Who's Next And 16 Songs Set For Rock Band Video Game

If you don't have the cash, talent or motivation to actually start a real band, then you'll soon be able to fake it with the new music video game, Rock Band.

Developed by Harmonix (makers of Guitar Hero I and II and Karaoke Revolution) and published by MTV Games, Rock Band lets up to four people rock out together on specially designed guitar, drum and microphone peripherals, with the guitar controller doubling as a bass.

The first 16 songs of the soundtrack were recently confirmed at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Santa Monica, California. The soundtrack spans four decades of guitar music from the '60s to this decade and features the likes of Metallica, Nirvana, David Bowie, The Strokes, Weezer and Canadian prog rock gods Rush.

Where other music game soundtracks consist of covers of songs performed by session musicians, Rock Band will feature mainly original recordings performed by the bands that made them famous (with the exception, so far, of Black Sabbath's "Paranoid," Rush's "Tom Sawyer" and Mountain's "Mississippi Queen," which will be covers).

Rock Band will be released this fall for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and new content will be made available for download every week after the game's launch. This content includes not only individual songs but entire albums, the first of which to be announced is The Who's Who's Next.

New songs will be chosen by the newly created Rock Band music advisory board chaired by musician, actor, record producer and radio host Steven Van Zandt (a.k.a. Little Steven).

Here are the first 16 officially announced Rock Band songs:

1970s
The Who — "Won't Get Fooled Again"
Mountain — "Mississippi Queen"
David Bowie — "Suffragette City"
Black Sabbath — "Paranoid"
Blue Oyster Cult — "Don't Fear The Reaper"
The Ramones — "Rockaway Beach"

1980s
Rush — "Tom Sawyer"
Bon Jovi — "Wanted Dead Or Alive"

1990s
Nirvana — "In Bloom"
Stone Temple Pilots — "Vasoline"
Weezer — "Say It Ain't So"
Foo Fighters — "Learn To Fly"
Metallica — "Enter Sandman"

2000s
The Hives — "Main Offender"
The Strokes — "Reptilia"
Queens Of The Stone Age — "Go With The Flow"