Mission #5: "Rock Band" Agent Reactions

[Bruce]

Location: Washington DC
Agents: ~30
Mission: "Rock Band"
Goal: To rock out on the national mall with Guitar Hero Guitars, Rock Band drums, Donkey Congas and a DDR mat.


Final video of the mission.

Many of you may be familiar with a recent episode of South Park which gave me the initial inspiration to organize and carry out this mission.

There are many things I like to make fun of DC for, and one in particular are the street performers here... but not all of them, just the really, REALLY bad ones. Fortunately we had the means and ability to do just that!

After gathering up a group of individuals willing to bring and play various video game instruments in public, along with a group of fans to cheer them on and record I knew a monster was being created. Where to unleash this beast?

As some of you recently found out Park regulations on the national mall are ridiculously strict so the first task was to figure out what permits we needed and where we could perform. After spending a full day on the phone (literally - it was just shy of 24 full hours spread through 5 different days) and getting nowhere with the convoluted regulation systems surrounding the mall. I was almost ready to throw in the towel but decided to take the only - albeit risky way out.

I normally don't like to take the lead role in my missions, however because we could have potentially been at risk, I was going to make sure I was the only one that would get cited. Unfortunately for me that meant playing "guitar" and even more unfortunately, I had broken my hand a week and a half previous to the mission. It had set and was on its way to being healed, but it still was a bit painful through parts of the mission.

The Defenestrators met down at the Signers of the DOI memorial (we also determined that it's much too long of a walk and decided to never meet down there again) to discuss the mission and how it would go down. There were only a few things we had to remember:

1) We only knew Guitar Hero or Rock Band songs so if there was a request for anything else we would have no idea how to play it
2) If we tilt up the guitars, it's star power baby! our audience was to cheer and clap "to the beat of the music" (which was really just when I bobbed my head)
3) Members of the band were also to do everything they did "to the beat of the music"
4) Members of the band were to act like they didn't know eachother before hand and they "just want to jam" - nevermind the fact that we were the only people that were carrying around video game instruments.

While we were down on the mall we learned that there was a Neo-Nazi protest rally and police were in full riot gear. While it was pretty crazy for a bit down there I also thought it would be great for us because most people of authority actually had something real to worry about and probably wouldn't bother us.


We walked up to the performance spot and I was the first to sit down and start playing. I went through about 2 full songs and 1 or 2 agents were there just watching and acting like they enjoyed me playing. It was a little awkward, but a lot of fun. I received two looks - either the "What the hell are you supposed to be doing" look or the "That is the most awesome thing I've ever seen" look. Generally the older they came the more likely they were to not get it.







After about 2 songs Oscar showed up with another guitar and asked if he could jam with me. I accepted and other agents started to gather around to listen. As the crowd got bigger, so did the number of non-agents stopping to look and take pictures. We played a full song until Mike showed up with the donkey congas, and yet another song brought in Josh with the Rock Band drums tucked away in a suitcase.






















After he set up a giant crowd had gathered waiting for us to start out. With a 1 - 2 - 1, 2, 3, 4 the click-fest began and the crowd let out a nearly unanimous laugh - then cheer at us as we thumped and clicked away.

Our last agent got caught in traffic so he missed the initial meet-up, but he was supposed to be the last one to arrive anyways - and did so with perfect timing. He laid down the DDR mat just as we got a request for Ok Go "Here it goes again." While I've never played rock band, I knew how this song went and apparently did such a good job clicking away that people could follow where I was in the song.

We also got a request for "Killing in the Name of" which people were easily able to follow along with where I was as I knew that by heart. There's even a person that walked by as we were playing who said to me "Heh... Killing in the name of!" - I thought it was awesome he recognized the song!

We saved Dragonforce - "Through the Fire and Flames" for last (even though that one was mostly ad-libbing and not the actual song) which left my hand in horrible shape. I determined that we would spend all of our panhandling profits on drinks for the crew that came out, and the $1.21 we made out there went a long ways between the 13 of us that stuck around.

We all had food and lots of water (I didn't realize how dehydrate I was until I downed my 3rd glass of water and still wanted more) and actually also had what I thought was a pretty good brainstorming session regarding some former presidents and risk.

Yet another successful mission for the DC Defenestrators!