So we’ve played Guitar Hero World Tour a couple time now since I bought the game 6 days ago. A really awesome experience once everyone in the band knows their roles and plays properly.

Jo and I and Whiskey (pictured) tried out Rock Band last night and think it’s actually better than Guitar Hero World Tour. The music choice is better and the game play is a lot more exciting and rewarding, but hey, that is our opinion.

Anyway, this morning the bloody red drum refused to work from the start. Just like that it stopped working. I went online and surprise surprise, quite a few people all around the world are experiencing exactly the same problem. (Bugger!). I called GAME at Bluewater, the shop where I bought it from and they confirmed this as well. Apparently loads of people have called up with the same problem. Great I thought, so they can fix it… Alas, they don’t have any in stock. The shop representive gave me a number to call and said “Don’t worry, just call them up, explain the problem, and they will tell you where you can get a replacement”. I gave the number a ring and gave up after listening to the same repeated message “we are busy, please stay on the line“.

In that time I found a brilliant website called Good Input and they explained ‘How to fix the drums for Guitar Hero World Tour‘. Nothing ventured nothing gained I thought and decided to open my drum kit up. There are quite a bit of screws on the back, but fear not, it comes apart really easily. I found the exact problem as described on the web site. In a little under 15 minutes, we had the problem solved and the red drum is working better than ever.

Simple solution: Underneath the read drum, the wire that is meant to connect to the inner sensor was loose, in fact it came off the second I touched it. I exposed abot 4mm of the wire from the sheath and used plastic tape to stick it directly onto the sensor. It’s as good as new now and there will be no need to send it back to the supplier only to wait weeks for a replacement.

Thanks to Pat and all the other people on Good Input.

So guess what we did this weekend, besides cleaning the house and watching two episodes of Dirty Sexy Money, one episode of Prison Break, and two episodes of Heroes? (and I think Jo bought groceries as well)!

Well let me back track slightly. I bought Guitar Hero World Tour on Friday evening from the Bluewater “Game” shop. I was surprised to see boxes of the game still in the shop. The pimple faced kid behind the counter blamed the Credit Crunch. Whatever!!!!

So Mrs Bowen became Tico Torres for one song, and I was Richie Sambora, and we battled through Livin’ on a Prayer. Not so easy thats for sure, the drums that is. It took quite a few attempts on easy, even after we swapped roles. I must say I battled to master those drum sticks.

The red, blue and green drum, pad or whatever you want to call it, is a pleasure to thump, but the two yellow and orange cymbels are hard and hurt like hell when you hit them. They are meant to be hit with force, but the shock wave you feel in your hands is not pleasant.

I’ll put it down to us not being use to the drum sticks, or perhaps we are holding them incorrectly or perhaps they are just crap. I did read somewhere on a review site, that it was recommended that we “go out and buy a pair of proper drum sticks“. They make quite a noise when one strikes the cymbals, but if the music is loud enough, I am sure the neighbours would just think that we are hammering all day long to loud music… Ha Ha!!!

I have mixed feelings about the drum kit overall. I found a similar review to my thoughts on IGN. Although I don’t feel like it will break if too much force is applied. It’s just those cymbals. But overall, what good fun to play all these awesome songs? I downloaded the latest Bond theme, and that is a bastard to play. More practice needed Bowen!

I stumbled upon this pretty cool (awesome) website called Mix Turtle - The Music Search Engine. As the name suggests it streams music. You type in the name of the song or the band or group, and it does all the work for you.

The Music Search Engine

There is this great new application called Mobbler, that allows you to login to LastFM account on your mobile and to stream music. The set up is pretty basic and it worked very well provided there was signal.

I tried it out on the train this morning, and it was not as reliable as I had hoped. Once it loses connection, you have to manually reconnect. (Lets hope this gets changed in newer versions as it is a right pain if your phone is buried in your pocket).

Overall I like where they are going with this application and would highly recommend using it!

Note: you need to have an account on LastFM before trying to use this application. You can sign up here.

If you log into LastFM on the web, you’ll notice they have updated your library, which is very cool.

I was watching Bruce Springsteen and his E Street band play a concert in Barcelona. It was part of The Rising Tour in 2002. Absolutely brilliant.

Then did a search for him online to see what he is up to at the moment and found this interesting article.

Isn’t it amazing that bands such as Bon Jovi, The Police, the Rolling Stones and of course Bruce Springsteen that have been around for decades are still pulling in the crowds and the millions.

There are some great websites offering free music streaming to your desktop or mobile phone. I’ve been trying out a few recently namely Last.fm, Social.FM, Pandora, Songbird and mystrands.com. The best two so far for me are Last.fm and Pandora, because they are really easy to use, and there are never any breaks or stutters in the music playback.

Social.FM offers a mobile phone player, which I will be testing out next week when I am on the train to work/home. There is also Mystrands that somehow synchronises your music library on your phone with your online profile, and then links up with other people who like similar music to you, and I think you can listen to what they have and vice-versa. Not sure how legal this is, and how practical it is, considering I upload music to my phone on a weekly basis, so does that mean it has to synchronise each time? 

The website looks pretty cool though, so I will give it a try. I guess all of these sites have one big advantage, and that is you do not have to own the music. I think it’s great to get such variety over the Internet.

I came across this video on Youtube.com. It is very clever and original for once. Must have taken ages to make.

We cant wait to see Aerosmith in concert on the 24th of June at the Hyde Park Calling.

It’s been 8 years since Aerosmith played live in London. We just missed out seeing them back in 1999, by a few of months, so have been waiting patiently for their return. But’s it’s been a long wait and to hear that they will be playing in Hyde Park on the 24th of June is music to our ears.

They will be one of many BIG names to be announced for the festival called "London Calling", which will be held over the course of two days. I don’t care if the rest of the bands are crap, to see them as being my life long dream. I just hope they don’t play anything from that Bobo album because they were kak.