AltWire Interview w/ Mike & Live Show Discussion

[hahninator]

Derek from LPA's site AltWire recently sat down with Mike in Oberhausen, Germany on October 9th for an interview. The person doing the interview was actually Melissa from LPFC, which is another fansite you all know.

 

 

The ten minute videos covers a range of topics and has a good variety of questions for Mike. He talks about Berlin becoming a home away from home, the Berlin LP popup store & the artwork with it, and more.

 

Of particular interest to LPLive members and/or fans of the band's live show....

 

- There will NOT be a "part two" of the North American Tour in 2015 or additional dates added.

- The band will not change the setlist for that tour drastically. Mike wants to add "at least one more new song", which pretty much echoes what Phoenix said earlier this year about wanting to play A Line In The Sand and Keys To The Kingdom live...it's likely it will be one of those tracks. Mike says they want to "change up a few things" with the set and "swap a few things around", so there will definitely be some changes, but not many. Don't hold your breath for more older songs making appearances. He said the band will be busy during the break between Europe and that tour with family and the holidays, so they don't have a lot of time to work on new setlists.

- Mike likes the idea of fan voted setlists. He talked about the balance of the rarer songs and more popular songs, as well as making it only so that fans attending the show can vote (like what Metallica did).

 

What do you think?

[RiderSSPU]

Mike likes the idea of fan voted setlists. He talked about the balance of the rarer songs and more popular songs, as well as making it only so that fans attending the show can vote (like what Metallica did

 

I very very very much like this idea

[hahninator]

My thoughts:

 

I didn't think a tour part 2 was coming so that's no surprise. They'll play a few random cities in 2015 like Milwaukee, Las Vegas, etc...and probably an LA show at some point since they play LA every year. No USA tour in the summer as they'll be in Europe again probably.

 

I don't understand the "at least one more THP song" thing. They PROMOTED this entire album as an album that was "written to be played live." But then they also said they wanted to play other Living Things songs live like Powerless and I'll Be Gone, so I guess that's just a marketing ploy. I thought they'd add in like Mark The Graves, War (which Chester said he wanted to play), etc. It'll probably be A Line In The Sand - I'll be surprised if Keys To The Kingdom comes in as well. But why can't they play these songs? Phoenix said they rehearsed almost the entire album in May 2014 (source: Rock am Ring 2014 interview).

 

Don't want to change the setlists? Because of time? 2007 tour ended on 11/30 and 2008 tour started on 1/16. 2014 tour ends on 11/24 and 2015 tour starts on 1/15. That's more time, and 2008 had 3 brand new setlists. But I guess they don't want to do that anymore. The excuse of "oh these B cities haven't seen the show"...sorry but that's just bullshit. As if the same fans don't travel from the A cities to these B cities to fill a majority of the venue instead of local fans. GENERALLY speaking. Orlando? The Tampa fans will be there. And all the other Florida fans. Providence? The Boston fans will be there, just like they went to Mansfield (middle of nowhere ages away from Boston), etc. It comes down to they just are set in their ways and don't want to change the setlists.

 

But I don't understand why. They aren't tired of opening 55 shows in a row with Guilty All The Same? They enjoy the faster tempo Crawling tease which the crowd sings most nights? And they like the Lost In The Echo 45 second version? Damn, the North American Tour would be a great tour to have 2 completely different sets...different opening songs, different flow, different encores and no more of this shortened song shit. Play Until It's Gone in full (with that epic European Tour NMS/Catalyst Intro that they dropped for some reason), play Lost In The Echo in full, drop some singles, add KTTK, ALITS and APFMH and let's jam.

 

Fan voted setlists would be great. I am 100% sure rarer Hybrid Theory and Meteora songs would make it into those setlists because the general public at LP shows LOVES those two albums. No More Sorrow has a great shot too, like Given Up does. Any other non-album cut? We'd have to have a grassroots LPLive effort to get something like Reading My Eyes, In Pieces, an LPU demo, etc in there because 80% of the fans going to the show won't vote for those.

[maik_gianino]

My thoughts:

 

I didn't think a tour part 2 was coming so that's no surprise. They'll play a few random cities in 2015 like Milwaukee, Las Vegas, etc...and probably an LA show at some point since they play LA every year. No USA tour in the summer as they'll be in Europe again probably.

 

I don't understand the "at least one more THP song" thing. They PROMOTED this entire album as an album that was "written to be played live." But then they also said they wanted to play other Living Things songs live like Powerless and I'll Be Gone, so I guess that's just a marketing ploy. I thought they'd add in like Mark The Graves, War (which Chester said he wanted to play), etc. It'll probably be A Line In The Sand - I'll be surprised if Keys To The Kingdom comes in as well. But why can't they play these songs? Phoenix said they rehearsed almost the entire album in May 2014 (source: Rock am Ring 2014 interview).

 

Don't want to change the setlists? Because of time? 2007 tour ended on 11/30 and 2008 tour started on 1/16. 2014 tour ends on 11/24 and 2015 tour starts on 1/15. That's more time, and 2008 had 3 brand new setlists. But I guess they don't want to do that anymore. The excuse of "oh these B cities haven't seen the show"...sorry but that's just bullshit. As if the same fans don't travel from the A cities to these B cities to fill a majority of the venue instead of local fans. GENERALLY speaking. Orlando? The Tampa fans will be there. And all the other Florida fans. Providence? The Boston fans will be there, just like they went to Mansfield (middle of nowhere ages away from Boston), etc. It comes down to they just are set in their ways and don't want to change the setlists.

 

But I don't understand why. They aren't tired of opening 55 shows in a row with Guilty All The Same? They enjoy the faster tempo Crawling tease which the crowd sings most nights? And they like the Lost In The Echo 45 second version? Damn, the North American Tour would be a great tour to have 2 completely different sets...different opening songs, different flow, different encores and no more of this shortened song shit. Play Until It's Gone in full (with that epic European Tour NMS/Catalyst Intro that they dropped for some reason), play Lost In The Echo in full, drop some singles, add KTTK, ALITS and APFMH and let's jam.

 

Fan voted setlists would be great. I am 100% sure rarer Hybrid Theory and Meteora songs would make it into those setlists because the general public at LP shows LOVES those two albums. No More Sorrow has a great shot too, like Given Up does. Any other non-album cut? We'd have to have a grassroots LPLive effort to get something like Reading My Eyes, In Pieces, an LPU demo, etc in there because 80% of the fans going to the show won't vote for those.

 

Amen Mark, second every word you said.

 

Would like to add that the fans voted setlist is another bullshit, they know and we know that they know that fans will select weird shit and probably a 180º turn in terms of setlist. So coming from the most lazy band in the world, is very hard to believe for me that they would be open to that idea in the near future.

[RogueSoul]

At this point, I'll take anythingthe band has to offer with setlist changes. I've lost hope with that lol. As long as the overall experience of the show is still A+ and memorable, I'm fine with minimal changes. If they play the SAME sets, now thats a different story.

 

I want to say that the fan voted setlists would be good but looking at Metallica By Request setlists I dont think theres much hope when it comes to that. People are going to vote for the songs THEY want (i.e. The singles), since the majority of every night's crowd are casual fans at best. We'fd still be seeing ITE, BID, Numb every night. I know almost every LP fan (even the casual fans) love Hybrid Theory so there's SOME hope there but I feel as if we wouldn't see too much of what we want out of that option.

[shadowofthehabit92]

I just want to see them throw in:

-By Myself

-APFMH

-Don't Stay

-Figure .09

-Breaking The Habit

-No More Sorrow

-W&K

-KTTK

-Mark The Graves

-ALITS

 

While some of those, such as By Myself and Figure .09 seem next to impossible, let's not forget that they finally started playing With You and Runaway after years of being absent from the setlists. Rotate APFMH and By Myself and then Don't Stay and Figure .09 and that would be great in itself along with at least 2 more THP songs.

[RogueSoul]

They played By Myself earlier this year lmao, I dont think it's THAT impossible. I'm pretty sure Chester said there's a good possibility some of the rarer HT songs would find their way into a setlist someday.

[auburntiger]

I'm leery about "fan-voted setlists." Metallica did that this last year, with a "By Request" tour. Turns out, fans only had the option of picking 1 of three songs that ended up in that night's set.

[JZLP-Benningstrong]

Pretty sure that they will end up playing War, seems like the easier song to perform, it's also short.

[Rob_Wilson]

Agreed with the points about lack of alternation in the set list, it's just a bit silly they promoted this album as something they wanted to play all the songs from, then stick to to the 5 songs released before the album even came out. Plus, it's supposed to be 'visceral' but ends up coming off more like a dj set with live music rather than a rock show :/

 

I'm leery about "fan-voted setlists." Metallica did that this last year, with a "By Request" tour. Turns out, fans only had the option of picking 1 of three songs that ended up in that night's set.

 

Sorry to correct you, but that's completely wrong. Fans had the chance to vote for 17 out of the 18 songs, the one constant song they kept was the new song 'Lords of Summer'. The option to pick 1 of 3 songs was for songs rated 17, 18 and 19 on the list and there was a vote-off between those 3 in the build up to the encore where this song was generally played. The problem with it was that because Metallica have such a huge back catalogue and these were festival shows, the set was invariably the same with one or two alterations max per night. There was the odd case of a surprise where in Finland, for instance, there was a mass of votes for 'Frayed Ends of Sanity' resulting in the first ever live performance of the song, but that was the only major surprise.

[adiek84]

Psst, guys, i was the one who did the interview. I hope you like the questions, I already knew when he replied that the non exisiting setlist change would start a discussion :-D

I liked the set for the two shows I attended this tour, but I feel sorry for people like Jonas or Corey who do tons of shows without much change in the set. I hope they add at least one or two new songs.

Edited November 19, 2014 by adiek84

[felipeintheend]

It is not fair with fans who go to 10 shows in a row but the real reasons for not changing the setlis is: it was made for those fans who will be watching them for first time (at least at the current tour).

 

They might have a max of 100fans touring with them on +5 shows so... at their mind, does it really deserve a setlist change for those 5-100 fans?

 

Also... we would DIE for a small LPU Tour with exclusive setlists and all. If they has public enough for a lpu tour?

Edited November 19, 2014 by Felipeintheend

[lgr]

a side note about fan-voting, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Metallica end up playing a pretty regular setlist each night with a few rare/old additions here and there? if LP did this, we wouldn't suddenly get crazily "good" sets

[Justin]

I understand that they wrote the songs, and with that said they mean a lot to the guys... Still though, I can't see how they're cool with playing the same songs in (almost) the same order night after night after night for this long.

[sian18]

Well as I said before looks like big setlist changes won't happen till next euro tour next year

[hahninator]

Psst, guys, i was the one who did the interview.

Congratulations...? Not sure what else you want me to say, you're in the main post.

[adiek84]

Congratulations...? Not sure what else you want me to say, you're in the main post.

Lol, I don't expect anything at all. As I explained on Twitter, I misread the first part and thought you made a mistake. I apologized for that. You didn't even have to mention me at all. I don't mention interviewers of other magazines, so all is fine. I don't expect a tiara XD.

 

As to the sentence you quoted, maybe read the full post. I wrote about knowing this topic would raise a discussion when he replied to me. I don't expect anyone here to know I am the interviewer as my username is different to my real name.

Now calm down, please, it was a misunderstanding and I'm actually very thankful that you wrote such an elaborate post about the interview.

[hahninator]

Everyone knows you're the interviewer because you run LPFC, lol. And your profile picture is the interview.

 

I was surprised that over half of the discussion was about live stuff - I surely thought you'd ask about Mall, etc instead. Kudos to whoever did the questions for including live stuff.

[adiek84]

I changed my profile pic after that post. It had Mikes artwork before :-D You think everyone knows LPFC? We have just a small percentage of your amount of followers on Twitter, I'd rather be humble, hahaha

 

Derek sent me some questions and I picked some of them and mixed them with my own ones. His were the medley/short versions question. I mostly chose live questions cause they are currently touring a lot. No idea how other writers do it, but I usually pick a theme for interviews that fits the band's current projects. I only managed to ask about half my questions though. It's so hard to guess how many questions someone can answer in ten minutes. I'm glad he didn't reply in only one or two short sentences, lol.

[LeonardoMF93]

My thoughts:

 

I didn't think a tour part 2 was coming so that's no surprise. They'll play a few random cities in 2015 like Milwaukee, Las Vegas, etc...and probably an LA show at some point since they play LA every year. No USA tour in the summer as they'll be in Europe again probably.

 

I don't understand the "at least one more THP song" thing. They PROMOTED this entire album as an album that was "written to be played live." But then they also said they wanted to play other Living Things songs live like Powerless and I'll Be Gone, so I guess that's just a marketing ploy. I thought they'd add in like Mark The Graves, War (which Chester said he wanted to play), etc. It'll probably be A Line In The Sand - I'll be surprised if Keys To The Kingdom comes in as well. But why can't they play these songs? Phoenix said they rehearsed almost the entire album in May 2014 (source: Rock am Ring 2014 interview).

 

Don't want to change the setlists? Because of time? 2007 tour ended on 11/30 and 2008 tour started on 1/16. 2014 tour ends on 11/24 and 2015 tour starts on 1/15. That's more time, and 2008 had 3 brand new setlists. But I guess they don't want to do that anymore. The excuse of "oh these B cities haven't seen the show"...sorry but that's just bullshit. As if the same fans don't travel from the A cities to these B cities to fill a majority of the venue instead of local fans. GENERALLY speaking. Orlando? The Tampa fans will be there. And all the other Florida fans. Providence? The Boston fans will be there, just like they went to Mansfield (middle of nowhere ages away from Boston), etc. It comes down to they just are set in their ways and don't want to change the setlists.

 

But I don't understand why. They aren't tired of opening 55 shows in a row with Guilty All The Same? They enjoy the faster tempo Crawling tease which the crowd sings most nights? And they like the Lost In The Echo 45 second version? Damn, the North American Tour would be a great tour to have 2 completely different sets...different opening songs, different flow, different encores and no more of this shortened song shit. Play Until It's Gone in full (with that epic European Tour NMS/Catalyst Intro that they dropped for some reason), play Lost In The Echo in full, drop some singles, add KTTK, ALITS and APFMH and let's jam.

 

Fan voted setlists would be great. I am 100% sure rarer Hybrid Theory and Meteora songs would make it into those setlists because the general public at LP shows LOVES those two albums. No More Sorrow has a great shot too, like Given Up does. Any other non-album cut? We'd have to have a grassroots LPLive effort to get something like Reading My Eyes, In Pieces, an LPU demo, etc in there because 80% of the fans going to the show won't vote for those.

 

Think that i don't need to express my opinion, you already said everything that I have in mind.

PERFECT!!!!

 

I hope that some day they let us to vote what songs we want to see live. That's not something good only for us, I think that's also good for the band. Maybe in the future, people won't be so excited to travel thousand of miles to attend 78247189 different concerts in the same tour with the same setlist.

 

At this point, I'll take anythingthe band has to offer with setlist changes. I've lost hope with that lol. As long as the overall experience of the show is still A+ and memorable, I'm fine with minimal changes. If they play the SAME sets, now thats a different story.

 

I want to say that the fan voted setlists would be good but looking at Metallica By Request setlists I dont think theres much hope when it comes to that. People are going to vote for the songs THEY want (i.e. The singles), since the majority of every night's crowd are casual fans at best. We'fd still be seeing ITE, BID, Numb every night. I know almost every LP fan (even the casual fans) love Hybrid Theory so there's SOME hope there but I feel as if we wouldn't see too much of what we want out of that option.

You have a point. I think the best way to make it works is let the LPU members choose only 5 songs for concert. The rest of the show could be the always the same, I don't care, but I really want to attend a concert with Forgotten, By Myself, Figure.09, In Between and BLACKBIRDS (I love this song).

I want to feel the same thing that I felt when I saw them playing A Place For My Head, With You and Runaway.

Edited November 19, 2014 by LeonardoMF93

[[AndOne]]

Voting for songs has to be either done when you buy a ticket or via LPU otherwise it is not fair and easily manipulated. I think Metallica is a good example that shows that most people still vote for the stuff they'd play anyway and really rare songs barely make it into the set but with LP it would depend massively what they would offer us to vote for. I'm sure they would exclude a ton of stuff.

[danielpsoad-09]

I pretty much agree with everythink Mark said. And I've said this before and I'll say it again, Mike and LP will always have an excuse to keep playing the same songs over and over again. The casual fans, the lights, the cities, the rehearsing time, the curfew, etc. In my opinion,they're just lazy musicians.

It's even hard to understand them from a musician standpoint. Even if you feel you have to 'please' an audience (which doesn't make sense since they precisely decided not to satisfy an audience from MTM on ...), you still need to make it entertaining for yourself and I doubt it is entertaining to play the same songs for an entire year.

 

None of the LP stuff is technically challenging so if they wanted, they could play pretty much anything from their catalogue without even rehearsing.

 

If they ever do a fan voted setlist, I'm sure they won't include LPU songs/HT EP, or b-sides, but they can easily find a way to please everyone. My idea would be to have two categories. First, let fans pick two or three singles from every album to play live (18 songs). That's plenty of material to please the 'casual' fans they worry so much. Second, let fans pick a non-single song from every album (6 songs) and that'd please the hardcore fans, and those who have been with them since the beginning (and who are always ignored). No interludes, no ridiculous shortened songs. A 2 hour live show that would leave everyone satisfied.

[shadowofthehabit92]

When he says there will be no part 2 to the North American Tour, did he mean to the Winter tour specifically, or is he saying that they will not have another U.S. Tour for this tour cycle?

[[AndOne]]

I asked Phoenix the exact same question and there will be at least no direct part 2 to this winter tour but they might not even tour the west coast for the rest of 2015, since they had a very big US tour in 2014.

[thedamian58c]

My thoughts:

 

I didn't think a tour part 2 was coming so that's no surprise. They'll play a few random cities in 2015 like Milwaukee, Las Vegas, etc...and probably an LA show at some point since they play LA every year. No USA tour in the summer as they'll be in Europe again probably.

 

I don't understand the "at least one more THP song" thing. They PROMOTED this entire album as an album that was "written to be played live." But then they also said they wanted to play other Living Things songs live like Powerless and I'll Be Gone, so I guess that's just a marketing ploy. I thought they'd add in like Mark The Graves, War (which Chester said he wanted to play), etc. It'll probably be A Line In The Sand - I'll be surprised if Keys To The Kingdom comes in as well. But why can't they play these songs? Phoenix said they rehearsed almost the entire album in May 2014 (source: Rock am Ring 2014 interview).

 

Don't want to change the setlists? Because of time? 2007 tour ended on 11/30 and 2008 tour started on 1/16. 2014 tour ends on 11/24 and 2015 tour starts on 1/15. That's more time, and 2008 had 3 brand new setlists. But I guess they don't want to do that anymore. The excuse of "oh these B cities haven't seen the show"...sorry but that's just bullshit. As if the same fans don't travel from the A cities to these B cities to fill a majority of the venue instead of local fans. GENERALLY speaking. Orlando? The Tampa fans will be there. And all the other Florida fans. Providence? The Boston fans will be there, just like they went to Mansfield (middle of nowhere ages away from Boston), etc. It comes down to they just are set in their ways and don't want to change the setlists.

 

But I don't understand why. They aren't tired of opening 55 shows in a row with Guilty All The Same? They enjoy the faster tempo Crawling tease which the crowd sings most nights? And they like the Lost In The Echo 45 second version? Damn, the North American Tour would be a great tour to have 2 completely different sets...different opening songs, different flow, different encores and no more of this shortened song shit. Play Until It's Gone in full (with that epic European Tour NMS/Catalyst Intro that they dropped for some reason), play Lost In The Echo in full, drop some singles, add KTTK, ALITS and APFMH and let's jam.

 

Fan voted setlists would be great. I am 100% sure rarer Hybrid Theory and Meteora songs would make it into those setlists because the general public at LP shows LOVES those two albums. No More Sorrow has a great shot too, like Given Up does. Any other non-album cut? We'd have to have a grassroots LPLive effort to get something like Reading My Eyes, In Pieces, an LPU demo, etc in there because 80% of the fans going to the show won't vote for those.

Totally agree.

 

What I don't understand, is why don't they rotate songs that aren't very popular, like Runaway, it could be rotated with NMS, RME or Don't Stay. With You could be rotated with APFMH (after OSC), By Myself or Forgotten. And many more.

 

I think that voting idea is fucking awesome, but in my opinion it shouldn't be whole setlist, maybe 1/3. People that comes to LP show for singles wouldn't vote, because the singles would already be included on the setlist, and they wouldn't know the less popular stuff.