Have you ever gotten excited about a show solely because of the number of red flags along the path to it? To review:

* A flyer whose art is a photocopied NES controller
* A band web site hosted at this URL, for real: greatestbandever.com
* A sign at the show’s entryway informing fans that, unfortunately, opening act Beefy couldn’t make it out tonight
* A robust, two-microphone recording rig in the Jewelbox’s tiny room that would confound even the most dedicated Wilco taper
* The band opening the show by giving a shout-out to the guitarist’s girlfriend in the crowd

But the best red flag of them all, of course, was the band’s name: Press Start to Rock. Holy shit. They’re an instrumental four-piece out of Kirkland who specialize in “rock” versions of old video game background music, much like national acts The Advantage or The Minibosses. PStR are, by far, the worst band I’ve ever seen. And I absolutely loved them.

It helped that their crappiness was so shameless. Their equipment was trash across the board—like they’d bought their guitars, bass, drums and amps in a bulk set from Costco, just to make sure their tone matched the sound of an 8-bit synthesizer. Between nearly every song, the drummer yelled, “Improv solo!”, and the rest of the bandmates would yell back at him as if this were an actual threat. And in spite of the drummer obviously making everything up as he went, the two guitarists held their own as best as they could—to be fair to these guys, they did a decent job with the complicated riffs that were originally meant for a computer sampler. Their struggles with the songs made me rethink my opinions about bands like The Minibosses—if you want to call their source material a shtick, at least give them credit for nailing some relatively complicated tunes.

But nothing-no-nothing topped their plump dynamo of a bassist, a man who looked like he had dreamed about this concert for his entire life, and he had a special hand-signal to prove it. At the beginning of a song? Devil horns in the sky. When his left hand didn’t need to hold a fret? It needed to rawk. Perhaps the middle of a song required a horn interruption? Fuck yeah it did. End of song? Conclude with pinky and index finger bah-lazing. This man, by himself, put more horns in the air than the entire crowd at the Family Values Tour.

Also, don’t tell him the theme from Tetris doesn’t slay—he headbanged the hell out of that jam (and most of the others) while the rest of the band stood pretty much frozen in fear. And how else to prove that you’re a member of the greatestbandever.com than to take your left hand off the frets to drink a beer mid-song, only to earn pissed-off stares from your guitarist duo? But my favorite moment came after only 20 minutes of the band’s complete shlub of a set, off tempo at all times: “We’re gonna do the Mega Man 3 medley, and then we’re going to take a 15-minute break. After that, we’ll do Zelda.”

You might wonder what the rise of Guitar Hero has wrought; ladies and gentlemen, it has wrought this.

Press Start to Rock plays again on March 6 at the Skylark Cafe. One can only hope that in the meantime, the guy with the two microphones uploads last night’s show to the Internet.