Motley Crue to Release Single on Rock Band Game

`Rock Band` went on sale last November, and now has more than 80 tracks available for download in addition to the 58 tracks in the original.

In a nod to the ascendancy of video games, rock 'n' roll bad boys Motley Crue will become the first group to release a new single through Rock Band, said the developer of the wildly popular game.

"Saints of Los Angeles," the first single from the group's upcoming album, will be available for download for 99 cents beginning Tuesday via Microsoft Corp's Xbox Live Marketplace and Thursday via Sony Corp's PlayStation store, said Viacom Inc's MTV Games.

In "Rock Band", gamers play along to songs with controllers shaped like a guitar, drum set, or microphone. The game is sold for about $170 for consoles such as Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It competes with the similarly popular "Guitar Hero" series, made by Activision Inc.

Their success has underscored the potential of video games as a new source of revenue for a music industry grappling with falling CD sales.

"Rock Band" went on sale last November, and now has more than 80 tracks available for download in addition to the 58 tracks in the original game. MTV Games said players have bought more than 6 million downloadable songs for Rock Band. Tunes range from classics by the likes of the Who and the Rolling Stones to more-contemporary fare from the Killers and Fall Out Boy.

Details of Motley Crue's album are expected to be announced during a news conference in Hollywood Tuesday.

The hard-living metal band, which rose to prominence during the glam-metal era in the late-1980s, is famed for such tunes as "Dr. Feelgood" and "Shout at the Devil."

From Javno.com

Nikki Sixx

Nikki Sixx (born Frank Carlton Serafino Feranna, Jr. December 11, 1958 in San Jose, California) is an American bassist, author, photographer, and the main songwriter for the rock band Mötley Crüe. He has also played bass for glam metal band London, the experimental band 58, the hard rock band Brides of Destruction, and SixxA.M.

Sixx was born Frank Carlton Serafino Feranna on December 11, 1958 in San Jose, California.[1] He was raised by his single mother, Deana Richards, and her abusive boyfriend, after his father and namesake, Frank Ferrana abandoned the family. When he was six, he and his mother moved to New Mexico for a short time, after which they moved to Jerome, Idaho, with his grandparents. The family moved several more times, to El Paso, Texas, then to Anthony, New Mexico, back to El Paso, and then returned to Jerome.

While living in Idaho, Sixx became a teenage vandal, breaking into neighbors' homes, shoplifting, a drug addict and being expelled from school for selling drugs.[2] His grandparents sent him to live with his mother, who had moved to Seattle. He lived there for a short time, and learned how to play the bass guitar after buying his first instrument with money made from selling a guitar he stole from a guitar shop that he stopped by while waiting for a bus.

At the age of 17, he struck out on his own, moving to Los Angeles and working at jobs at a liquor store and selling vacuums over the phone while he auditioned for bands. He auditioned for the band Sister, with Blackie Lawless of W.A.S.P. before joining London, a local glam outfit whose lineup saw numerous changes and whose major claim to fame was that its singer, Nigel Benjamin, had sung with a late version of Mott the Hoople. Nikki soon left the band, convinced that his ideas for world domination would never come to fruition with Dane Rage and Lizzie Grey as his partners in crime.

From Amazines.com