Bonnawho?

This week in Rock Band, we take a trip to Tennessee, down to the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival. There we'll hear music from a number of bands, including Coheed and Cambria, Shooter Jennings, and Phish. If that sounds like your cup of tea, you can get the entire six-pack of songs for only 800 MSP/$10, or each track individually for 160 MSP/$2. It's a festival experience you may actually remember the next day!
Here's what's on offer:

Ben Harper and Relentless7 - Shimmer & Shine
Coheed and Cambria - A Favor House Atlantic
Coheed and Cambria - The Running Free
Phish - Wilson (Live)
Shooter Jennings - Steady at the Wheel
TV on the Radio - Wolf Like Me
Note: Click on any song for expert drum videos.

Unfortunately, I'm highly antisocial and burn easily in the sun, so I stayed far away from this week's tracks. But there's a whole other kind of festival going on right now: The electronic entertainment extravaganza known as E3. This is far more suited to a type like me, and brings us much news about the upcoming Beatles Rock Band.

Many of the announcements were made at the start of Microsoft's press conference on Monday. After showing the opening sequence of the game, six people took the stage to play Day Tripper, giving us a taste of what was to come. Yeah, that's right, six people. It seems that earlier rumors were true: the game supports up to three singers at the same time. This will make for some nice harmonizing in many of the tracks, and at least back-up vocals in others.

Of course, it's also worth spending a minute talking about how it plays. The Rock Band formula looks pretty much unchanged, which isn't a bad thing, but might leave things feeling a little easy for all the drummers out there. As much as I love The Beatles, after stepping into the shoes of Keith Moon and Neil Peart, I'm not sure if Ringo Starr is going to offer too much of a challenge. No offence, Ringo. However, once you add a microphone into the mix (because who wouldn't want to sing back-up?), that difficulty should pick right back up.

The press conference also gave Harmonix a chance to reveal the first ten songs in the game, as well as the first piece of DLC we can expect. Oh yeah, I suppose that's confirmation of downloadable content as well. Fans of the Fab Four have the following songs to look forward to:

• I Saw Her Standing There
  
• I Wanna Hold Your Hand
• I Feel Fine
• Day Tripper
• Tax Man
• I am the Walrus
• Back in the USSR
• Octopus's Garden
• Here Comes the Sun
• Get Back

Pretty good so far. It will be nice to see the evolution of the band as they go from their early, poppy years into their later, more experimental stuff. It was also announced that Abbey Road will be the first downloadable album, which I hope is an indication that all of their music will be released in this fashion, rather than in smaller song packs. I don't expect a new album every week, but every month or so would be nice. That would allow them to keep the game fresh for a year or more, assuming that people haven't gotten totally sick of the whole concept by then.

Unfortunately, one more piece of news revealed that there will be no cross compatibility between Beatles Rock Band and other versions of Rock Band. This is a shame, as it means we can't stick all the songs into our ever-growing libraries of music once we tire of the whole Beatles aesthetic, but I understand if licencing agreements are starting to get a little tricky for the companies involved by this point. Also, since this particular entry in the series supports more instruments than the others, I guess we can't really expect them to include such a function. Still, shame.

Ah, but who really cares? It's The Beatles, for crying out loud! September 9th can't come fast enough! Here's that opening sequence, in case you didn't see it: