Rock Band DLC: 3/11

I've been addicted to Rock Band ever since I played it back in January. Finally, here was a slice of entertainment that combined my triumvirate of loves: music, video games, and mindless repetitive tasks. Playing with 3 other people is the most fun I've ever hand playing co-op video games, and even the single player mode is a blast. One aspect of Rock Band that I love is the amount of variety: four different instruments, an almost infinite amount of costume choices, and of course, the wide variety of songs. I have to sympathize with the programmers a bit in that regard. Do they go with the most popular song of a particular group ("Radiohead", Creep) or maybe a less well know song from a popular band (""Queens of the Stone Age", Go With the Flow)? I'm sure that a lot of the decision comes down to the songs that can be programmed, and are most fun to play, but taste has to factor in at some point. In my opinion, Rock Band has the best track list of any of the music games on the market, even if you have to wade through misogyny (Aerosmith) and mediocrity (Fall Out Boy) to get to the good stuff.

Which brings be to the downloadable content portion of this post. Rock Band has another distinct edge over other music games, specifically Guitar Hero 3, in that they publish 3 new songs a week for download from Xbox Live. I've downloaded quite a few and they are almost all worthwhile. I got the Oasis pack out of boredom and was surprised to find that those songs are some of the most fun to play (for me at least). I'm no huge Oasis fan, but I'd rather play "Don't Look Back in Anger" than "El Scorcho" (from a band and album I love) just because, well, its more fun to play. So, I've taken a rather pragmatic view towards the DLC every week. I used to be only interested songs that I knew well, now I'm more open minded.

Here are this weeks tracks:
"Shockwave" by Black Tide
"Crushcrushcrush" by Paramore
"Beethoven's Cock" by Serj Tankian

I'm not reneging on my promise to be more open minded, but I'm a bit let down by these tracks. I've been surprised by unfamiliar tracks in the past (The Grateful Dead, Oasis, The Monkees) but these tracks are seriously underwhelming. Black Tide are a bunch of teenage Ozzfest rejects, Paramore swing from the same branch as Avril and Fall Out Boy and Serj? Well, I used to like System of a Down, but I have no use for his solo material.

I theory I respect Harmonix for going with unknown/new/less popular artists (for a discounted price no less), but in practice I'm not going to get any of these songs. If they wanted to go obscure there are much better bands to go with. I know that licensing and legal issues probably clog up the sources of music, but from where I'm standing these are underwhelming choices. They must have some rubric for choosing which songs are available as DLC, like what percentage of video game users are classic rock fans, pop fans, modern rock fans, etc... I just wish they would include more of the songs I like. Its selfish I know, but I would pay double the normal price if they included more, I don't know what to call it... indie rock I guess. I would love to see some Liars, Marnie Stern (sweet Christ that would be awesome), White Stripes, Spoon, Television, Stooges, Tapes n' Tapes, Modest Mouse, Fiery Furnaces, Les Savy Fav, Interpol, the Cure, Blur, Belle and Sebastian, Deerhunter, Animal Collective, etc... but I know that's probably a pipe dream.