Rock Band 3 Setlist....of my Dreams

A friend linked me to this article that outlines some of the new features for Rock Band 3, including the introduction of the keyboard as an instrument, and the use of the harmonized vocals that were featured in The Beatles: Rock Band. Also, they reaffirmed their intention to try to bridge the gap between rhythm games and real instruments, which is a neat idea. There was no mention of incorporating any of the ideas from my Rock Band RPG article from a while ago, but I never really held out much hope for that.

So how about a setlist? The article above named the 22 songs listed below:

Dio - "Rainbow in the Dark"
Huey Lewis and the News - "The Power of Love"
Ida Maria - "Oh My God"
Jane's Addiction - "Been Caught Stealing"
Jimi Hendrix - "Crosstown Traffic"
Joan Jett - "I Love Rock and Roll"
Juanes - "Me Enamora"
Metric - "Combat Baby"
Night Ranger - "Sister Christian"
Ozzy Osbourne - "Crazy Train"
Phoenix - "Lasso"
Queen - "Bohemian Rhapsody"
Rilo Kiley - "Portions of Foxes"
Smash Mouth - "Walkin' on the Sun"
Spacehog - "In the Meantime"
Stone Temple Pilots - "Plush"
The Cure - "Just Like Heaven"
The Doors - "Break On Through"
The Vines - "Get Free"
The White Stripes - "The Hardest Button to Button"
Them Crooked Vultures - "Dead End Friends"
Whitesnake - "Here I Go Again"

Definitely some good songs in there, but that's only 22 of a likely 80+ song tracklist. So what will the other 60-odd songs be? Well, ten to fifteen of them will be bogus-ass songs selected by the game designers that nobody's ever heard of (although they've occasionally found some good stuff). Regarding the other 45-50 songs, I don't have any legitimate guesses, but here are my suggestions/wishes/demands.

Please note that I'm aware that many of these songs don't take advantage of the keyboard. Tough. I did what I could to try to include songs with piano or keyboard, and songs with multiple vocal parts, and songs from different eras and genres. But in the end, it is Rock Band. The focus isn't going to be on hip-hop.

Alabama - "Mountain Music"
Big and Rich - "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy"
Bruce Springsteen - "Glory Days"
Clutch - "The Elephant Riders"
Counting Crows - "Hanginaround"
Cracker - "Low"
Creedence Clearwater Revival - "Born on the Bayou"
Dave Matthews Band - "Stay"
David Bowie - "Young Americans"
Deep Purple - "Perfect Strangers"
Dire Straits - "Money For Nothing"
Dishwalla - "Counting Blue Cars"
Doobie Brothers - "Takin' It To The Streets"
Eagles - "Already Gone"
Electric Light Orchestra - "Evil Woman"
Fiona Apple - "Criminal"
Five Finger Death Punch - "Hard To See"
Foreigner - "Cold As Ice"
Hard-Fi - "Gotta Reason"
Hoobastank - "The Reason"
Jackson Browne - "Doctor My Eyes"
Jason Mraz - "I'm Yours"
Jethro Tull - "Locomotive Breath"
Jonny Lang - "Still Rainin'"
Journey - "Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)"
Lynyrd Skynyrd - "Call Me The Breeze"
Maroon 5 - "This Love"
Matthew Good Band - "Indestructible"
Matthew Sweet - "Sick of Myself"
Modest Mouse - "Dashboard"
Muse - "Knights of Cydonia"
New Radicals - "You Get What You Give"
Santana featuring Chad Kroeger - "Into the Night"
School of Fish - "3 Strange Days"
Semisonic - "Closing Time"
Shinedown - "Heroes"
Sponge - "Wax Ecstatic"
Squirrel Nut Zippers - "Hell"
Steve Miller Band - "Jungle Love"
Styx - "Lady"
The Kinks - "Lola"
The Strokes - "Last Nite"
Toto - "Hold The Line"
Train - "Drops of Jupiter"
Van Halen - "Right Now"
Warren Zevon - "Werewolves of London"
Wolfmother - "Colossal"

By the way, Green Day: Rock Band? Really? We couldn't do better than that? What about Dave Matthews Band, or Electric Light Orchestra? Pearl Jam? Maybe pony up the ten million, or whatever it takes to get Led Zeppelin to release their master tracks. Zeppelin is the ultimate rock band of all time. There's got to be some amount at which they'd cave in.

In the words of a great hero of mine, "Everybody's got a price."

LOST Series Finale and Beyond - Part 2

In case you were wondering, yes, I totally forgot about this. But I do remember most of what I was going to say, so let's jump right in. This post will be about the show itself, and not so much the "beyond" part.

I thought the Lost series finale was entertaining. I wouldn't say it was as good as the show's best episodes (mostly first and second season episodes), but it was satisfying, and more than anything else, it gave us a fairly gratifying wrap on the entire series. I did have one idea, though, regarding the "alternate reality" portion, which we ended up learning was a kind of limbo/afterlife deal.

Couldn't that whole storyline have been made into a movie? Certainly Lost has enough viewers to at least justify releasing a full-length feature; you'd get at least ten million people easy, which translates to at least $80 million. Moreover, that whole path was kind of a stand-alone storyline; it didn't depend on anything happening on the island. The value it brought to this final season was in the questions it brought up, the kind of second-season questions we all had about, "What exactly is going on here?" As far as stories go, it could have been just as effective on its own.

In the end, though, I do think it was ultimately necessary to include that storyline alongside the final season. The reason showed up at the end of the final episode; while the bookend of the close-up Jack's eye was a great move by the show, the finale needed emotionally powerful scenes to satisfy long-time viewers. The confrontation between Jack and Samuel (the man-in-black's apparent name) was good, the farewell between Jack and Kate was good, the bestowal of the island's caretaker role to Hurley was good, but for pure emotion, nothing came close to the final meeting between Jack and his father. The finale needed that emotion, so it had to have the other-dimensional sequence.

Are there still questions? Of course. I don't think any of us realistically expected the show to resolve all of our questions. And leaving Hurley's reign on the island open-ended leaves open the possibility for a future movie; we'd all like a little more Lost. In that regard, I think Lost's writers did a great job. You know the old saying...

...always leave them wanting more.