Music

Bit Brigade is backing band for live video game player

Athens, Ga.-based band Bit Brigade will play the soundtrack to classic video game Metroid while band member Noah Mc-Carthy tries to play the game in its entirety Sunday at Vino’s.
Athens, Ga.-based band Bit Brigade will play the soundtrack to classic video game Metroid while band member Noah Mc-Carthy tries to play the game in its entirety Sunday at Vino’s.

Like a lot of rock bands, Bit Brigade of Athens, Ga., has a couple of guitar players, a bassist and a drummer.

Unlike a lot of bands, Bit Brigade also has a player. His name is Noah McCarthy and he's the band's video gamer.

Bit Brigade

Opening act: Becoming Elephants

Vinos, 923 W. Seventh St., Little Rock

Admission: $7

(501) 375-8466

vinosbrewpub.com

You see, Bit Brigade isn't a typical rock 'n' roll band. While most bands are happy with hopping on stage and knocking out a set of original music, the Brigade provides the music to classic video games as McCarthy plays along.

The band -- guitarists Bryant Williamson and Jace Bartet; bassist Luke Fields; drummer Mike Albanese -- provides the soundtrack, synchronized note for note, nonstop, as gamer extraordinaire McCarthy, seated onstage, battles against a classic Nintendo Entertainment System video game that is shown on a large screen behind the group. The five-piece band transforms the plinky, buzzy, 8-bit computer music into a full-scale rock show that has elements of math rock, prog rock and arena rock all in one.

On Sunday, Bit Brigade will play along as McCarthy maneuvers his way through the 1987 Nintendo Entertainment System game Metroid at Vino's in Little Rock. Becoming Elephants will open the show.

"It's a very difficult thing to find the perfect storm of musicians who can handle the music and who have the endurance to keep playing without stopping," says Fields from his Athens home. Each set is about 45 minutes, he says, with no breaks. "It's really athletic."

The physical toll is most apparent with drummer Albanese, Fields says. "He doesn't play soft. He's a full-body drummer. He beats the hell out of the drums and at the end he usually looks like he's dead."

Of course, McCarthy must also pull his weight. The whole point is for him to carry the game through to the very end -- consistently and quickly conquering his pixelated foes and advancing from ever higher levels -- so the band can bring the rock.

"You have to have a gamer [who can beat the game] every single time," Fields says, "who can reliably beat stuff live in front of an audience with a really loud band playing around him. That's another thing entirely. You have to have someone who has the focus to deal with all of that and get the job done."

At the band's first show, in 2004 in Athens, the unthinkable happened and a game wasn't finished.

In those days, the game was presented on a TV, and a few overly excited crowd members bumped into it and sent it crashing to the floor. Unable to reboot the video, the band played along to a blank screen to finish the set, says Fields, who didn't join the band until 2007, but was in the audience at that debut gig.

This is Bit Brigade's second stop this year at Vino's. The group was on a March bill with Protomen, who play music inspired by the video game Mega Man -- another title among Bit Brigade's oeuvre.

At that gig was lifelong gamer Blake McCutcheon of Sherwood.

"It was a lot more packed than I thought it would be," says the 26-year-old. "I thought a couple of nerds would show up, but it was packed. It was very high energy, with lots of clapping and cheering as [McCarthy] finished the levels."

Seeing McCarthy dash through all of the Mega Man levels while the band played was a nostalgic treat for McCutcheon, who grew up absorbing the sounds and images of NES games.

"He made it through the entire game," he said of McCarthy's Mega Man run. "He took one or two hits, but never died. Toward the end, he was just showing off and doing things to be funny. As a gamer, it was an impressive display of skill, on top of the band being able to match his pace all the way through it."

Sunday's set at Vino's will feature Fields' favorite game with which to play along.

"I really like Metroid," he says. "It's really weird and there's this spacey, atmospheric thing we do. We get to take a little liberty with some of the tracks and I get to do a lot of cool stuff with the bass."

Weekend on 09/22/2016

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