Grateful for Rock Band
Hot on the heels of last month's full albums goodness, Harmonix has recently announced that they will release a sizable number of downloadable Grateful Dead tracks for their upcoming game Rock Band. Here's the abridged official announcement:
New York, NY - September 5, 2007- Harmonix [...] announced a deal that will bring the legendary band Grateful Dead to the highly anticipated music videogame Rock Band. The iconic group is making 18 master recordings from its diverse catalog available as digitally distributed game levels following Rock Band's release this holiday season. Among the songs available will be the classic Dead tracks "Truckin'," "Uncle John's Band," "Touch of Grey," "Sugar Magnolia," and "Casey Jones."
"Grateful Dead's unique fusion of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, and jazz challenged traditional musical boundaries and pushed the limits of creativity to produce a signature sound that is undeniably their own," stated Paul DeGooyer, MTV's Senior Vice President of Audio, Home Video and Electronic Games. "With an enormous legion of fans all over the world, Rock Band will give players a chance to interact with the music of these beloved rock pioneers and experience what Grateful Dead did best - jam from the depths of their souls." [...]
Grateful Dead's journey ignited in San Francisco's Haight and Ashbury district during the psychedelic '60s. The band, well known for constantly touring, continued to spread their message of peace and love for another three decades with a devoted community of fans known as Dead Heads, many of whom traveled the country with them. Earlier this year, the Recording Academy awarded Grateful Dead a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award for its contribution to the evolution of rock music.
You can pretty much guarantee that Friend of the Devil is going to be on there, but I'm hoping for New Speedway Boogie, St. Stephen and New, New Miglewood Blues as well. With any luck Harmonix will catch the bootleggin' spirit and release the tracks for free.
What do you think the next big announcement might be? Clapton? Zeppelin? Queen?
Labels: Music, Video Games
posted by Matthew Gallant at
9:04 PM
2 Comments:
The only announcement that will be acceptable to me is a price point. Activision has already released a MSRP for GH3, so Harmonix needs to stop delaying and settle. The game is more or less one step away from going gold, so there is no reason EA and Harmonix couldn't have talked retail at their event on Wednesday. As much as I love to talk about this game with my friends, I think the silence surrounding the price has hurt the game a little bit. In more than a few places I've read people saying they were buying GH 3 over Rock Band mainly because they know RB is going to be priced well above their gaming budget. With Harmonix remaining tight lipped about the retail price of the whole set-up plus the cost of the DLC songs, they are creating an atmosphere of "if you have to ask, you can't afford it."
Bottom line, they need to shit or get off the pot about what it's going to cost. GH 3 with a wireless guitar is $109. I can't imagine RB with all the trimmings being less than $199. That's practically a console investment.
On a side note, I know you're worried about spam and what-not, but those word verifications are supremely annoying. Does this blog get enough traffic to warrant them? I'm just sayin'. ;-)
By
Dave, At
September 7, 2007 at 1:18 PM
I'm mostly a Rock Band enthusiast in theory; it's got a really tremendous lineup of excellent music and that alone is worth a lot of credit in my mind. I'm much more sceptical about the game providing good entertainement value for the cost, at $200+ it had better be the last game I'll ever need!
As for the comments, touché. How about a compromise: I'll disable the word verification until I get my first spam message!
By
Matthew Gallant, At
September 8, 2007 at 2:05 AM
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