"‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ is a song that we’ve had at the top of our wish list ever since I came to Guitar Hero,” Activision's Vice President of Music Affairs Tim Riley tells Rolling Stone. “So it’s been a while.” Read more about yesterday's announcement on Rolling Stone's Rock Daily blog.

Rock Band? Played out! Guitar Hero? Chyuh! Sooooo yesterday. I'm trying to get my hands on this hot, new video game that all the kids are playing: Rock Journalist Hero.

You can play as play in Lester Bangs or as a condescending Pitchfork critic as you “transmogrify inarticulate responses from lithe idiot savants into passably meaningful comments” and “challenge yourself to write more than 70 by-the-numbers profiles and reviews, including: The fatuous British band that thinks it’s the new U2!”

Hilarious! But, sadly, not a real game. It’s a spoof dreamed up by Vanity Fair’s David Itzkoff. Check it out here.

Blabbermouth.net reports that Rage Against the Machine vocalist Zack de la Rocha and ex-Mars Volta drummer Jon Theodore, aka One Day As A Lion, have a new track called "Wild International" posted on their MySpace page.

I gave it a listen. It's no "Bulls on Parade," but it's kinda tight. Listen for yourself here.

Blabbermouth reports:

The song comes off the group's eponymous debut EP, which is scheduled for release on July 22 via Anti Records.

[snip]

According to the band, ONE DAY AS A LION's name was "taken from the infamous 1970 black-and-white, captured by legendary Chicano photographer George Rodriguez, featuring a center framed tag on a white wall in an unspecified section of Boyle Heights. It reads: 'It's better to live one day as a lion than a thousand years as a lamb.' This record is a stripped down attempt to realize this sentiment in sound."

Read the rest of that report here. But while that's all good and well, inquiring minds want to know whatever happened to that solo album Zack de la Rocha has supposedly been working on for the last decade?

This just in from Associated Press. And really, how can you call the game "Guitar Hero" without music from the greatest guitar hero of all?

LOS ANGELES (AP) Jimi Hendrix is coming to "Guitar Hero."

The Seattle-based company Experience Hendrix, which controls the rock icon's musical legacy, is providing Hendrix's music and likeness for the latest "Guitar Hero" video game, Aaron Grant, a spokesman for publisher and developer Activision and Red Octane, told The Associated Press today.

It's the first time Hendrix's likeness will be showcased in the game.
An avatar of Hendrix as well as the song "The Wind Cries Mary" and a live version of "Purple Haze," which was recorded in 1969 at the San Diego Sports Arena, will be included on "Guitar Hero World Tour," the fourth edition of the popular game franchise scheduled for release Oct. 27.

"World Tour" will be the first "Guitar Hero" to feature playable drums and a microphone.

Experience Hendrix provided Activision and Red Octane with various songs from Hendrix, who famously played the Woodstock music festival in 1969 and died of a drug overdose in 1970. Other Hendrix tunes would be released in the future as downloadable content for the game, Grant said.

Rockstar's Mayhem Festival kicks off at Auburn's White River Amphitheatre on July 9. And the most exciting part of that is the return of the mighty Mastodon, as far as I'm concerned. That's why I was on the phone with Troy Sanders early in the a.m. today, right before he and his Mastodon crew headed back into an Atlanta studio where they're laying down new tracks with super-producer Brendan O'Brien. So look out for clips of Sanders talking about the new disc, which he says will be colored by more '70s prog-rock and psychedelic influences, among other things.

But as one of three people on the planet that don't yet need "Guitar Hero" 12 step, I didn't realize who the festival's biggest hit might be. My home skittle, pop culture writer Bill Hutchens, tells me that his boy and his friends are all crazy for the Dragonforce. That's thanks to the insanely difficult to master number "Through the Flames" from GH3. Oh, and Bill tells me what that knucklehead in the video pretends to be doing is impossible. I'll take his word for it. Funny, though.