beaten. A second attempt with more conservative overdrive use posed no threat at all, still landing a five star performance.

Run to the Hills is, by far, the hardest song in the game. We Won’t Get Fooled Again finishes the set list, but that choice by Harmonix is clearly one out of respect for the contribution to rock that The Who has made and not out of respect to the brutally fast high hat/snare work and triplet strings action that Iron Maiden delivers with Run to the Hills. After beating our way through Run to the Hills with a particularly notable performance by Nathan, it was down hill.

During We Won’t Get Fooled Again, that’s when we noticed how careful we had been playing. Normally we play with a lot of energy, practically throwing ourselves into the performances with wreckless abandon. We’re just silly, it’s true. However, our desire to complete the Endless Setlist had prepared us instead for a calculated team effort. We started to cut lose a little in We Won’t Get Fooled Again… and then it was over.

We yelled we screamed, but there was one thing on our minds more than anything. We needed more Rock Band. We wanted to cut loose. It was GO time. So we selected a 4 song Make a Setlist, and let each band member pick what song they wanted to play and one what instrument. To allow even more ridiculousness, vocals was mandated to be on Easy!

The set was the most epic we had ever played. Maber chose to sing Casey Jones by the Grateful Dead, putting his rendition of the groovy favorite down to a preposterously enthusiastic Little Endian (that’s our band name). We followed Casey Jones with Nathan’s selection, War Pigs with Nathan on drums. Maber stayed on vox, though I’m sure the microphone could pick up all of us singing the song at the top of our lungs.

For part three of our gratuitously platinum setlist, I chose to sing March of the Pigs. After carefully and roboticly delivering pitch-accurate singing that sounded more or less like crap, I was raring to just scream my face off in spite of the pitch detection software. I delivered March of the Pigs with such vigor that I even managed to get a “Messy” on the Easy difficulty. I also threw the microphone stand down during the breakdown and tried to knock over my band mates.

The finale for our delightfully self-indulgent “riding on coattails” performance was “This Ain’t a Scene” by Fallout Boy. I know, it’s silly to think that a group of individuals with discriminating taste in music would end with such a trite pop rock hit, but that over-the-top simplicity is exactly what we craved. Jonypawks on vocals, myself on guitar, maber on bass, and Nathan on drums, we just destroyed that track. Guitarists were spinning, the drums quaked, and the mic stand rarely stood on the ground.

It was over. It was legendary.

Thank you, Boston! Good night!

Update:

I almost forgot! Here’s some aggregate statistics from our setlist, broken down by instrument!

This put our average number of stars at 4.57 (counting gold stars as 6).

Independence Day
Chipotle takes a short break.
Thursday it is, Yay!