I want to Rock n Roll all night

With the recent purchase of Lego Rock Band, I've made return to the Rock Band series. I've downloaded more songs, my music library was expanded and dusted off Rock Band 3 after some time away.

But having played Rock Band 1, 2 and Lego, my once glorious perception of RB3 has changed. Whereas I was singing it's praises months ago, now an ugly side has revealed itself.

Rock Band 3 a game that hates me.

Yes it's true: Playing Rock Band 3 now makes it clear that this a game that wants me to do things it's way and resents me for doing things other wise.
Allow me to elaborate: First there's the unlockables. Not a bad idea but it's problematic that nearly all of them can only be done through the the disc songs. One can use all the DLC they like but at the the end it's the disc songs that yield the rewards - whether or not the players likes them or not. That seems a little unfair.

Second, there's the DLC. Maybe it's just me but the game seems to resent me using the DLC. Whereas I was scoring on particular songs really well in previous Rock band titles, now I'm unable to match such efforts. I appear to be scoring well but the game seems really picky on what classifies as an 'Awesome' rating. Indeed I tried a DLC song and did it really well but somehow falling short of the five star ranking. Then I tried a disc song and, I swear this true, I seemed to make more mistakes but somehow the game didn't penalize me too much.
What, doesn't the game like me for using the DLC? Sorry but I was enjoying having more control over how I played the game - is it any wonder why I skipped over the pre-selected playlists in story mode for the make-your-own-setlist?

Indeed, I've been trying to replicate the gold-star ratings I've scored in previous Rock Band titles but the more I do it the more it seems clear that RB3 seems to change it's mind as to constitutes as a successfully scored portion of the song. Now in the past I have preferred Rock band over Guitar Hero because I felt the former was a bit more generous to newcomers than the latter. So to have an erratic difficulty like this in RB3 doesn't really sit well with me.

So if Rock Band 3 resents me using DLC then it begs the question of what the point in it is....