A few thousand people went to Target Center last night for Panic at the Disco. I went for a video game: Rock Band 2.

In one of the most sensible product tie-ins ever, Panic at the Disco, Plain White T’s, Dashboard Confessional and the Cab visited the Twin Cities as part of the Rock Band Live Tour. Before the show, fans could play the Xbox 360 version of Rock Band 2 in the halls of Target Center. The groups with the two highest scores got to go on stage and perform between sets by the real bands, as did fans who won a Best Buy contest. It would have been cooler if they all actually had gotten to finish their one-song performances. The game cut out in the middle of Pterodactyls Swarming of Minneapolis and the Exits of White Bear Lake. Only a fan group calling themselves White Suburban Kids made it through the whole song. Of course, a group of Best Buy employees, Blue Shirt Nation, finished their tune, too.

Still, for the guys and gals in the three groups who made it onstage, the emcee was spot-on when he said, “You guys will be the coolest kids at school tomorrow — there’s no doubt about that!” They also got to use primo third-party Rock Band instruments and nice, big flat-screen sets.

It would have been nice if their hard-earned gigs had come in front of a packed house, but Target Center wasn’t even half full — and that was in a half-arena setup. Oh, well, it was easy to get around in the halls and get a turn at playing one of the biggest games of the year.

Gotta add: How about the Plain White T’s? The last time I saw them here, they were playing as part of the Nintendo Wii Tour.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008 at 9:58 am and is filed under Video games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.