Leaked Rock Band 2 Tracklists Kill My Interest

Back in April, I wrote a post about Rock Band DLC which basically opined the fact that my favorite genres ('80s and '90s alternative from the UK) are under-represented in rhythm games, albeit it with good reason, financially speaking. The number of people who are going to pony up the dough to download My Bloody Valentine's "To Here Knows When" is a lot smaller than the number of people who will buy any given Red Hot Chili Peppers song, and while that might be a very sad comment on the average American's taste in music, it makes it pretty clear what Harmonix should do if they want to make money.

However, a strange thing happened since that post, namely the release of The Pixies' Doolittle as a Rock Band album pack. Now The Pixies aren't from the UK, but Doolittle was released by my favorite label, 4AD, which has played host to some of my favorite bands of all time, including the Cocteau Twins, Lush and Throwing Muses. When the release of Doolittle was followed closely by the announcement of Rock Band 2, to feature bands who had never before appeared in a rhythm game, my mind instantly leapt to some wondrous possibilities.

Well, this week, Kotaku ran a story about a couple of leaked tracklists which may or may not shed a lot of light on what to expect from Rock Band 2. And if you like good music, it looks like this definitely will not be the game for you. In fact, if the lists are to be believed (and never have I so desperately wanted a rumor not to be true), Harmonix seems to have gone out of their way to make a game I would absolutely not buy. The appearance of Lush's "De-Luxe" on both lists does nothing to change the fact that System of a Down, the Offspring and The Presidents of the United States of America are three bands I hate so much that hearing one of their songs literally ruins my whole day. I realize that's an irrational degree of hatred, but as a good musician once said (guess which one) "I can't change the way I feel". Any one of those bands making the final list will prevent me from buying the game, because I'd have to stop as soon as I came to their song.

I can't get irrationally upset, though, because like I said in my previous post on the topic, I understand why Harmonix is going with so much garbage: the masses have no taste. It's my own fault for developing expectations that were never going to be met. My only hope now is that more good stuff will eventually appear as DLC--or that Guitar Hero World Tour will pick up the slack and woo the money I would have spent on Rock Band 2 into Activision's pockets instead.