Count Zero blows out the birthday candle at Lizard Lounge on Friday, 17 November 2023.

Landowner smokes dope in the opening slot.

Does Count Zero have songs on the rock n roll video games Guitar Hero and Rock Band?

Holy shit! Thanks for the tipoff, Wikipedia.

The games aren’t moving the units they once did, but there was a time when pop culture was obsessed with Guitar Hero and its evil twin Rock Band. Not just guitar players, not just musicians. People with no musical instinct or training loved strapping on the plastic axe, and letting it rip.

Kids were asking for real music lessons so they could play fake guitar. It was wild.

Now for the important question. Which was better: Rock Band or Guitar Hero?

Rock Band let you play with a full band of instruments, but the real shredders enjoyed the single-minded focus of Guitar Hero.

Count Zero’s contribution to Guitar Hero was “Sail Your Ship By.” For Rock Band, “Shake.”

Check out these bangers in action…

Landowner

The five-piece Landowner outta Holyoke have been touring their latest album Escape The Compound up, down, and all around western Massachusetts and adjoining territories. If you’re into three-eyed felines, you might have caught them at the Fuzzstival in September.

Did they just cross the border into Canada for a gig in Montreal at the start of the month? There you have it. An international touring act.

The surprise of the night was their cover of Sleep’s “Dopesmoker.” Interesting backstory on the provenance on this hour-long, one-song opus from the stony, doom metal celebrities. Thanks again, Wikipedia!

In brief, the song/album was recorded in 1996, but Sleep’s label hated it, refused to release it. Over time bootleg versions of the album leaked to glowing reviews, and the momentum built for a real release. Multiple releases and versions, in fact, as the artists and different labels wrestled over how to present the finished product.

Landowner performed the hour-long song at, reportedly, “600% speed.”

Count Zero

Out of the remnants of the electronic band Think Tree, Count Zero emerged somewhere around 1996.

The same year “Dopesmoker” was recorded!

Count Zero frontman, vocalist, and guitarist Peter Moore steers the ship closer to the mainstream of altrock, though, than anything resembling doomy brooding. The current lineup includes longtime collaborator Will Ragano on guitar, joined by newer recruits Mike Corbett (bass), Jude Heichelbech (keys), and Shawn Marquis (drums).

It was a birthday for Ragano, and the band made a little celebratory digression between songs. Complete with party hats, streamers, cupcakes, and a candle. Extra points for connecting the audience with those cupcakes – it’s not every gig you get free frosting.

Shout out to the guitar stylings of Ragano as well. A singular style that cuts across Moore’s chord progressions and Heichelbech’s keys like a surgeon’s scalpel. A full complement of guitar technique: drones, slides, whammies, oh my! He picks his spots, wringing strange sounds out of his rig that oscillate between pure rhythm, melody, texture, or some bastard progeny of all three.

And if you were looking for the connective thread that tied the Landowner and Count Zero sets together, it might have been Ragano’s playing. He’s capable of the same sort of hurky-jurky pattern-mashing that you hear from the Holyoke band. A kind of post punk Sahel sound.

What’s on the horizon for Count Zero – a new album? Reportedly in the works for the last eleven or twelve years. That’s Chinese Democracy-level shit.

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