Rush Moving Pictures tommorrow

Just a quick note that it looks like the Moving Pictures DLC is finally coming out this week, 9/23, according to the Rock Band forums, as well as the following individual tracks:

Bad Religion - Sorrow
The Cult - She Sells Sanctuary
Hot Hot Heat - Bandages
Kasabian - Shoot the Runner
Sleater-Kinney - You're No Rock N Roll Fun
Stone Roses - Love Spreads

And another news flash for you, Walter Cronkite...TCat's back in Rock Band 2, and now she's rockin' bass on HARD! And surviving, though it's not as pretty as her medium guitar stylings. I even went into the online battle mode with The TCat Project and kicked the snot out of a couple unsuspecting bands. Awwwwww yeah!

Update 9/23 - Yep, Moving Pictures is there, alright. We downloaded it this morning, and tonight I'm gonna rockit tonight I'm gonna rockit tonight!

Rush DLC delayed...new albums announced

As I sit with a few thousand Rush fans on the Rock Band forums, waiting for the inexplicably delayed Moving Pictures to become available for download (come ON, XBL, it's a download album, it's not your first day at the rodeo with this stuff!), I have determined that Fake Steven Tyler is the new internet THING. I'm serious. Remember I said that.

Update 8/27 - The natives were quite restless on the forums today, as Harmonix kept the Rush DLC delay explanation in a shroud of secrecy until pretty late in the day. It was eventually revealed that the album download is to be delayed 1-2 weeks. Not sure what went wrong there, but it had to be something significant. Most speculation is that it has to do with the YYZ song having no vocals. Probably, and something to do with how that worked in the live environment, something QA wasn't able to catch in their test environment (like remotely joining a group, or something like that), because it's not as if the lack of vocals somehow escaped their notice until the last minute. So I wouldn't be surprised if the portion of YYZ that is tambourine-friendly becomes a vocals part, if the theory that vocals are not a removable part holds.

Update 8/28 - Harmonix has offered some good news to balance this out though. The Hollywood Insider has the exclusive on the upcoming crop of full album DLC releases, and it's pretty impressive! It starts with Metallica's new record, Death Magnetic on Guitar Hero (this was expected) on September 12. But then:

Stocking the digital bins, EW.com has learned exclusively, will be seminal full albums by Foo Fighters (The Colour and the Shape), Red Hot Chili Peppers (Blood Sugar Sex Magik), Jane's Addiction (Nothing's Shocking), Megadeth (Peace Sells... But Who's Buying) and Stevie Ray Vaughn (Texas Flood), along with a specially-compiled No Doubt Best Of collection. All are slated to roll out in the coming months, according to MTV Games.

Stevie Ray. NICE! No Doubt. NICE! Jane's Addiction...awwww, doesn't include Caught Stealing. Alas. But some pretty exciting stuff coming down the pike.

You can also check out Rock Band 2's opening sequence.

What's the Rush?

Yesterday I got the first Rock Band Community Zine. The big announcement in this issue is the full album downloadability of Rush's Moving Pictures (which has Limelight, my favorite). The downloads will be available next Tuesday, the 26th, and there's a new interview to go with it.

If this is supposed to make me feel better about my XBox version of Rock Band 2 being delayed to October 19, well...it does, a little. It's for the best anyway, I guess, I don't think I could handle Rock Band 2 and the Spore launch in the same month. (And I wonder, is it any coincidence that Warhammer Online's open beta begins on September 7, the same day as Spore's launch?)

It's not a great week for delay announcements, with Harry Potter being delayed to July 2009 (rumors on why are plentiful, this one's my favorite. /sigh), and The Watchmen on the ropes (THANKS, Fox...). But hey, if bad news comes in threes, we're all set!

Also, this gives me some time to start practicing Rock Band vocals. I figure it'd be nice to get up to speed on another instrument, and forays into the wild world of hard-level guitar have been dubious, though not as dubious as my dealings with the drumset. That leaves vocals, and while I do NOT have a singing voice, Rock Band vocals are mercifully all about pitch.

PS - It's not too early to start thinking about what comes AFTER Rock Band 2!

Nas playing Rush on Rock Band...on Colbert

Now this is just getting silly, don't they know that I have a limited amount of column width for entry titles? Cripes.



OK, I admit I didn't know who this Nas fellow was, but he's GOOD, he got 95% on Expert and managed to do some rock-out guitar poses at the same time. However, dude, you got to the end of the song with a full bar of deploy energy? Duuuuuuude! DEPLOY!!

Rush playing Rock Band

Rush was recently a guest on the Colbert Report. Here they are playing Tom Sawyer on Rock Band backstage:



That's just awesome.