^[1]As previously mentioned ^[2], I trekked my butt down to Seattle for the Penny Arcade Expo a couple of weekends back, and I’m just now recuperating. I am not the young convention goer I once was.

Overall, an excellent time was had by all, but the surprise was that Vancouver’s The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, who were down to perform at the expo, found themselves as a downloadable track on Rock Band!

Basically, PAX and Harmonix (makers of Rock Band) arranged to release a song pack for Rock Band which featured music from three of the acts playing the weekend – Geek folkster Jonathan Coulton, geekier rapper MC Frontalot, and Canada’s own, The Thickets (who are, to be fair, geeks.) But wait, there’s more!

Besides becoming the first Canadian independent act to feature on Rock Band, The Thickets track is helping raise money for Child’s Play – the charity where gamers from around the world raise money for children’s hospitals. Fifty-plus internationally, four of them in Canada, including the BC Children’s Hospital. Money from each PAX Pack sold is being donated to Child’s Play – so, buck a song… minus Microsoft’s cut… then server overhead and production… that’s potentially some big bucks.

I’m betting that there are a lot of Rock Band rockers out there – what’s three bucks for some great tracks and making kids happy, right? You can preview the track on their MySpace page [ms ^[3]], or, if you prefer, you can watch this blurry YouTube video of them playing/performing the song at PAX [yt ^[4]]. Enjoy!