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Finally! I’d already had She Bangs the Drums in GH3, but it’s not one of the Roses’ best tracks and the GH3 implementation was, typically, not that much fun.

There’s a small handful of tracks on Guitar Hero : World Tour that I would like to see in Rock Band, and one was Love Spreads by The Stone Roses. Luckily next week’s Rock Band DLC includes this track, so that’s one crossed off my list. It’s still not one of my favourite tracks, but it’s still quintessentially Stone Roses and more interesting than She Bangs the Drums – I’m certainly looking forward to the Harmonix take on John Squire’s riffs and Reni’s drums.

The Stone Roses did a massive amount to shake up the tired 80′s music scene and were in the vanguard of early Indie in the early 90′s, but are still ignored by a lot of people today. A combination of poor management, dodgy legal problems and their own incredible stupidity meant they didn’t realise their potential, but I remember the first time I heard Fool’s Gold – in 1989/1990 it was just so different. For anyone interested, the BBC did a documentary about the Roses which is fairly informative although I think they dismiss their second, admittedly 6-year late, album (Second Coming) a little too quickly; despite them being out of fashion by then and no longer fresh (since the sound had already been copied & furthered by others by then) I think it’s still good.

Now, Harminix/MTV please can we have Fool’s Gold, Waterfall, What the World is Waiting For, Mersey Paradise, Daybreak, Breaking Into Heaven.. hell, almost anything. Tell you what, I’ll just give you my wallet now, ok?

I can easily see how Rock Band DLC went double-platinum on only 2 months and why Motley Crue said they had more sales as DLC than as regular records – it’s compulsive. It’s been scientifically proven to be impossible to have too many songs to play, especially when the quality of the note chart conversion, which is directly proportional to fun, is as consistent as we’ve found it to be. I’ve spent the equivalent of half of a full-price game just on DLC already, and I’ve only really stopped because I have all the ones that simply must have; I could easily find another half dozen I’d be happy to buy but the need is not as urgent.

It has made me realise though that no matter how well the DLC has done already, it’s still a massively untapped pool of revenue in practical terms. Recently, a lot of the DLC has been a little ‘niche’ to say the least – personally I’ve no interest in The Cars, Jimmy Buffet or Disturbed (but then I’m not a huge metal fan, Iron Maiden a-likes don’t do much for me), so I’ve been mostly buying from the back catalogue. Don’t get me wrong, Rock Band’s DLC is far and away the best DLC list of any of the music games out there, but I just know that they could extract a lot more money from me if the recent releases were a little more diverse. Perhaps I should be grateful for that!

So, tips to Harmonix – you could quite easily force me to give you the shirt from my back by releasing some or all of the following:

Missing Bands

Arctic Monkeys
Franz Ferdinand
Led Zepplin
Lenny Kravitz
Manic Street Preachers
Pink Floyd
Queen
Supergrass
Snow Patrol
Santana
The Beatles (yeah, like that’s going to happen)
The Bluetones
The Smiths
The Stone Roses (and more than a weak cover version of “She Bangs The Drums”)
U2

Missing Tracks From Existing Bands

Foo Fighters – Almost anything else
David Bowie – Ziggy Stardust
Red Hot Chili Peppers – Give It Away specifically, but again most other tracks
REM – It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
REM – most tracks from Accelerate
Rolling Stones – Jumpin’ Jack Flash

For a Laugh

Adam Ant (full-on camp, but you know it makes sense)
Bee Gees (just to see people try it on vocals)
Happy Mondays (if you didn’t have an Amiga tracker remix of Step On, you weren’t around in the early 90′s)
Smash Mouth
The Darkness (for those who can already do the Bee Gees)

One wonders whether the lack of quite as many mainstream entries as we might like in the DLC is down to just plain licensing, or Activision buying the rights up, or Harmonix hoarding tracks for Rock Band 2. Who knows? But still, I have an 80-odd song list locally for now and that’s still more than I’ve had before.

I bought another guitar today (a GH3 Les Paul as advised) so we’ll have 4-player to look forward to soon. Awesome.