Meet the Minibosses, a game-geek cover band trying to take it to the next level.
Level I: The Practice
It's a sweltering night in Phoenix, and I'm standing in a desolate industrial park, where neatly aligned warehouses fence in a rectangle of asphalt. The buildings echo with the sonic mess of a half-dozen practicing bands. Through one garage door comes a pretty, prog-rock melody of guitar notes. It's being played by the group I'm here to see: the Minibosses.
Bill Thomas
The players: From left, Fred Johnson, Matt Wood, Aaron Burke, and Ben Baraldi.
The band is fronted by a guitarist who's 6' 6" and prematurely balding. There's a bassist, bespectacled and just as tall, and a second guitarist, a foot shorter, both also balding. There's a drummer who isn't balding. He's very thin. Their names are Aaron Burke, Ben Baraldi, Fred Johnson, and Matt Wood. And they play only covers of music from classic Nintendo Entertainment System videogames. Tonight, they seem a bit stressed.
In a couple of days, the Minibosses will drive to Los Angeles to perform at a friend's party and then play last in a four-band lineup at a Hollywood club. The other bands do not play only covers of music from classic Nintendo Entertainment System videogames, and this is a matter of some concern to the Minibosses. Audiences at regular clubs never seem to know what to make of them.
Based here in Phoenix, the Minibosses have a nice little following in local clubs, reliably drawing a few dozen friends and fans each time they perform. They also hit geek conventions, from the Las Vegas hacker gathering Defcon to the Mid-Atlantic Gaming Festival in Williamsburg, Virginia. But when they venture before a more mainstream audience, they get curious looks.
"Those are the ones who ask," says Burke, in a squeaky imitation, "'Why aren't there any words?'" A couple of years ago, the Minibosses opened for Phantom Planet, and the entire audience was made up of teenage girls wanting to see "Jason Schwartzman and the other Gap models in his band," Burke says. "When we played, it was just silence." At a recent house party, a drunk grabbed Burke's mike and began yelling his own angry lyrics. Later, the man pushed over a friend of Burke's who was standing in front. As he fell, the friend tried to kick the drunk, but his foot landed squarely in Burke's scrotum. "People don't always get what we do," Burke says. "Not entirely."
The Minibosses practice at least two nights a week. Music from classic Nintendo Entertainment System videogames is not easy to learn. It's not written for a band. There are no chords to fall back on, no sheet music or guitar tablature to buy. The band members memorize the melodies note for note.
After an hour of practice, the Minibosses contemplate the set list for LA. Taped to the wall, it reads like a kid's Christmas list circa 1988: "Rygar," "Mega-Man II," "Kraid," "Punch-Out." Brackets indicate a medley, "Castlevania II" flowing into "Contra." Wood, the drummer, makes them run through "Rygar" again so he can work on his timing.
Johnson eyes the set list. "Not a lot of rock," he says with a frown.
"It's very ballad heavy," agrees Burke, especially for an LA crowd.
"This set," concludes Baraldi, rubbing his chin, "is a bit weird."
The Instructions
In the parlance of videogames, a boss is a creature you have to hit repeatedly and eventually kill in order to get to the next level. A miniboss also takes multiple hits, but all that trouble doesn't get you much - just the right to continue on your way.
Forming the Minibosses was Burke's idea. By his own admission, he grew up without a lot of friends; his after-school routine consisted of watching G.I. Joe and Transformers on TV, then playing Nintendo for hours. When he learned guitar, he played videogame music.
Burke, Wood, and Baraldi met in 1996 when they were students at the University of Massachusetts. Burke was double-majoring in math and astronomy, Wood was getting a degree in astronomy, and Baraldi in computer science. Burke and Wood were first in a band called Jenova Project, performing original music as well as gaming tunes. "It's hard to find a drummer who will go with something weird," says Burke. "Playing videogame music is not a good way to get chicks."
Burke got to know Baraldi in an abstract algebra class in '99. The instructor was, Burke remembers, "the hottest abstract algebra teacher ever." Baraldi was obsessed with videogames. He played bass. He was in the band. After graduation, Baraldi scored a cushy job at a Phoenix software company, and Wood and Burke moved to the desert with him to keep the group together. Last year, they added Johnson, who plays in several bands around town.
Now the Minibosses have monthly gigs and at least one rival. In Florida, the NESkimoes play sloppier versions of the same tunes. They have a Web site that disses the Minibosses, because they won't perform the theme to Mario. "It's like an A-ha cover band not playing 'Take on Me,'" says Dr. Wily, the NESKimoes' lead guitarist.
Disparaging the NESKimoes is a popular topic on the Minibosses' message board, where more than 50 "Bossies" discuss music, movies, the Sci-Fi Channel, and, of course, videogames. There are rants, reviews, tips, and information about NSFs, the files found in every Nintendo game that contain all the sound and music data.
The Minibosses love the Bossies and even tolerate two fans who seem to show up everywhere they travel, talking about and occasionally brandishing firearms. At a recent concert, held in the band's Phoenix practice space, two awkward 16-year-olds were dropped off by their parents and sat for the entire show with a notebook across their laps so they could play Magic: The Gathering. "These kids might not generally go out to a rock show," says Baraldi.
The Minibosses play music from classic Nintendo Entertainment System videogames. In the process, they pay tribute to geeky childhoods, theirs and others. And the misfit adolescents who delight in role-playing card games aren't just fans. They are brethren.
Level II : The Road Trip
Two days after their rehearsal, the Minibosses are speeding down I-10 through the deserts that separate Phoenix and Los Angeles. It's rock on the road, in a tour bus with women in tow and music cranking on the stereo. There will even be a run-in with police.
In this particular case, though, the bus is an eight-seat van packed so tightly with gear that the limbs of the eight passengers are deprived of blood flow. The women are the band members' steady girlfriends. The music is that of their favorite singer of the moment, their friend Phil, who records under the name I Hate You When You're Pregnant and sings the song "Gary Sinise," which consists of a spare beat and the repeated screeching cry of "Gary Siniiiiise." Band members sing along joyously as they pass around a handheld two-player Tetris game. They also play The Transformers soundtrack, and a cover of The Price Is Right theme song.
For other bands, a friend's party in Hollywood might suggest a degree of decadence. But these are the Minibosses. They're heading to Meltdown, one of LA's biggest comic book stores, for the release party of 1-Up, a friend's videogame zine. Just after crossing into California, they're stopped by a state trooper. Tetris is paused. The Minibosses are cited with seat belt violations.
Level III: Meltdown
The comic book store is filled with shelves of graphic novels and displays of action figures in clear plastic cases. The Minibosses are ushered to the back parking lot, where they will perform. But first up is DJ Dolphinforce, dressed in a homemade cardboard costume that resembles the robot B-9 from Lost in Space. He plays the actual, bleepy music from Commodore 64 soundtracks. By the end of his set, 40 people have gathered to watch appreciatively.
By the time the Minibosses are ready to take the makeshift stage, there is a crowd of about 100 men and, yes, women. The average age looks to be about 17. Most of them wear T-shirts with various videogame logos and have the pale look of those who have handed over their lunch money, involuntarily, more than a few times.
The Minibosses are a hit. Johnson leaps and kicks, and the kids headbang along. After they play the theme to Contra, a young man with dark plastic glasses and unruly brown hair tucked into a trucker hat raises his cell phone and plays the Contra ring tone in salute; the fans cheer and laugh. I track him down after the show, when the Minibosses are mobbed for autographs, and he tells me he discovered the band two years ago when a friend sent him a link to Minibosses.com. "I listen to the actual videogame tracks," he says. "But it's much cooler to drive around with your windows down rocking the Minibosses."
Bill Thomas
Johnson cranks it up at the MAGFest 2.0 Gaming Conference.
Level IV: The Rock Show
After Meltdown, the band members and their girlfriends get dinner at a Thai place across the street. They're stoked about Top Fuel, the club they'll play later tonight. It's an all-ages venue just walking distance from Meltdown, so the Bossies will be there in force.
Top Fuel is a bunker, chipped enamel paint on cinder block, with a small wooden stage at one end. When the Minibosses are ready to go, the place is still filled with stragglers who came to see earlier bands. At first, it seems the group's fears might be realized. They open with "Rygar," and someone yells, "Play 'Mario'!" Someone else screams "'Asteroids'!" There are some giggles in back.
The Minibosses keep on playing, though, and gradually the enthusiasm of the Bossies wins out. Some lighters are raised during the delicate "Metroid." The crowd pogos up and down during "Contra."
Toward the end of their set, they play "Punch-Out," which I hadn't heard them do before, and I begin to feel the magic of the Minibosses. Rather than prog rock, the tune sounds like my childhood - cranked to 11. It evokes pumping quarters into machines, the thrill of adolescent victory, and the agony of an allowance spent.
The band finishes to an ovation, swamped by fans. People buy T-shirts and get autographs. Burke signs someone's videogame cartridge. Outside, he points out the two diehards with the weapons obsession. Tonight they sport high-powered rifle scopes, casting concentrated light beams onto Hollywood buildings thousands of feet away. "These fuckers fucking rule," one says. There's also 18-year-old Justin, who wears a T-shirt that says KNOW YOUR ROOTS with a picture of the old NES controller. He drove three and a half hours from Fresno to videotape the two shows. "This is the only music I listened to until I was 12," he tells me. Scattered around him is a handful of boys too young to shave and apparently too intimidated to approach band members as they load their gear into the van.
Later the Minibosses will drive to a friend's boyfriend's apartment and play videogames until they fall asleep, most of them in sleeping bags on the floor. In the morning, there will be food at a Big Boy's breakfast buffet, then a seven-hour drive back to Phoenix. For the moment, though, they are the Minibosses. They play only music from classic Nintendo Entertainment System videogames. And they are rock stars.
