This week Rock Band owners will be able to download the Foo Fighters second album ‘The Colour And The Shape’ which was originally released in 1997.

‘The Colour and the Shape’ featured the hit singles “Monkey Wrench”, “Everlong”, and “My Hero”.

The track “Everlong” will not be part of the download however as the song is on the Rock Band 2 soundtrack.

‘The Colour and the Shape’ will be available for download on Tuesday November 11th for the Xbox 360, and on Thursday November 13th for the Playstation 3. The full album download will cost $19.99 (1600 Microsoft Points), or $1.99 (160 Microsoft Points) for individual tracks.

See the complete ‘The Colour and the Shape’ download for Rock Band tracklist after the break. Read the rest

Harmonix and MTV announced last week that a follow up to the first Rock Band Track Pack would be hitting store shelves later this month. Like the first track pack, volume 2 will also feature 20 songs, but the disk will also be available for all consoles hitting the PS3 and 360 in addition to the PS2 and Wii.

If you have Rock Band 2 for the PS3 or 360, you will be able to copy the songs from the disk to the hard drive just like you can with songs from the original Rock Band disk.

The Rock Band track pack will be available on November 17th and retail for $30. A full tracklist is available after the break. Read the rest

Grace Kim, former PR rep for Activision and Red Octane in promoting the Guitar Hero franchise, has been selected as Playmate of the Month in the November issue of Playboy.

Grace graduated from UCLA with an english degree in 2001 and parlayed that into a career in public relations, eventually landing a job with Activision.

In fact it was while she was working on promoting Guitar Hero Aerosmith and Guitar Hero On Tour that she was contacted by a Playboy scout to appear in the magazine.

Sadly, Grace had to quit her job in order to help her pursue her dreams of a Playboy Playmate, but we’re not complaining.

For you fetishists out there, we’ve got a picture of Grace rocking out with a Rock Band stratocaster after the break. Read the rest

When it was announced that Harmonix had acquired the rights to work on a music game featuring the Beatles, many a Rock Band fan were hoping that Beatles songs would become available to download for Rock Band.

Reuters is reporting that “while the Beatles will certainly give a boost to MTV’s music games business, none of the Fab Four’s songs will be available for download on the existing “Rock Band” franchise”.

This doesn’t come as a major surprise given that the Beatles music catalog is heavily guarded when it comes to licensing the songs for use.  The Beatles are one of the few bands who are not on iTunes.

The songs will also not be able to be loaded onto gaming hard drives in the way that songs from the original Rock Band can.  This arrangement also appears to follow in the footsteps of the recent AC/DC Rock Band expansion.  AC/DC is another band that guards their music licensing quite heavily.

Source:
Reuters - MTV and Activision Face Off In Battle Of The Brands

Related Stories:
Console Hero - The Beatles Are Coming To Rock Band. (Sort Of).
Console Hero - Rock Band AC/DC Expansion Confirmed

These two commercials aired during Monday Night Football and follow the same theme as the other ‘Risky Business’ commercials for Guitar Hero World Tour.

The first one features Heidi Klum playing Guitar Hero World Tour in a white T-Shirt.  The second one features Ms. Klum playing (and jiggling) without the white T-Shirt.

The first one is below, but to see the second one you will have to click on the read more link as it’s not exactly safe for work.

Read the rest

Play.tm had an interview with Rock Band 2’s lead designer, Dan Teasdale of Harmonix, who mentioned that he is working on a new title, and it’s not the recently announced game featuring the Beatles.

“I’m working on another new project that I can’t tell you about yet.” Teasdale told Play.tm

Teasdale also talks about how Harmonix had initially wanted to have a music creation tool in Rock Band 2 and that they hope to have it in their future game saying they are “going to be exploring stuff like that in the future”.

One thing that gamers can get excited about is the hint that unlike the Guitar Hero World Tour music studio, if Harmonix releases one in an upcoming game it may feature the ability to record lyrics.

“The whole thing for us, our reason for making games, is to give people the experience of creating music. I think that expressing… player expressivity is definitely something that we’re going to be focussing on in the future. But we want to do it properly, we don’t want to go out half-assed.

“We want lyrics… we don’t want just another bullet on the back of the box. We want it to add something meaningful, not just to pad the game, but add something to everything people do in the game.”

Activision did not include the ability to record lyrics in Guitar Hero World Tour due to ‘copyright issues’, but music game fans will know that such a response might just be kotowing to the record labels because ‘covers’ of songs are legal.

Even the music game Lips has the ability to load mp3 files into the game to sing along to.

Is this announcement of a music creation tool in an upcoming Harmonix game too late?  Has Guitar Hero World Tour cornered the market, or do you think Harmonix can bring it and do it right?

Sources:
Play.tm - Harmonix Working On Additional, Secret Title
Play.tm - Harmonix Consider User Generated Content

Related Links:
Console Hero - The Beatles Are Coming To Rock Band. (Sort Of).
Console Hero - Lips

This fantastic cartoon comes from the Canadian political satire cartoonist J.J. McCullough who runs the site Filibuster.

Based on the description of the cartoon it is trying to illustrate just how far behind John McCain is behind Barack Obama in the American Presidential election polling.  I think it also speaks volumes to the perception of both candidates amongst the population with regards to their mental well being, age, and what I like to call the “gets it” factor.

Source:
Filibuster Cartoons - Who’s Winning sourced from Kotaku - Try Hitting the Whammy Bar, My Friend.

 Next weeks Rock Band DLC has been announced and it will feature a 3 pack of the “Presidents Of The USA”, as well as tracks from Hinder and Fallout Boy.

The songs from The Presidents are;

• “Dune Buggy”
• “Feather Pluckn”
• “Ladybug”

The individual tracks are;

• Hinder - “Use Me”
• Fallout Boy - “I Don’t Care”

The Presidents of the USA track pack is available for $5.49 (or 440 Microsoft points) or the tracks can be downloaded individually for $1.99 (160 Microsoft Points) each. The tracks from Hinder and Fallout boy however are only $0.99 (80 Microsoft points) each.

These tracks will be available on Tuesday November 4th for the Xbox 360, and on Thursday November 6th for the Playstation 3.

For those who have been having sensitivity issues with their Guitar Hero World Tour drum kits, Red Octane might just have a fix for you.

Red Octane has just released a Guitar Hero World Tour Drum Tuning Kit.  The tuning kit is a downloadable application for the PC which will allow you to program the sensitivity on your drums for fine tuning.

The application will connect to your Guitar Hero World Tour drums through the use of a USB to Midi cable.  While it is unlikely that you have a usb to midi cable, you can likely purchase one at some musical instrument stores, or you can have Red Octane send you one via their customer support page (the link for which we’ve listed below).

Source:
Red Octane Customer Support - Guitar Hero World Tour Drum Tuning Kit

Related Links:
Console Hero - Sensitivity Issues With Guitar Hero World Tour Drums

 No, Harmonix didn’t just release a bunch of new info regarding the game, this is just a small update to our post yesterday.

News magazine Variety is also saying that the upcoming Beatles music game will feature 45 songs, and that all of the songs will come from the 1962-1969 EMI years.

That’s it, that’s all.

Source:
Variety - MTV cues up Beatles videogame

Related Links:
Console Hero - Beatles Are Coming To Rock Band. (Sort Of).