Here is this week’s lone Pro-Guitar/Bass chart for yesterday’s Bush DLC from the always awesome thenewnoelisoncruz. Definitely check out and subscribe to his YouTube channel!

Bush – Machinehead

Like throwing fuel on a fire...

For those that may have missed it, last night the official @RockBand twitter account tweeted out the following:

Next Tuesday we’ll be releasing the single most requested song in 3+ years of tracking RockBand.com/request. Any guesses?

So we thought, with the help of the community, lets see if we can crack this nut and figure out what song will be arriving next week as DLC.

We read through a plethora of tweets and RockBand.com forum posts and attempted to pull songs that were mentioned the most, and included each one below along with a brief analysis of why or why not each song may be dropping next week.

Led Zeppelin – Stairway to Heaven

Okay, so this is probably the most iconic song in rock history, so why not start with this. We have known for quite a while that Led Zeppelin hasn’t been interested in any music games. In 2009, Jimmy Page mentioned that people getting their music from a video game is “a little sad,” and that no one is going to be able to duplicate John Bonham on drums anyway. Last year, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick told Forbes magazine that the Guitar Hero franchise approached Led Zeppelin, as they were the “number one thing” fans wanted, but were unable to get things done. But sometimes, things change. Fellow Led Zeppelin bandmate John Paul Jones is featured in Rock Band as part of Them Crooked Vultures. Harmonix has requested community feedback on popular bands, including Led Zeppelin, suggesting that the possibility may be there. And finally, Rock Band NOW has Pro features that let players accurately replicate playing the real thing, rendering Jimmy Page’s criticism moot. If you combine all these factors, it just might be enough to thaw Jimmy Page’s icy grip on Led Zeppelin licensing.

The Eagles – Hotel California

While the Eagles have yet to make their Rock Band debut, they have been featured in Guitar Hero. In fact, Hotel California was featured in Guitar Hero: World Tour, so technically speaking, it shouldn’t be too difficult for this song to make it into Rock Band. The problem with this is licensing, as the Eagles reportedly were exclusive to the Guitar Hero franchise. With Guitar Hero more or less out of the picture at this point, it’s easy to simply say that they are free to come over to Rock Band, but typically licensing agreements don’t just evaporate. More than likely, similar to Sony’s grip on the Spider-Man film franchise, it may be a situation where if Guitar Hero doesn’t do anything with the Eagles’ content over a set time, the licensing can possibly go back up for grabs, making this a distinct possibility. It looks like there hasn’t been any content from the Eagles since a DLC pack in December of 2008, so an exclusive licensing window of three years would be completely plausible.

Boston – Let Me Take You Home Tonight

While I have serious doubts as to whether this song is truly “the most requested song” in Rock Band, it would complete Boston’s self-titled album on the Rock Band platform, so it may be plausible that a high number of requests have been made for this song if only to complete that album. For those that may doubt just how popular this band is in Rock Band, they handily won a poll we had here on the site asking which DLC should be upgraded for Rock Band 3, beating out Queen, The Who, and everyone else. The band has an achievement just for 5-starring one of their songs and is one of the best selling artists in the game. While it may not be the most exciting track listed here, it would bring closure to many die-hard Rock Band fans.

Rolling Stones - (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction

We saw a cover version of  Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’ in Guitar Hero 2 and we had the master version of Gimme Shelter in the original Rock Band, and that has been the extent of Rolling Stones from Harmonix games. Despite former Rolling Stones guitar Bill Wyman calling out Guitar Hero and “Rock Star” in 2009 for making people “less and less dedicated to really get down and learn an instrument,” Guitar Hero did feature Rolling Stones DLC (albeit live versions) for Guitar Hero 5, so again the technical possibility is there. I haven’t heard any rumors of licensing exclusivity for Guitar Hero, it is entirely possible considering their deep pockets at the time, but as we’ve pointed out above, even with exclusivity in the past, that doesn’t necessarily rule it out now, especially when you notice that Rocksmith was able to snag a few of their songs for their game (although they don’t require master stem files for their game, and thus have different types of licenses). With the Rolling Stones arguably the second most iconic band in rock history (after The Beatles), it wouldn’t surprise me to see them coveting the “most requested song” slot.

Guns N’ Roses – Welcome to the Jungle

Fans that have been with the franchise since the beginning, and many that have even been around before that, may remember an early demo video of Rock Band that featured this song performed by members of Harmonix (we’ve included it below if you haven’t). The song obviously never made it into the game, and we could easily understand why it could be the top requested song. To date we only have content from Guns N’ Roses’ latest album, Chinese Democracy. RBA contributor Brian Shea was able to touch base with former Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash in the past, who claimed that songs from Appetite for Destruction “will never happen,” despite both Slash’s likeness and Welcome to the Jungle featured prominently in Guitar Hero III. Slash claimed that Axl Rose still holds all rights to Guns N’ Roses licenses (not sure how Guitar Hero III got around it… oh, that’s right). And if you remember during the Harmonix Halloween livestream, John Drake tried to (diplomatically, of course) address the situation again, saying that former members of the band may be preventing older tracks from making it into the game. A common trope from Harmonix is that licensing is hard, and this is a perfect example that has played out much more publicly than most situations. While not impossible, it’s hard to see things being resolved at least to a point where this song (or Sweet Child O’ Mine or Paradise City) could be released as DLC, unfortunately.

Metallica – One

This band could obviously have any number of songs that could be highly requested (Master of Puppets could easily replace One, for example), but the biggest roadblock I see here is… again… licensing. Activision was quick to lock down the band, first in an arrangement of releasing their Death Magnetic album as DLC for Guitar Hero: World Tour, followed quickly by their stand alone Guitar Hero title. In fact, Activision basically hired Metallica as their house band, performing at Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops game premiere. As a result, Rock Band lost the ability to export Enter Sandman from the first disc and Battery from the second. Not all hope is lost, as Rock Band has been able to keep Metallica DLC from disappearing in the game (unlike a few rare others), and several noticed that a Metallica t-shirt was available for purchase for your in-game players in Rock Band 3. It has been awhile since Metallica has showed up under Activision’s banner, so they may be “free agents” again.

Rick Astley – Never Gonna Give You Up

OK, I REALLY didn’t want to feature this, but several people are CONVINCED this is going to happen, so I begrudgingly have included it. There haven’t been many clues, besides @RockBand retweeting an @HMXHenry tweet reminding everyone it’s Rick Astley’s birthday a few days ago. Frankly, this isn’t nearly enough evidence to go on as proof that the song is coming to Rock Band. It may be heavily requested as a joke, but I think a lot of people would be disappointed to see this revealed after Rock Band’s tease.

Muse – Knights of Cydonia

Did you really think we would write this without including Muse? The simplest explanation is that a single Muse track may be FINALLY dropping next week. There has never been any proof that Muse has been exclusive to Guitar Hero or any other franchise (again, they appeared in Rocksmith), so we could possibly see something… ANYTHING… from them. They could easily fit the bill of “most requested” in Rock Band, considering they have their own inside joke among the community (MOAR MUSE) and are currently featured as the top requested band on the Rock Band Facebook app. Knights of Cydonia was featured in Guitar Hero III, which would explain why the song has been requested the most since the beginning of the franchise. It’s entirely possible that we could also see their most commercially successful single, Uprising, featured instead. Hell, it could be their least successful song and people would simultaneously be immensely ecstatic that a song from Muse has arrived and ridiculously pissed because it wasn’t insert-other-song-name-here. Still… I think Muse is the most requested BAND in Rock Band, but may not have the most requested SONG (if I recall correctly from some PAX East panels in the past), so I’m not holding my breath for Muse next week.

OK, so there you have it. There are several other songs that could be included (I personally have my fingers crossed for Elton John’s Tiny Dancer), but we had to draw the line somewhere, and the songs above seemed to come up the most. Now we’ll let you decided. What do you think is coming? Vote below, and let us know why you think that way in the comments.

Arriving in the Rock Band library today is a three-pack from alternative grunge rockers Bush. Included below are playthrough videos of the DLC from the always awesome thenewnoelisoncruz. Definitely check out and subscribe to his YouTube channel!

Links to purchase DLC songs online at Xbox.com are included below for each track. All tracks are 160 MSP ($1.99). The Bush Pack 01 is 440 MSP ($5.49). Pro Guitar/Bass charts are noted below where applicable, and can be purchased for an additional $.99. Playthrough charts for Pro Guitar/Bass will be posted tomorrow.

Directly below is a playlist of all the DLC videos, followed by individual videos of each DLC track after the jump.

Playlist of all new DLC:

Bush – Comedown

Bush – Everything Zen

Bush – Machinehead (Pro)

Last week, we started a recurring post where we randomly giveaway one Xbox 360 DLC code for a Rock Band pack (as well as one 160 MSP code as a consolation prize). As we stated last week, we’ll try to giveaway a different DLC pack each Friday until our stash runs out. We started with Billy Joel, and this week we move on to giving out a code for the Celebrating Nirvana pack, originally released last September. The songs included are…

• Nirvana – Heart-Shaped Box
• Nirvana – Rape Me
• Nirvana – All Apologies
• Nirvana – You Know You’re Right

If this is something that you want to try and win, entry is going to be a bit harder than last week. To enter, post a comment below of a “random fact” about Nirvana, its members, or anyone associated with the band. Standard rules apply: one entry per household only, Xbox 360 only, codes are redeemable worldwide (as far as I know). Please include a valid email address in the appropriate field (or Twitter account if you don’t want to take off your tin foil hat) with each entry so we can contact the winners.

We’ll let this run through the weekend so everyone has a chance to enter and randomly choose a winner sometime on Monday afternoon (Central time). And since we ALSO have a number of 160 MSP codes, we’ll randomly give out a “consolation gift” to one random entrant, as well!

Good luck! And thanks to Harmonix for providing us with codes to giveaway!

UPDATE: Congratulations to banjofan284 and DivineKaos for winning codes! If you didn’t win, we’ll have another DLC contest this Friday, so you can try again then.

OK, c’mon Harmonix. You’re making me look like a fool, continually predicting that we would see either Bush or Huey Lewis and the News as forthcoming DLC for the past several weeks now. We saw @HMXHenry’s cryptic tweet that we should be seeing something special around Valentine’s Day again, so I don’t think that means Bush or Huey Lewis, so I’m betting once again that we will see one of them this week. And next week’s winner is…

• Bush – Everything Zen
• Bush – Comedown
• Bush – Machinehead *

* Denotes Pro-Guitar/Bass chart availability for $.99.

[Official announcement]

I’m a big fan of the motoring program called Top Gear. I recently watched an interview with non-other than Alice Cooper, so I thought I would feature his most iconic song for this week’s Thursday Throwback pick, School’s Out (Live).

Alice Cooper is famous for his horror-movie style concerts, which has spanned over four decades of music. He has released over 25 albums between his band and his solo career, with over 50 million sales worldwide. Because of this success, the band has been included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. While the original version of School’s Out was released in 1972 on his fifth album of the same name, this live version featured in Rock Band comes from the 2005 compilation album, Classicks. In May 2009, this song, along with five other Alice Cooper hits, was added to the Rock Band library. The song was also featured on Guitar Hero 3 (and again as DLC for Guitar Hero 5).

Although not as good as the studio version, this live version still features his usual difficult solos and catchy lyrics. The song’s devil-tiered guitar features that iconic riff, and will assault your fingers during the solos. 2-tier bass is quite lively, with frequent changes to keep things from getting stale. I would recommend to play the 4-tier drums in Pro mode, as there are some unique and interesting charts during the song’s choruses. And finally we come to the 2-tier vocals, which is quite different to the studio version, probably due to Cooper’s age and his improvisations during the intro and other parts.

Here’s a playthrough video:

Is there any new features you would to be added to future articles? What do you think of the pick and song? Sound off below!

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