IGNN–The Imaginary Game News Network

Alex (far left), Jennie Q., Luke (drums) and Ibid rocked the house during the EA Rock Band UK championship.

WORTHY, SUSSEX, UK–Alex VanImpish was at the peak of his game. With Rock Band mates Luke, Jennie Q. and Ibid, Alex reached the finals of the UK Rock Band championship held by Electronic Arts last month. The band, known as ColdPlastic, had grown a Facebook following of over a million fans in just three weeks, and lead guitarist Alex was the instant darling of the gamer scene, cementing his status as gaming’s heartthrob kid by appearing on Sky TV’s The Beatles Rock Band release day demopalooza.

“I thought it would last for “fooking” ever,” Alex told IGNN in an exclusive e-mail exchange. “It was like being a fooking rock-and-roll god. But the lads and Jennie weren’t growing with me, musically, you know. I didn’t have a fooking clue what to do next, but I knew I had to do something.”

That’s when Alex decided to break from the band and go solo. Talent agent and entrepreneur Marvin Mallow booked venues for Alex from Liverpool to Pudlingham, contracted with stage and costume designers and lined up a recording contract with Zeeper Music Ltd., the famous indie punk label from Bognor Regis.

“All the pieces were in place for a major–and I mean MAJOR (all caps, please)–explosion onto the music scene,” Marvin related. “There was only one detail we forgot to address.”

“It was the bleedin’ guitar,” lamented Alex. “They gave me this heavy piece of crap that had bloody wires all over it. No fret buttons. No strum bar. No whammy bar! Bloody hell! I remember thinking, what the fook is this? Who do they bleedin’ think I am, Eric “Fooking” Clapton?”

“He was a brave, lad. I’ll give him that,” Marvin continued. “When the stage lights came up, Alex began jumping up and down and fretting that Stratocaster like he was strangling an ape, but it didn’t sound quite the ticket.”

London music critic Jesper Figgins described it as, “…akin to having your head twisted off with a rusty spanner while children are being dissected with spoons in the flat next door.”

“I think Jesper was a tad unfair,” countered Marvin, “at least I thought Alex’s screaming had a certain innocent pain to it. Quite moving, actually.”

Alex’s first song, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, turned out to be his last, as well.

“The entire auditorium was empty by the time he slapped his last fret and screamed the final lyric,” sighed Marvin, recalling the heartbreak of the moment. “And then it was just this silent young man standing alone on stage in a hall so big it could accommodate half the population of Ipswich, the last awful twang echoing off into the rafters, and I guess he just sort of lost his head.”

“All I could fooking think of,” confessed Alex, “was how much I hated that fooking guitar and how much I wanted to send it to fooking hell in little bloody pieces and how fooking Rock Band hadn’t taught me a fooking thing about fook. So I just started swinging it all around and clubbing everything in fooking sight: the amps, the stage, the curtains, the mic stand, the drum kit, bashing and smashing it with all my fooking strength until it was nothing but a twisted mess of fooking wire and wood. And so there I am standing over the fooking thing, when I hear a slow bloody in-your-face clapping from somewhere in the hall, and then there was this fooking distant sound of laughing like a bloody fooking hyena. I can still hear it today. I’ll never fooking forget that sound.”

Alex has given up plans for a musical career and is working at his uncle’s pub cleaning urinals and pulling pints. He has put his bitterness behind him, and he has a new passion, that he says is his true calling.

“Fooking DJ Hero, that’s where it’s at. You don’t have to know a fooking thing about a fooking thing to be a DJ. And if that doesn’t fooking work out, there’s always fooking SingStar. I can sing “Fix You” like it’s nobody’s bloody business!” –Gideon Chazwit-Stoop