Name: Jen

Gamertag: TheZenRoom
Instrument: Vocalist
Console: Xbox 360
Team Cena Section: Xbox 360
YouTube: deadlyStingnyc

My name is Jen, I'm 36 years old and live in NYC with my adorable muppet-puppy, Oz. I'm an expert vocalist on Rock Band 2/The Beatles: Rock Band/LEGO Rock Band (once in a blue moon I'll sing on GH5 & Band Hero too, but I STILL don't really understand the vox engine on those games). I also perform with NYC's Rocky Horror Picture Show cast as Dr. Frank N Furter, and my XBL name (TheZenRoom) actually comes from a line in that film. I'm currently a casual member of the PMS Clan's GuitarHero|RockBand Division. I've played all sorts of video games over the years, from Pong (yes, we actually had Pong at my house when I was a kid!) to EverQuest 2, but my obsession with Rock Band has by far outlasted all the others!

The first time I ever saw a rhythm game, I was at a friend's apartment preparing to march in a parade with some of my Rocky Horror castmates in August of 2007. Some of the kids who were waiting for the rest of us to get ready were playing Guitar Hero 2. I watched for a bit, but the whole thing just struck me as confusing and annoying, surely something I would never be coordinated enough to play! Fast forward a few months to October of 2007...I'd gotten a Wii and my friend and I were getting tired of the games that came with it, so he eventually convinced me to pick up Guitar Hero 3 and give it a shot. Even though I never managed to progress past Medium difficulty, I was hooked! By January of 2008, I'd picked up a secondhand PS3 and convinced my mom to get me Rock Band as a belated Xmas gift. Once I held the Strat in my hands there was no going back to GH3...I found the RB guitar much easier to use and within two weeks I was rocking out on expert bass & guitar, wooo!

I didn't actually play vox all that much when I first got Rock Band, mostly because when I had friends over that was the instrument "non-players" usually felt most comfortable with. I generally stuck to bass except when my friend wanted to score duel me on guitar for a quick ego boost (his ego, not mine). But in February of 2009 I was enrolled in cosmetology school and we'd gotten to a point in the program where I was standing on my feet for 8 hours a day and washing/cutting/coloring hair for clients who came to the school. I'd get home exhausted and unable to stand with my fingers all cramped up from the days exertions. I wanted to play RB2, but simply couldn't deal with the plastic guitar for more than a song or two. That was when I decided to switch to playing vocals as my primary instrument, so I could sit comfortably on my sofa & still rock out for hours on end!

In the Spring of 2009, I started streaming some of my RB2 sessions on Ustream for kicks. In July, with school over, a new Xbox 360, and a lot of time on my hands, I decided I wanted to start a blog, but couldn't think of what the topic should be. I mused on Twitter that maybe I should do an FC on vox a day for a month and write about it, and my buddy RockBandAide suggested I up the ante and do an FC a day for a year instead. And thus, my blog 365 Days of FCs: A Rock Band Odyssey was born! As I write this bio, I'm about halfway through my journey, the goals of which have changed a lot since my first article. Somewhere in the middle of the month & a half it took to FGFC The Beatles: Rock Band (remember, I was limiting myself to one FC a day!), I got all into squeezing and started analyzing my session videos for data that could be of use to the greater vox community, including the discovery of new paths on a couple of songs! Contributing to the RB vox community gives me such a warm fuzzy feeling :-)

I'm really excited to be part of Team Cena, and I'm looking forward to seeing where my gaming life will take me with the support of my awesome new teammates!