PAX East starts this Friday, and with it comes almost a full week of exciting things; a veritable Rock Band blitz of information descending upon us. Whether you are on the ground in Boston, or channeling the news through the internet at home, below is a list of all the events that Rock Band fans should know about.

While not directly related to PAX East, Harmonix will be making an announcement debuting a NEW TITLE on tomorrow night’s episode of X-Play. Be sure to catch the 6:30 PM (Eastern) episode for a very special announcement that you will not want to miss. And in typical PAX East fashion, we will publish our story asking for people to submit questions, but we figured we would wait until AFTER the big reveal for you to submit your queries for Harmonix.

Then we move on to the Wednesday before PAX East, where Harmonix will be showing off gameplay previews from the NEW TITLE on their PAX East Preview Livestream from the Harmonix offices. Exact time TBD.

On Thursday, PAX East eve, if you will, the night is being kicked off with the Pre-PAX East Game Swap. Starting at 5:30 PM at the Middlesex Lounge in Cambridge, you can exchange or purchase some hidden treasures from people’s video game libraries, while networking (and drinking) with other friends throughout the gaming and Rock Band community.

The night also includes a double feature, of sorts, at the Brattle Theatre with a 6:00 PM showing of Scott Pilgrim vs The World, followed by Rock Band Night (featuring appearances/judging from the fine folks at Giantbomb) at 9:00 PM. Tickets for Scott Pilgrim are $6.75 to $9.75, tickets to Rock Band Night are $7, and combo tickets to both are $13.

The following day kicks off the official start of PAX East, and if you want/need a map of the event, we’ve got that (in PDF form)!

See the full list of all the Harmonix-related PAX East events after the jump!

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Sunday’s are pretty slow both on the site here, as well as on the rest of the Internet, so when we saw that this year’s April Fool’s Day landed on Sunday, we decided to take a year off, but Harmonix sure didn’t. Featuring all the members of the community team, Harmonix produced a pretty hilarious video of a “new game announcement,” that can be seen below. Even if the video is just for April Fool’s day, they’ve clearly painstakingly recreated much of what makes the real Rock Band game so unique, including the lack of availability of Australia!

And yes, I would probably buy this.

High res image of the boardgame available here.

[via RockBand.com]

We’ve got a couple things to note regarding next week’s DLC. First, @HMXHenry made a comment on the RockBand.com forums about having some DLC “in the near future” from two female-fronted bands. My own hope is that we see some DLC from one of my personal favorites Halestorm, who have a new album releasing on April 10th, and have been pushing their new content in a LOT of different places, including having one of their new songs on an episode of Glee. The other thing is that this is the first week that Sony Europe and Nintendo Wii players will be reading the DLC announcement from the outside looking in, due to the publishing snafu that is currently going on.

Anyway, here is what’s coming for those that are still able to purchase DLC:

• Evanescence – Everybody’s Fool *
• Evanescence – Lithium
• Evanescence – What You Want

* Denotes Pro-Guitar/Bass chart availability for $.99.

[Official announcement]

This week saw the release of a three pack from Shinedown. And much like the Three Days Grace DLC giveaway, despite it not being Friday TODAY, we will send out DLC codes tomorrow (Friday) so the winners can play the DLC this weekend. But… unlike many of the previous giveaways, we are giving away TEN Xbox 360 codes AND TEN PS3 codes! That’s twenty codes total! (I did not use a calculator for that.) In case you missed the singles that were included in this week’s Shinedown pack, here they are:

• Bully
• The Crow and the Butterfly
• Second Chance *

* Indicates Pro-Guitar/Bass chart availability for an additional $.99.

If this is something that you want to try and win, here’s what you gotta do. Despite having found commercial success, modern rock bands that have appeared recently as DLC like Shinedown, Three Days Grace, and Nickelback are easy targets on the internet. To enter, and this is not going to be easy, but post a positive comment about Nickelback. Also, because this is a giveaway for two consoles, make sure to include what console you are entering for (if you don’t include it, I can’t select you for a winner)!

Standard rules apply: one entry per household only, Xbox 360 and PS3 only, codes are redeemable worldwide (as far as I know). Please include a valid email address in the appropriate field (not the comment itself, or include Twitter account if you don’t want to take off your tin foil hat) with each entry so we can contact the winners.

We’ll let this run through tomorrow so everyone has a chance to enter and randomly choose and contact winners sometime mid-afternoon on Friday.

Good luck! And HUGE thanks to Harmonix for providing us with codes to giveaway!

Unless otherwise noted, all songs are $1.99.

• Buckner & Garcia – Do the Donkey Kong
• Jerry Naylor – Tear It Up
• Machinae Supremacy – Indiscriminate Murder is Counter-Productive
• Rocket Ship Resort – Starlight Speedway *
• White Wizzard – Over the Top

* Denotes $.99 track.

ROCK BAND NETWORK 4/3 PS3 PLAYLIST

[Official announcement]

Unless otherwise noted, all songs are 160 MSP ($1.99). Songs not linked below were not available on RockBand.com at time of publishing.

• Bikey ft. Dapper AJ – No Shaking *
• Close Your Eyes – Song for the Broken
• Danny and the Lost Souls – Soul Candy *
• The High Strung – The Luck You Got
• Jason Charles Miller – You Get What You Pay For
• Joe Vikingo – Todo lo que Pienso
• Sunny Side Up – She’s Rad *
• Sweethammer – Gypsy Rave Massacre Party 2 *
• Sworn To Oath – Last Call *

* Denotes 80 MSP ($.99) track pricing.

ROCK BAND NETWORK 3/29 XBOX 360 PLAYLIST

[Official announcement]