Normally, watching actual musicians play music-based games is pretty cringe inducing. They don't like feeling like they can't play their own songs, and we don't like being reminded that playing Rock Band prepares us for for absolutely nothing other than playing Rock Band 2.

But in this backstage footage from The Colbert Report, we're happy to report that Rush does not completely embarrass themselves on "Tom Sawyer," aside from only making it 31 percent through their song. But hey, back in the drug years, we bet Clapton was lucky if he made it through 31 percent of a verse. Nothing to be ashamed of Rush, hold your heads high. Your old, old heads.

Last week, a handful of Joystiq crew got to make fools of themselves on the mini-stage before Harmonix's Rock Band Bash featuring The Who. Set up for us on stage was the new Ion premium drum set for RB2. Over the span of the night, we drummed through a handful of songs to get a feel for the set.

Embarrassing on-stage moments were at a minimum this E3 -- especially compared to last year's Disney and Activision debacles -- but there was one shining moment of facepalm during the Konami press conference.

After rocking out on stage and playing real bass to The Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop" with a cover band, Lauren Faccidomo – senior product manager on Konami's Rock Revolution – proceeded to fail out of the very same song in Rock Revolution. It very well may have been one of the worst compare/contrast press conference ideas ever conceived -- not to mention, Rock Revolution looks like it drunkenly stumbled in from 2003. Check out the oopsie after the break.

The first thing we noticed when we stepped into the Showcase Pavillion at this year's E3: This is really quite small. The second thing we noticed: Everyone seems to be dancing! Everywhere we looked, there seemed to be someone (usually with a Wii Remote/Nunchuk in hand) waggling about to some vary hard-to-hear music. But don't just take our word or it. Check out our video montage of just some of the dancing fools on this year's show floor. See if you can guess which dancers are random attendees and which ones are PR people who've been assigned to pretend to be interested in dancing these same steps ALL DAMN DAY. Fun!

We all know that the talent of a musical performer is less important than the instrument through which they channel their rocking energies -- that's why we were pleased as punch to get a look at Mad Catz's impressive line of Rock Band 2 peripherals during E3. Sure, $200 might sound outrageous for a controller, but after viewing their full-sized (and realistically weighted) wireless Stratocaster and Precision Bass guitars, complete with foot pedals for easier "overdrive" activation, the list of things we would rather drop two Benjamins on quickly evaporated.

The heavyweight axes will be available Q1 2009, but Engadget got a sneak peek at some of Catz's less publicized periphs, due out this fall. These include M.I.C. ($30), a microphone with built-in buttons from a standard Xbox 360 controller, Portable Drums ($60), which include four flat pads that can be used on any surface, the "Official Cymbals" ($30 for 3 or $15 each), which will plug into three slots on the kit's center console, and the Kick Drum Screen -- though we're not exactly comfortable calling a circular piece of cardboard you apply to the front of your faux drum kit a "peripheral".

Although we'd gotten used to three songs being added every week to Rock Band's music store, Harmonix told us this week a little bit more could become the norm as the developer pushes to have 500 songs by the end of the year. This week, the band Trent Reznor built and Shinedown add some songs to the library.

Nin Pack (440 MS points / $5.49) -- Also sold seperately (160 MS Points / $2)

• "Burn"
• "Capital G"
• "Last"

Individual Shinedown tracks (160 MS points / $2)

• "Devour"
  
• "Junkies For Fame"
  

Videos for the tracks can be found after the break. The consoles return to a regular DLC schedule next week (following this week's Tuesday release of The Who pack), with songs being available next Tuesday and Thursday on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 respectively.

We got a chance to sit down with Keiichi Yano – chief creative officer of Lips developer iNiS – for a walkthrough of their upcoming Xbox 360 karaoke game. We'll get around to writing up some of our impressions later, but first we wanted to share some answers to our biggest questions about the game.

The microphone

• The wireless microphone will bind with the Xbox 360, no dongle required.
• It's unclear if it will work with other music games. When asked about Rock Band or Guitar Hero World Tour, Keiichi Yano told us, "That's a great idea. We would love to do that." Alas, it's up to those third-party devs to implement support for this peripheral.
• A second player can shake the microphone to instantly "jump in" to the song, no menus needed.
• They use 2 AA batteries, just like the Xbox 360 controller. Yanno said that, despite the motion-sensitivity and the lights, the battery life is pretty impressive already, on prototype hardware.
• Lips will be bundled with a black and a white controller

Your music

• Though they were only showing off the streaming functionality through a Zune, they assured us it would work just as simply through an iPod. When asked why they couldn't use one now, Yano responded, "Trust me. It works." We then crossed our arms and fell backwards into his waiting arms ...
• DRM'd songs can't be used, regardless of the DRM scheme used. So no Zune or iTunes songs.
• Lips will perform "vocal reduction" on your own songs, though they weren't showing the functionality off.
• You can be scored on your own songs.
• Audio from a Zune or iPod is streamed only, not downloaded, so you'll need to keep it nearby
  
• After telling us that they "actually don't know" if Lips will be able to read directly from your streaming media library (think iTunes) the way the Xbox 360 can, Yano said they'd like to implement the feature, which he followed up by saying "hint hint, wink wink, say no more." We asked him to repeat that in a British accent and he was all too happy to oblige.
• When asked if you would see your Avatar singing on the screen in the absence of a music video, they said they weren't talking about Avatars now.
• No word on how they'll implement lyrics or a beat chart for the songs, though Yanno promised it would be "very, very compelling."

Its music

• There are only three confirmed songs: "Mercy" by Duffy; "Young Folk" by Peter, Bjorn & John; and "Bust a Move" by Young MC
  
• All songs will be master tracks and will include the original music videos
• Rap songs work a little differently, it's not just about rhythm.

Bad news for Freezepop fans (like us here at Joystiq) -- the synthpop trio, of which Kasson Crooker, Senior Producer at Rock Band creators Harmonix, is a member, does not have a song in their latest game, Rock Band 2. And that's a shame -- they've had a new song on the disc in every Harmonix game since FreQuency (including Phase, their iPod game), which makes this the first Harmonix game without a new Freezepop tune.

Shocked at this revelation, we confronted Harmonix at the Rock Band event this evening, and they confirmed that yes, there is no Freezepop song on the disc in RB2. The reason given to us was that Freezepop hasn't recorded any new music lately, and that they didn't have anything new to put out. But our source at Harmonix did say to look out for some Freezepop DLC -- they may be planning, we were told, a two or three-song downloadable pack of "sweet and cold and fruity and plastic-y" music.

There's a rub, though: there is a new Freezepop song in the recently released Guitar Hero: On Tour DS game. Guitar Hero, as you may know, was originally created by Harmonix, but since GH3 has been owned by Activision and developed by Neversoft. Are Liz Enthusiasm and her two compadres jumping ship?

Update: Commenter skie reads Liz' livejournal. Apparently the band never got paid for any of their songs in the Harmonix games since Guitar Hero, but they did get paid for the GH:OT appearance. They say they want to open themselves up to as many different fans as possible, and that means showing up in other companies' games.

We're live at the E3 2008 Rock Band bash. "Who" is the special guest band tonight? We have no clue yet, but we'll be updating the gallery with all the pics of the event we can publish, including some of the Joystiq crew making fools rock stars of themselves live on a Rock Band 2 stage. Update: We've decked out the gallery with pics from -- you guessed it -- The Who. Now we can try to enjoy ourselves a bit.

Speaking at the Nintendo's 2008 E3 developer roundtable, Shigeru Miyamoto has confirmed that the Wii Music "game" disc will contain 50 songs, featuring a variety of of public domain songs, as well as licensed music. As for DLC? Nintendo is "not really thinking" about digital song distribution, instead focusing on using WiiConnect24 to share music videos.

Harmonix has made Rock Band 2 much more party-friendly by adding a no-fail option. It's accessible through the Extras menu as an unlockable. Like the name suggests, you can't fail a song when on this mode -- perfect for playing with people who like to stretch themselves too far when playing with friends, or perhaps bars that are hesitant to let people ruin drunken audience singalongs by a tricky bass line. Another, less obvious benefit mentioned in our interview this morning with senior designer Dan Teasdale: People who are unable to use their legs can now play drums.

Rumors have been flying left and right all day that The Who would be gracing the stage at the Rock Band party tonight. Well, we decided to visit the The Who's website to see if we could glean any clues. Yes, there's a huge clue right there in left hand news feed. "According to REUTERS, The Who are playing a private show at a historic theatre in Los Angeles this evening to help promote the "Rock Band" video game..."

It makes a lot of sense, because The Who's Rock Band content just dropped this week, so they should just change that to "according to our official website," but hey, The Who. Live in town to promote Rock Band 2. Now you're talkin' bout my generation. Rock on. Maybe Roger Daltrey isn't so bored by the game anymore. Or maybe all it takes to excite him is the smell of a paycheck.

We'll have a full report tonight, or tomorrow, depending on how coherent we are later. If we're lucky, it'll even have video and audio goodies in it.

In the madness of E3, we got 10 minutes with Rock Band 2's Senior Designer Dan Teasdale. We rattled off a bunch of questions and jotted down his basic answers. Full quotes? We don't have time for full quotes! Check out the rapid-fire Q&A after the break.