Night has fallen in West Hollywood, and it's the rocking hour at the Troubadour, the legendary club that helped launch the careers of Pearl Jam and Guns N' Roses. A band on the tiny stage is crunching out a surprisingly faithful rendition of the Hives' "Main Offender." The drummer, a skinny hipster with fuzzy sideburns, is as steady as a metronome. The lead singer, a blonde in a low-cut, lacy black top, caterwauls into the mic, a red bandanna wrapped around her wrist.
It's the first night of E3, the yearly trade show for the videogame industry, and this concert is crawling with game developers, executives, journalists, and retailers. They were lured here by the promise of hearing metal bands Queens of the Stone Age and Eagles of Death Metal, but the audience loves this amateur opening act.
The guy on bass, overdressed in dark slacks and a button-down, is Peter Moore, a Microsoft vice president and the public face of the Xbox 360 console. On drums, lead guitar, and vocals are staffers from a Boston-area game developer called Harmonix. They all play and sing with abandon. But they aren't playing music, exactly. They're playing a videogame.
The instruments are plastic facsimiles festooned with brightly colored buttons. These faux instruments, as well as the microphone, are all plugged into an Xbox 360. The more accurately the players follow the rhythm, the more points they score and the better the music from the game console sounds. By Chris Kohler 09.14.07