About The Linkin Park Live Guide

What exactly is LPLive.net?

LPLive.net is home to the Linkin Park Live Guide, which is essentially an informative listing of all Linkin Park tour dates from 2000 until present day. The Live Guide contains tour and show information on Linkin Park, Fort Minor (Mike Shinoda's side project), Chester Bennington's (lead singer of Linkin Park) guest appearances with other bands, and most recently, a band called Julien-K (a side project from the group Orgy, who are friends of Linkin Park). We are proud to say that we will also be featuring the Dead By Sunrise (Chester's side project) shows when they take place too.

Each show that we have informatuion on has a page for itself that features the setlist and any known live recording information (aka: tapes, bootlegs, etc) on it. We give runtimes of shows, tapers of shows, and other information. Also included on the pages are Show Notes and Other Notes. Show Notes is a small section for notes like if a certain show was the first time Linkin Park ever played song X or if a guest came out on a song. If something special happened during the show, you can expect to find it there. Other Notes includes information such as if a song from the show was used on a CD or DVD, like for the Linkin Park Underground (Linkin Park Fan Club) CDs, or if say Chester or Mike came out and joined another band on the bill for a song.

How did the idea come about for the site?

In 2006, the current site owner, Mark, decided that after viewing other sites that attempted to feature live information on the band, he'd take the initiative to create his own site. He had offered to help manage other sites that had tour info, but after being declined a few times, he thought it'd be easier to just create one of his own. By doing this, he envisioned that he could not only dedicate one single site towards all aspects of the live show, but also that it would be something that could almost effortlessly updated in real-time immediately after shows. Since other sites with tour setlists and show info were incomplete and lacking in depth, the goal of LPLive was to make a site where fans could contribute and help make it full of accurate details on all the shows possible.

When LPLive first debuted after several months of work in September 2006, it was nothing more than just a few white pages containing links to text documents that had information on each show. Although it was basic, it got the job done and soon had quite a database of information that other sites were lacking. In April 2007, when the band was getting ready to go out and tour for "Minutes To Midnight", Mark was approached by a guy named Sebastian Sebotta. Unknown by Mark, Sebastian was the creator of the original Linkin Park Live Guide that was made around 2001. Mark was asked specifically by Sebastian to merge his existing Live Guide (which covered years 2000 through 2003) with the current LPLive project (the one with the text documents). Mark gleefully accepted this major source of help, and thus a major project was started shortly thereafter.

As the Live Guide was kept updated throughout the Minutes To Midnight promotional shows, the European Tour, and Projekt Revolution 2007, Mark worked on adding all the information that Sebastian had given him. Gratified, Mark was able to enlist the help of several online friends: [AndOne] (Germany) and SergSlim (Ukraine). From that moment on, the new team focused its attention on creating a brand new Live Guide. This new project would later be known as "Live Guide 2.0". Coincidentally, [AndOne] had a small live guide on his site that was filled with information on which shows had audience and professional recordings, which proved to be VERY useful in the construction of the 2.0 project. The threesome worked throughout the spring on the project, but unfortunately things slowed to a crawl.

Due to the busy schedules of the team, they didn't make much progress throughout the summer. Nevertheless, once the team saw the band live a few times over the summer, the enthusiasm was there to continue the new site. Needing a good layout for the site, Mark contacted a good friend, Shadowfax1007 (Australia), who worked with him on the 'CureForTheItch' project. After going through two demo layouts, Shadowfax delivered the final layout in under 2 hours flat! The Live Guide was worked on throughout September and October 2007, and was finally launched on October 22, 2007. The work was finally able to be shown to the public, and with a new domain name (LPLive.net instead of LinkinParkLiveGuide.com), the site soon attracted a popular crowd.

With its team of talented staff from around the globe, LPLive was able to successfully stay quite up-to-date throughout the Australia and Asia 2007 Tours, the KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas 2007 show, the Europe 2008 Winter tour, and the North American 2008 Winter Tour. The site was able to feature excellent, detailed information on setlists and shows, with much help being provided by Astat, who wrote specific, in-depth pages for each tour that gave as many technicalities as you could ever want. A search box and rotating banners at the top of the site were added during this stretch as well.

In May 2008 during the three-month break for the band, Mark was contacted by a guy named Lloyd, who ran a website called LPU-International The site at the time contained a large vault of live downloads of the band. Lloyd suggested some new features to LPLive, like forums, downloads, user blogs, and a gallery. On May 23rd, after some negotiations, he was commissioned to build what became known as "LPLive 3.0". Astonishingly (even to Lloyd himself), the project was completed three weeks ahead of schedule, on the June 6th 2008. After a brief run of testing, the site was launched on June 8th, 2008. LPLive was able to finally have a database of its users and also be able to track its excessive traffic throughout the summer. Due to the hardcore LPLive / LPUnderground members, setlists were being posted for some shows within minutes of the show ending. Incredible!

Unfortunately, in August 2008, disaster struck. Without even three months of having launched 3.0, some trouble found its way to LPLive. Due to conflicting interests with other staff, some of the staff members were at each others' throats. After a few personal attacks were launched, some staff was removed. Afterwards, it was discovered that Lloyd, the very designer of version 3.0, was performed his own act of sabotage against the site when he took it offline, deleted admin accounts and changed login passwords later that month. This certainly was unacceptable, so Mark took immediate action and removed all involved members from the site permanently. With this said, we took the choice to downgrade back to version 2.0 on August 21, 2008. With some brand new forums, and a total revamp of the site information, LPLive was at its peak once again and showed that it could indeed rebound after a period of downtime. Never was the site so up-to-date with information as before, and a shoutout must be given to the staff at how much work they put in to update the site.

Shortly afterward, work was begun on LPLive version 4.0. Work continues on it each and every day, and a launch date is expected sometime before the next album release. Stay tuned!

What about the staff?

The Live Guide currently has an interesting variety of staff members. You can find details on the staff on the Live Guide Team Page. Not counting Mark - SergSlim, [AndOne], and Shadowfax1007 were added on as staff in mid 2007, and have been a part of the team ever since. NKramar was officially added as staff a few months after that. Earlier in 2008, LESTAT joined us to work specifically on the Chester Bennington and Julien-K sections, and we've received excellent, quality work from two of our newest staff members - Joe_LP and >>In The End<<. LPLive now has staff members from the following countries: United States, Germany, Ukraine, Australia, Colombia, and Brazil. Aiming to have a diverse mix of staff, it can definitely be said that LPLive has succeeded in attracting some of the best, quality staff members from around the globe.

Who else helped with the site?

LPLive has had many inspirators throughout the years and has received assistance from a generous amount of fans.

Major credits go out to:
- [AndOne], a fellow staff member, for allowing us to use some of his "bootleg" and recording information on his old "Recording Guide".
- Shadowfax1007 for his graphics, layouts, coding and assorted help with LPLive throughout the years.
- Sotrix for all of the hosting and server needs that we've stuck him with since the site was created.
- Crewdy of ForfeitTheGame.com for his archived setlists taken from the old PushMeAway.com.
- Sebastian Sebotta and Omar Osatch, who indirectly helped by creating the first major live guide that went public and allowing us to use a generous amount of their live information.
- www.foofighterslive.com for the huge inspiration and ideas for the site. Simon K, this means you!
- Astat, who has contributed more information himself than any other person throughout the history of the site.
- All of you that previously did and continue to submit information and corrections to us which help better the Live Guide overall (major shoutout to the LP Underground members right here).

If you navigate to the 'Contributors' page on the right hand side menu bar, under 'Content', you can find a full list of everyone that has helped out and contributed to the site.

So why in the world would you even need a Live Guide?

There are many reasons! The Live Guide as created because it is neccessary for the everyday LP trader and collector to know what is out there and has a place to come for accurate information about each show. I have visited other traders' sites and seen mislabled shows too many times, which is quite annoying. Like I said, the main purpose for this is because of the sheer "junkiness" of other LP sites in covering the information about shows. We hope you find what you need on the site; we've compiled every possible piece of information to date on the live shows by Linkin Park, Fort Minor, Dead By Sunrise, Julien-K, Chester's guest appearances, and more.

Anything else?

The Live Guide itself has had it's share of success, believe it or not.

-On February 22nd, 2008, Mike Shinoda mentioned the Live Guide on his blog at www.mikeshinoda.com. He referenced the release of 'Plaster' (the One Step Closer demo) and linked to all 4 sites that released it (LPLive, LPFuse, LPProjekt, and LPAssociation). In the spring of 2008, Mark called in to 'Rockline', where Mike commented on the Live Guide. Mike also commented on version 3.0 of the site, saying that he thought it was excellent, at the Milton Keynes show during the LP Underground 'Meet and Greet' in summer of 2008. Lastly, in February of 2008, LPLive was mentioned in a Tour Mag interview with Ken "Pooch" Van Druten, the LP "Front Of House" Engineer. Scans coming soon!

We at LPLive really hope you enjoy this Live Guide as much as we do. We hope you get something useful out of it, and we'd love to hear from you if you have any questions, comments,or would even like to add information to the site. Thanks!