Rick Springfield

One recent strip in the popular video gaming webcomic Penny Arcade laid down the gauntlet in the fued between the Rock Band and Guitar Hero music-game franchises: "Fact: 'Jessie's Girl', by Rick Springfield, is the greatest song ever written. Fact Two: Jessie's Girl is coming out for Guitar Hero, and not Rock Band. Fact Three: Guitar Hero wins." It's sort of an extreme position to take, but considering that it's a damn good sorta-new-wave/sorta-power-pop hit that scored one of the better movie scenes of the '90s (the drug-deal-gone-wrong climax of Boogie Nights) and has aged pretty well for something critics of the early '80s considered unredeemable cheese, it's also an understandable one. Of course, it's not the only thing Springfield's done -- he's been playing in bands since the late '60s (and was on General Hospital, don't forget) -- but if it was, he'd still get a thumbs-up here.
Fridays, Saturdays, 7:30 p.m. Starts: Nov. 7. Continues through Nov. 8, 2008