Teen Drops Out of High School To Become Professional "Guitar Hero"

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Call it The Decline of Western Civilization IV: Blake Peebles, a teenager in North Carolina, recently dropped out of high school to pursue his dream of playing music. While this sounds like an everyday occurrence, there is a catch: Peebles dropped out so he can concentrate on playing Guitar Hero with hopes of becoming good enough at hitting colored plastic buttons to play in the surprisingly-lucrative world of competitive gaming. Peebles has already won a few Hero tournaments, but so far his winnings include gift certificates, gaming equipment and 52 Chick-fil-A meals. For what it's worth, Peebles was doing poorly to begin with in school, and his parents have since hired him a private tutor. If Peebles lives up to his high-flying Guitar Hero dreams, he could earn up to $80,000 a year on the competitive circuit, though groupies should be slightly harder to come by.

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Song Stories

“Everyday People”

Sly and the Family Stone | 1968

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.

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