Guitar Hero 5 Giveaway

It’s not only Batman helping us celebrate at our new site launch party, we’ve got rocks stars here too! So here is your chance to win a copy of Guitar Hero 5 on Xbox 360, signed by the super cool punk rockers and Guitar Hero 5 stars Attack! Attack!
Our question to you is…

What is the name of Attack Attack’s lead singer?

a) Freddie Starr
b) Neil Starr
c) Rawk Starr

Send your answer to this email address to be entered into the draw. Entries must be received by Friday 9th October and you must be a UK resident aged 16 or over to enter.

Attack! Attack! vs Guitar Hero 5

The music industry is something of an enigma these days. For decades there has been a well travelled and universally accepted pathway to musical stardom: you form a band, write a few songs, play a few gigs and wait for a record executive to approach you from the back of a smoke-filled club with a cheque bearing six figures and Richard Branson’s signature. Cue recording studios, champagne-drenched launch parties, Gold Discs and demolished hotel rooms. But things aren’t quite so simple nowadays. MySpace, YouTube and iTunes have reduced the traditional business model to so much shattered vinyl, and bands are now utilising an increasingly broad spectrum of media outlets to promote and distribute their latest musical offerings.

So, with all avenues being considered it was only a matter of time before band managers came knocking on the door of the videogames industry. The Guitar Hero franchise has been the home of interactive rock and roll since it first pursed its lips and strutted onto the global stage, and the success of the sequels have provided would-be Townsends and Pages with an ever expanding library of RSI-inducing classics to whammy their way through. With the release of Guitar Hero 5, however, Neversoft are proving that you don’t necessarily have to look back in order to move forward.

Introducing Attack! Attack!, a Welsh quartet of post-hardcore pop-rockers. Selected from a pool of over 200 songs ‘You and Me’, a track from the band’s self-titled 2008 debut, has made its way onto the Guitar Hero 5 playlist, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Dire Straits, The Rolling Stones and David Bowie. To discover how this union came about, Ready Up travelled to London where Nick and Ryan of Attack! Attack! were on hand to talk gigs, GamesCon and, of course, Guitar Hero.

RU James: So guys, give us the brief history of Attack! Attack!

Neil: We formed around the end of 2006. We [Ryan and I] knew each other from other bands and we both knew of a couple of guys who had left other groups and weren’t up to much. So we recruited them, wrote a couple of songs, went to America, recorded an album and here we are.

RU James: How did you establish your fanbase? Were you a gigging band or a MySpace band?

Neil: We had fans before we even played a gig, purely because of MySpace. We didn’t have any videos, no YouTube channel or anything like that. We’d written these two songs, and within three weeks of writing them we’d recorded them and put them up online. ‘Cause we’d all been in bands before we were sending the new songs out to the old fanbase saying, “We’ve got a new band, check it out”, and before we knew it we were having thousands of hits a day without ever having played a gig.

Ryan: But now we are definitely a gigging band now. We don’t stop!

RU James: Since recording the debut album, what have you been up to?

Neil: Well, we just played GamesCon in Germany. That was incredible. It was the biggest thing I’ve ever seen. There were kids waiting four hours just to see a seven minute trailer of a new game – absolutely mental! We were hoping to get some privileges – queue jumping passes or free games or something – but we didn’t get anything…

Ryan: …In fact, we did get something. We got a ping pong ball.

Neil: Oh yeah. We played SXSW last year as well. That was the first time we’d actually been to America to play a gig. We played the Guitar Hero sponsors stage. It was truly awesome, a real eye-opener.

RU James: MIDEM 2009 was your gateway into Guitar Hero 5. How did that come about?

Neil: We had nothing to do with it! Our manger mentioned it and we said, “Cool, whatever, we’ll leave that to you”. Then we hear we’ve been shortlisted, which was wicked because we didn’t expect anything to come from it. Next thing we know we’ve been selected. We didn’t believe it at first – a lot of stuff in music tends not to happen even when you’re told it will happen, so we took it with a pinch of salt. But now the game is out and it’s real. We can’t believe it!

RU James: ‘You and Me’ is the song that appears on Guitar Hero 5. Why that song?

Neil: We didn’t even know ourselves until it had been shortlisted. We heard one of our songs had been selected from over 200 other tracks, and we were like, “Really? Cool – what song!?’ Looking at the track itself it’s probably one of the most suitable ones: you’ve got your hook at the beginning, a little solo bit. It just seems to work with the gameplay.

RU James: Guitar Hero 5 came out a week ago – what has happened to your MySpace traffic in that time?

Ryan: The reaction has been huge. YouTube plays have gone through the roof.

Neil: We monitored the music video for the song, and it had 100,000 hits within days. I emailed the other guys, I couldn’t believe it! The comments have been really positive too. I guess it all starts from here.

RU James: Are you videogame fans yourselves?

Ryan: Big time. This is going to sound a bit ‘cool’, but next to our rehearsal room there is a second room which we use purely as a games room.

Neil: We’re all into gaming. We’ve got games all over the place: all the consoles from the Master System upwards, a vintage Simpsons arcade machine from 1991 – everything we can get our hands on. We were already fans of Guitar Hero, so it means that much more to us when we see our track being played by other gamers.

RU James: Having now played your song on the game itself, are you happy with the translation?

Neil: Yeah, it’s really good. There’s a spelling error in my lyrics though: they’ve written ‘are’ when it should be ‘aren’t’. Kind of a schoolboy error that one… but we’ll forgive them! They’ve done really well with the rest of it.

Ryan: I hadn’t noticed…

RU James: Do you think that Guitar Hero encourages people to pick up actual instruments and play music, or do you think it distracts people from learning the real thing?

Ryan: It’s definitely getting people more involved in playing music. After trying Guitar Hero it makes people want to play the real thing. It’s just another way of getting into the music.

Neil: The drums on the harder difficulties are scarily close to the playing a kit. It makes you more aware of rhythm, regardless whether it’s a real instrument or not. I don’t think it distracts – I would never give up real guitar in favour of Guitar Hero!

RU James: Has Guitar Hero 5 pulled in a different audience than your current fanbase?

Neil: Well, we haven’t gigged since the launch, so we’ll have to reserve judgement on that one. We know there are far more people checking the band out than before, but we can’t tell from the comments what age group or demographic they are. It’s the kind of game that a 13 year old can play, but it could just as easily be their Dad playing, so we just don’t know yet.

Ryan: We’re actually taking the game out on tour with us – we’re going out on the 3rd of October and taking two Guitar Hero pod-stations that we can place in the venues, so it’ll be interesting to see who picks it up and has a go.

RU James: With the new media outlets available to up and coming bands – YouTube, MySpace, iTunes and now videogames – do you think it’s easier to become a successful band than it once was?

Neil: I still think quality shines through in the end. There can be a million bands but you still need to know how to write a song. It is easier now to do stuff like recording – you can even build songs in Guitar Hero 5, you don’t even need a studio – but ultimately it needs to sound good to be recognised. But it’s definitely a positive thing that so many people now have access to stuff like this.

RU James: If there are kids out there playing your song on Guitar Hero 5 and thinking they might like to try forming a real band, what advice might you give them?

Neil: Well, MySpace is free; it gets your music out there, you can be on it forever and it doesn’t cost you a thing. But obviously you’ve got to gig as well.

Ryan: When I first started a band you had to gig if you wanted to build a reputation and get recognised. Now you can do it online with a click of your fingers, reach out to the fans in their houses through the internet and now even videogames. You’ve still to play live if you want to be successful, but it’s the people who listen on MySpace and YouTube that then come to the live shows. Like Guitar Hero, it’s a great way of getting your songs out there.

RU James: What’s the future for the Attack! Attack!?

Neil: We’re starting a tour in October and will be on the road until the end of the year. It’ll be a long few months but it’s going to be amazing. We’ll be promoting the game as well as the band, so it’s going to be interesting to see what the reaction is. We’re anticipating another wave of interest after Christmas because of the way Guitar Hero sells, so that’s something we’re really looking forward to. Good times, basically!

Many thanks to Attack! Attack! for stepping into the Ready Up spotlight. You can listen to ‘You and Me’ on the band’s MySpace page, and keep your eyes on Ready Up for the upcoming review of Guitar Hero 5.