I don't know why this didn't occur to me when I was suddenly hearing that damn Dragonforce song everywhere...but it took the headline: "Geeks Save Rock" in reference to the new Motley Crue single being released on Rock Band to make me realize it...the second coming of butt-rock has happened - much to joy, or possibly horror of many bitter old men.

Allow me to explain these musings. In the late years of high school, I was that kid. The anti-social one with the long hair who carried a guitar case everywhere and yes, was convinced I'd be a rock star once I was out of that dump.

Needless to say, reality took hold, I went to college and now I'm that anti-social long haired guy who sold his guitar to pay the rent.

But before that, I was a very active member on a musician message board where there was a constant battle going on: the floggers v.s. the wankers.

The floggers were supposedly the Korn and Limp Bizkit listening to brats who'd rather bang on detuned guitar strings than actually play their instruments, but the truth was, they were more the frat-boy types who didn't use the interwebs because that's for nerds. So in reality, the floggers were more the three-chord strumming dudes who listened to boring black-rimed glasses rock.



Meanwhile the wankers who the old dudes who got pulled into reality in the mid-90s and suddenly discovered that playing a harmonic minor scale as fast as possible didn't mean some chick was automatically gonna let them crash in her bed that night. Thus they'd had cut their hair and get boring government jobs so they could make child support payments.

But to relieve the frustration of their crappy jobs, they logged on message boards at night and made creepy posts going on about this supposed second coming when the kids were going to start listening to Yngwie Malmsteen again, start scalloping their fret boards and going meedly-meedly-meedly-meedly all over again.

Along with the rest of the younger crowd, I laughed, then sighed. We knew it would never happen. Of course...none of us were counting on Guitar Hero or Rock Band.

So, I can't help but wonder if they think they won. On the one hand, the music they pined for so badly is back in style.

On the other hand, most players probably have no idea what the harmonic minor scale is, and there aren't even any buttons on part of the neck that needs to be scalloped. Double-edged win, perhaps?