Have you visited the official Harmonix Rock Band Blog? If not, you should. There’s a great entry on one of my absolute favorite bits of DLC so far, the complete first 1978 album from seminal pop new wave band The Cars.

The producer of the first Cars album was Roy Thomas Baker, an Englishman best-known for his mile-high production work on the first four Queen albums. But although the album sounds like an immaculate studio production, Hawkes says the recorded versions are pretty close to how the songs sounded live. “We were the same arrangements we id on the demo—The most obvious difference is that we added the multi-track backing vocals, and did a fair number of overdubs. I do remember that on ‘Just What I Needed,’ Roy suggested we do two choruses at the end instead of just one.” By then Hawkes had already come up with the song’s trademark keyboard lick.

“That was a lucky combination of finding the perfect sound for that little melody. And I have to admit, it happened partly because we made cassettes of all our rehearsals and every show we played. When I heard them over again, my style would start simplifying. I’d be saying, ‘Okay, it’s getting busy in here. Maybe I don’t need to play during that verse, and it’s more effective if I wait till the chorus’. That’s the drudge work of being in a band.”

There’s a lot of great insider information on the weekly downloadable content, as above, plus some truly excellent in-depth entries like the following:

• Battle of the Lyrics

  There’s a heated discussion raging on our message boards about certain lyrics used in Rock Band, and whether those jibe with the ones that are sung on the records. Most of the talk concerns Nirvana’s “In Bloom,” and whether Kurt Cobain sang “don’t know what it means” or “knows not what it means”. It’s true that Kurt sang both versions, though not necessarily at the points where the lyric sheet says. For what it’s worth, producer Butch Vig did a lot of cutting and pasting with Cobain’s vocals on that album—One rumor I’ve heard is that he sang “Here we are now, entertain us” only once; and that clip used in every chorus of the song. Sounds that way to these ears, but that’s one studio secret that may never be revealed.

• Inside Rock Band’s Sonic Secrets

  Even a seminal punk band like the Clash yielded some surprises. Even wonder why the drums sound so good on “I Fought the Law”? Because there’s two drummers on it (or more likely, drummer Topper Headon recorded his part twice)—something that became clear when Brosius picked the mix apart. Thus, the drum parts you play in Rock band are a composite of those two original drum tracks. The Spanish backup vocals that you’re used to hearing on the middle verse of “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” originally ran through the whole song; and the parts are still there on the tapes—You can hear a little more of the Spanish bits on Rock Band than you can on the record. And listen to the way the two guitar parts intertwine on the chorus—Play the song on expert and you’re doing guitar bits that Strummer and Jones had to work together to create.

• Behind the Legend of Sailor Jerry

  So why did Sailor Jerry wind up connected with Rock Band? Because sometimes the original is still the greatest. And there are real-life, tattooed rockers on the Harmonix staff who wouldn’t dream of getting inked with anybody else’s designs. When you think about old-school tattooing—the tough-guy imagery of anchors and skulls, inscribed hearts, tigers and dragons, and well-proportioned women—you’re thinking Sailor Jerry. Though Jerry himself (real name, Norman Collins) died in 1973, his designs are still worn around the world. And despite Jerry’s personal tastes, his images have become an essential part of rock’n’roll culture.

I can’t recommend the official Harmonix Rock Band Blog highly enough. This sort of authenticity and attention to detail is precisly why Harmonix has been so enormously successful with Guitar Hero 1, 2, and now Rock Band.

Long may we all rock.