In the summer of '05, I was gearing up to move to California and the debut Shaimus album was in the final recording and mixing stages. I was saving money and living at home in PA and Phil (lead vocals, keys) and Johannes (bass) were in Boston. They both had jobs at Harmonix, a little-known indie video game developer that was located in Cambridge only a block away from my old apartment on Brookline street. Harmonix specialized in music-related games and they were on the quality assurance team testing out their latest edition of "Karaoke Revolution."

While they were working there, Harmonix was developing a new game called "Guitar Hero," in which players used a plastic guitar-shaped controller to "play" along with famous rock songs. They were putting together a list of bonus songs for the unlock shop and were looking mainly for local indie bands to fill the spots. Our album wasn't finished but we had a rough version of "All of This," which seemed to be one of the more guitar-intensive tracks, so we showed it to them. They liked it and decided to include it.

It was all well and good, but I didn't even really understand how the game would work, and nobody was expecting huge things from an expensive game made by a tiny company. But boy were we surprised. The rest is basically history: Guitar Hero became the smash hit surprise of the year and rocketed Harmonix to stardom. Suddenly our song was in households across the country and around the world, and my guitar solo became tendonitis-fodder for air guitarists everywhere.

Although we did not appear in Guitar Hero II, we felt the benefits of its success as well. Plenty of people who were introduced to the franchise by the sequel ended up getting the first one and hearing our song. The exposure was amazing and I can't imagine where we'd be right now without Guitar Hero as our springboard. Grateful is not a big enough word to describe how I feel about being a part of what is now a cultural phenomenon.

So for those of you who know who I am because of a video game, I say thanks for listening AND playing. Oh, and please don't challenge me to a dual on my own song - I'm much better at playing it on real guitar.