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My Life According to Rock Band: Or Fifty-Eight Short Stories About Life, Love, and the Greatest Video Game Ever Made
When fifteen-year-old Cade first laid eyes on the box that held the video game Rock Band under his family Christmas tree, he could see his whole the face-melting guitar solos he'd play to stadiums of screaming fans, the fame and glory that would follow him like an entourage, the girls that would beg for a night with Cade the Rock God . . . But that's not exactly how it went. Instead of a packed stadium it was a packed college apartment, and girls didn't exactly beg him, although he did find himself in the highs and lows of love a few times. He didn't get to play to thousands of screaming fans either, but the few real friends he found along the way, well . . . that part turned out to be just as epic. With a story for each of the fifty-eight songs available on the original Rock Band, Cade Wiberg dives headfirst into the brutal and beautiful years that shape us into the people we become, and the music that gets us through it all.
356 pages, Paperback
Published May 30, 2022
6 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 19, 2022
Really enjoyed this honest coming of age story that explores themes of love and friendship. Folks in their 20s and 30s will really identify with the framework of the memoir and enjoy reliving the music-focused cooperative gaming experience. While some authors have difficulty capturing realistic dialogue, Wiberg's writing is spot-on. Here I digress--this book made me nostalgic for the period where companies were developing a variety of multiplayer games that could be played with everyone in one room. Like many other aspects of 2022, I feel like people are increasingly limited to on-line social interaction. It feels like a majority of games are designed for one person-one console. Yes, players are still virtually together but we all know it's not the same as eye contact and an in-person high-five. Back to the book--and without spoiling the ending--I think there are many folks who need to hear that as hard as life can be, if you can find a few trustworthy friends, things will be okay.
July 8, 2023
This memoir, framed by 58 rockin' tunes from a rockin' game, is a touching one. With clear, honest, witty voice, the book will feel like a friend telling you a story. I've never read something so pleasantly idiosyncratic. The tale weaves through different tones, but keeps one singular soul, as Wiberg stops through different areas and albums of his life (so far). For me, I saw some of myself and my generation in the pages. The song framing is obviously front and center, but if you're of the author's basic age group, you might also be charmed (as I was) by the inclusion of a month and year given for each chapter. Having the recollections rooted in time gave me a feeling of going down memory lane, which augments the connection between reader and narrator. Realizing that your experiences are less than unique will either make you celebrate or squirm, but to have it rendered in such an entertaining way is a gift. It makes you feel less alone on your own journey, and not just because you see the same cultural billboards out the window.
Sometimes the books feels like a 3:00 AM conversation that you hope might take you to daylight, and you'll find yourself being opened up to; you might feel honored at the fact of it. Like the description says, there are some highs and lows, but any book that makes you want to reach through the pages to party or to shake the narrator is a good book indeed. Is it odd to want a sequel?
Sometimes the books feels like a 3:00 AM conversation that you hope might take you to daylight, and you'll find yourself being opened up to; you might feel honored at the fact of it. Like the description says, there are some highs and lows, but any book that makes you want to reach through the pages to party or to shake the narrator is a good book indeed. Is it odd to want a sequel?
August 18, 2024
I’m one of the biggest Rock Band fans I know; literally all of my online friends are people I bonded with over this amazing series. On a couple of occasions, Cade Wiberg rises to the challenge of celebrating Harmonix's flagship rhythm game franchise through the lens of how it helped his own life; it brought friends together, it expanded his interest in music. A couple of songs on the setlist that seem simple are really there to teach the player that the art of music can be explored by anyone, and that is what Rock Band is about perhaps even more than just using plastic instruments to simulate rock stardom. This is an angle Wiberg tackles...perhaps twice. Unfortunately, much of the novel ditches the concept of tying his life story to individual songs from RB1, and instead we get a boilerplate memoir from a man who...doesn't seem all that interesting?
Harsh as it may be to call someone I don't know boring, this is the kind of criticism a memoir shouldn't invite, I feel, if it is written properly. Flowery and evocative description can elevate a mundane story fictitious or not, and Wiberg's exploration of college life is sufficient but boilerplate, nowhere near colorful enough to hide the mundane nature of his adolescence as put to the page. And the Rock Band thing could have been a good hook, or at least a better one than it turns out to be. He does consistently play the game up to 2018, a rarity, but it's still just a hobby intermittently mentioned. A detailed description of all his play sessions wouldn't have been much more obtrusive and low-impact than it is already. Instead, we get a typical college scene set-up, Cade talks to one or more of his friends, and it's the most basic line-reading formatting imaginable.
So without style, Wiberg's memoir must rely on its content, which...my loquaciousness fails me here. I don't want to read about one straight guy failing at love on five-plus separate occasions because he's an alcoholic and a hopeless romantic, and I can't imagine who would except for other straight guys as boring as this one. One of these relationships is genuinely tragic and nauseating, where the others simply amount to Cade colossally misreading the room. And I like that Cade thinks we can tell the difference between any of these girlfriends, or all of his dudebro friends; I legitimately lost track of the characters in his life because few of them are anything but loud dudes who love drinking and Rock Band, or girls with slightly tan skin. We get very few details beside, and it's okay if he has a "type" or if his friends all fit one mold, but that doesn't make it interesting to read about. Outside of some genuinely relatable moments of a crisis of faith, Wiberg is a stock character. He has as much personality as the avatars in the games.
The pacing is also a killer when you realise you're only halfway through and Cade's on his fourth short-term fling. Progression is not a card in Cade's deck, and his failure to underline this speaks to his poor character at this time and/or his substandard prowess as a storyteller now. If anything, it kind of echoes the progression of the real life RB series; by 2013, the momentum is gone, and even with a promising shot in the arm in 2015, the book just shambles along, barely alive, like a DLC schedule stuck at two songs a week, and not always new ones.
Yes, reading this book, I also felt a bit wistful about the good old days of not just being able to play RB with real-life friends, but also the college years where your experiences are the loudest and most vibrant and it feels like the world is at your fingers. But giving a nascent transfem bittersweet nostalgia about her 20s is not hard. You know what would have also been not hard? Leaving out the one instance of dudebro transphobia like it's no big deal. There is a disclaimer at the front that he wanted the biography to be warts and all even if his values have improved, but why leave such a mundane but toxic detail in? I was expecting a turn later in the book like "one of my lifelong friends came out to me as trans" or something to use as a parallel. That's a literary device an accomplished author might use. Otherwise, leave it out. You're a college dude in 2012 who drinks too much, the casual insensitivity is kind of implied.
Harsh as it may be to call someone I don't know boring, this is the kind of criticism a memoir shouldn't invite, I feel, if it is written properly. Flowery and evocative description can elevate a mundane story fictitious or not, and Wiberg's exploration of college life is sufficient but boilerplate, nowhere near colorful enough to hide the mundane nature of his adolescence as put to the page. And the Rock Band thing could have been a good hook, or at least a better one than it turns out to be. He does consistently play the game up to 2018, a rarity, but it's still just a hobby intermittently mentioned. A detailed description of all his play sessions wouldn't have been much more obtrusive and low-impact than it is already. Instead, we get a typical college scene set-up, Cade talks to one or more of his friends, and it's the most basic line-reading formatting imaginable.
So without style, Wiberg's memoir must rely on its content, which...my loquaciousness fails me here. I don't want to read about one straight guy failing at love on five-plus separate occasions because he's an alcoholic and a hopeless romantic, and I can't imagine who would except for other straight guys as boring as this one. One of these relationships is genuinely tragic and nauseating, where the others simply amount to Cade colossally misreading the room. And I like that Cade thinks we can tell the difference between any of these girlfriends, or all of his dudebro friends; I legitimately lost track of the characters in his life because few of them are anything but loud dudes who love drinking and Rock Band, or girls with slightly tan skin. We get very few details beside, and it's okay if he has a "type" or if his friends all fit one mold, but that doesn't make it interesting to read about. Outside of some genuinely relatable moments of a crisis of faith, Wiberg is a stock character. He has as much personality as the avatars in the games.
The pacing is also a killer when you realise you're only halfway through and Cade's on his fourth short-term fling. Progression is not a card in Cade's deck, and his failure to underline this speaks to his poor character at this time and/or his substandard prowess as a storyteller now. If anything, it kind of echoes the progression of the real life RB series; by 2013, the momentum is gone, and even with a promising shot in the arm in 2015, the book just shambles along, barely alive, like a DLC schedule stuck at two songs a week, and not always new ones.
Yes, reading this book, I also felt a bit wistful about the good old days of not just being able to play RB with real-life friends, but also the college years where your experiences are the loudest and most vibrant and it feels like the world is at your fingers. But giving a nascent transfem bittersweet nostalgia about her 20s is not hard. You know what would have also been not hard? Leaving out the one instance of dudebro transphobia like it's no big deal. There is a disclaimer at the front that he wanted the biography to be warts and all even if his values have improved, but why leave such a mundane but toxic detail in? I was expecting a turn later in the book like "one of my lifelong friends came out to me as trans" or something to use as a parallel. That's a literary device an accomplished author might use. Otherwise, leave it out. You're a college dude in 2012 who drinks too much, the casual insensitivity is kind of implied.
April 8, 2024
A fun, vulnerable, sincere, honest coming of age story. Love hurts, friendship is forever, and music is there through it all.
March 28, 2026
car seat headrest mention caught me off guard
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews