Sean's not the only one who has been doing some touring this past week. I had the good fortune to sit on a Pop Montreal panel with Lenny Kaye (guitarist for Patti Smith), Sandy Pearlman (legendary producer of more acts than I can remember; coined the term "heavy metal music"), Dan Levitin (also a famous producer and professor), and upcoming digital studies professor Dominic Arseneault (who brought a PAX bag).

I have to say, Sandy Pearlman was every bit a character as Christopher Walken portrayed him to be in the SNL "Reaper" sketch. One of the first words out of his mouth were "You know, there really wasn't that much cowbell." I sensed he wanted more.

Originally, the plan was to have Dan Levitin play "Don't Fear the Reaper" on Rock Band while Lenny Kaye played it on a real guitar and the "Don't Fear the Reaper" sketch looped in the background. Unfortunately I had brought two wrong builds. After 5 hours of trying, and some tenacious over-the-phone help from Alex Rossi in QA, that just didn't happen.

But Lenny really stepped up to the plate and figured out how to play Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" in the course of 5 minutes, then proceeded to rock it down live (versus Levitin on Rock Band). It was awesome. Lenny stole a solo before the authored one in-game, and on quite a few occasions traded back and forth with the game as if they were both live instruments. I even caught him cheating a few times, watching the Rock Band screen to see upcoming changes in the music. Total pro.

The discussion panel after the pony show was mostly complaining about the state of music licensing. Apparently Patti Smith couldn't afford to license her own music back from her label, and had to cut out most of the concert footage from a documentary about her life. Sandy complained bitterly about this band or that label, and how he did things differently back in the day when he managed Black Sabbath.

There was also a lot of talk of Rock Band, and how music games (especially paired with digital distribution methods) have started real long-tail alternative revenue streams for budding artists. We talked about how Rock Band is a stepping stone between listening on the radio and gigging with a band, and how Apple's Garage Band is kind of like that too. Rick Karr (of NPR fame) kept the discussion sharp and on point. I felt a little bad after the Q&A session at the end... all of the audience questions were about Rock Band, and none of these other real rock stars on stage were getting any attention. But it was a great gig, and it was nice to feel the love from our frozen neighbors.

One last word of warning. Montreal is full of "helpful" city maps everywhere. They're a trap! They're each rotated differently, scaled arbitrarily, and centered on different random locations. They're the navigational equivalent of playing miniature golf. Bring a GPS, I say.