Dan at Activision’s One of Swords blog is running a sweet contest for any fans of legendary shock rocker Alice Cooper. In honor of the recently-released Alice Cooper track pack, he’s giving away a Guitar Hero 5 guitar bundle that includes a guitar signed by Alice himself.

And that’s not all: The winner will also get some extra gear:

[The prize] can only be made more awesome by the addition of a deluxe Guitar Hero guitar strap and a USB Guitar Hero rechargeable battery kit with an extra battery, so you never have to be without the power to rock. The winner of this prize pack might also find a Guitar Hero keychain in the box if they look hard enough. And maybe something else too if I can find a place for it.

And all you need to do to enter is send Dan an e-mail with a bit of trivia and your contact info. Hit the Read link for all the details, but hurry up! The contest ends tomorrow.

[Read | image: One of Swords]

Didn’t get a chance to play Rock Band 2 with OK Go last night? You’ve got another opportunity to rock out with musicians today: Flogging Molly will be playing Guitar Hero 5 with you XBL Gold members this evening.

This “Game With Fame” session starts an hour earlier than yesterday, so you’ll want to send friend requests to FlogMollyGwF01, FlogMollyGwF02, FlogMollyGwF03, and FlogMollyGwF04, and be online by 6:30 pm, Eastern time (3:30 Pacific). The event starts at 7:00 and is expected to run to 9:00.

Also note: Since the Guitar Hero folks just released a Flogging Molly track pack, it’s a pretty sure bet that’s what the band will be playing. So if you don’t already have it, go get it.

And if you can’t get enough Flogging Molly, One of Swords has an interview with banjo hero Bob Schmidt today, too.

[Read, via One Of Swords]

According to Contactmusic, Courtney Love has recently taken a different tone regarding her late husband Kurt Cobain’s appearance in Guitar Hero 5. Speaking to music magazine NME about the brouhaha, she said this:

“What pisses me off the most about it is I think Kurt would be fine with having five Kurt Cobains singing the [Spice Girls] song ‘Wannabe,’ [importable from Band Hero] like, ‘Tell me what you want, what you really really want.’… I think he’d find that really funny. But at the same time it’s gross what they did. Gwen [Stefani] started the lawsuit. I have really good lawyers now and will join that lawsuit. There was this grey area and they f—ed the lot of us. They didn’t f—k Jack White, but they f–ked Gwen, f–ked Johnny Cash and f–ked Kurt… It’s just gross. This is the rock ‘n’ roll business, this is what people do. They are sleazy; they do sleazy things.”

So, er, if the person whose likeness is being used would have been fine with the use…didn’t you just kinda shoot your whole legal argument in the ‘nads there, Courtney?

[Read, via Kotaku]

I’m kind of a geek. I freely admit this. Learning the minute details of things I like — and especially learning why things are that way — never fails to intrigue me. So I dig this post at the Guitar Hero blog from Anthony Campos, note tracker at Neversoft, in which he explains in exhaustive detail how and why vocals are handled differently in Guitar Hero 5.

I’ve played a hell of a lot of GH5, much of that time spent on the mic, and I have to admit that I didn’t catch all these changes. Like this:

If the player barely crosses the “Excellent” threshold of a [star power] phrase, they will be awarded the standard 1/4 of the star power meter. However, if they begin to push into the extra 20% of the progress meter, the player will be awarded extra SP relative to how much of the meter is filled. Think of it like whammying SP for vocals.

So tell me, am I the only one who hadn’t noticed this?

[Read, via @GuitarHeroDevs]