2015.05.24 - San Antonio, TX - Bud Light River City Rockfest

[hahninator]

What was supposed to be Linkin Park's second show in two days (following Rocklahoma on the 23rd) is in San Antonio, Texas on May 24th. They will be headlining the Bud Light River City Rockfest (a one day festival), which is interestingly held OUTSIDE of the AT&T Center in the parking lot instead of inside in the 19,000 capacity arena. It's a big lineup at this one and playing before LP on the Bud Light Stage will be Volbeat, Papa Roach, Halestorm, In This Moment, Drowning Pool, The Pretty Reckless, and Starset.

 

We say "supposed to be" because Rocklahoma ended up being canceled at the last minute, after Linkin Park was set to go on stage. The entire festival was evacuated several times during the day, the last time being during Halestorm. Volbeat and Linkin Park both never got to play, and about a half hour into LP's time slot, the festival canceled the rest of the show. Dangerous winds, tornadoes and torrential rain darkened the skies yesterday, so we are hoping for a better outcome today in San Antonio. See the National Weather Service post from 10pm last night here and the Rocklahoma cancellation here. "ROCKLAHOMA UPDATE: Due to the continued inclement weather in Pryor, we will be cancelling the rest of the bands scheduled to perform tonight."

 

Unfortunately, this is Linkin Park's seventeenth cancellation in 2015, but excluding Chester's foot injury and scheduling/rescheduling of shows, it's actually their first cancellation since the A Thousand Suns World Tour in 2011, and first weather-related cancellation since 2007 in Italy. That show was also canceled before LP took the stage. Luckily for those Italian fans, Linkin Park returned to headline Italy's Heineken Jammin' in 2008, so perhaps LP will return to Rocklahoma next year.

 

 

Linkin Park has played the San Antonio area a few times in the past. While most tours now get just two shows in Texas in Dallas and Houston, they have deviated to San Antonio a few times. Selma, the local amphitheatre for years until it closed in 2011, featured stops on Ozzfest 2001, Projekt Revolution 2004, and Projekt Revolution 2007. A show at the Alamodome in San Antonio unfortunately fell victim to a rescheduling/cancellation on Family Values Tour 2001 but Linkin Park did headline Freeman Coliseum on the massive Meteora World Tour in 2004.

 

 

The Projekt Revolution 2007 show in Selma was pretty good...the band was on fire only seven shows into their massive North American tour. Chester nailed the full scream on Given Up for the first time in public (he did it at the AOL Sessions show at rehearsals earlier that year). This was the second time Rob ever performed a drum solo on Bleed It Out (after the band literally forced him to do one in Phoenix the show prior). Mike dedicated The Little Things Give You Away to those who were affected by Hurricane Katrina by saying, "I know a lot of the folks from New Orleans came out here after that happened. This is for you guys." He later dedicated it again to those from New Orleans who were in Atlanta. Other highlights include a rare Nobody's Listening verse over the Points Of Authority intro (this was when Mike was in the groove of changing it up a lot) and the crowd actually playfully stealing the microphone they put into the crowd on Crawling, but giving it right back.

 

This will be LP's fifth show in the San Antonio area and just second inside the actual city of San Antonio.

 

 

It's a bit of a deviation from the norm for Linkin Park to play these summer North American festivals this year...Mike even commented on Instagram this weekend, "The "Playing Every US Festival With 'Rock' In The Name" Tour continues...Rocklahoma and River City Rock Fest this weekend. See you there!" A positive to these festivals is that it sometimes takes LP to places they don't normally play (Pryor, San Antonio, Montebello, Mack, etc). A negative is that the band has to trim their show down a bit and perform about 7-10 minutes shorter than their normal headlining show, and they also don't bring their full production (fans commented on a noticeably dark stage at Rock on the Range). What do you think?

 

And since we touched on Points Of Authority earlier in the post, why not discuss Mike's Solo Medley? He experimented with a few verses back earlier in the touring cycle. Most recently at the ninth November show in Germany last year in Bremen, he rapped High Voltage over the medley for a rare treat. When They Come For Me verse 1 was done off-and-on in 2014, Hands Held High was done several times by requests from LPLive staff, and he rehearsed verse 2 of When They Come For Me at the Carnivores Tour production rehearsal. The most popular verse besides the Remember The Name verse that he has now resorted to most of the time was the Skin To Bone remix verse, which was originally THE verse that was debuted over the medley. It has been seen just once in the past few shows, though.

 

 

While it seems like Mike has become (almost too) comfortable with the Remember The Name verse, perhaps we will see him change it up later in the year. Europe is a great place for requests at M&Gs due to the amount of hardcore fans that attend the show, so we are positive someone will ask him to do a rarer verse. Besides High Voltage and Hands Held High, are there any other verses you'd like to see Mike attempt? It's actually a surprise to us that When They Come For Me verse 2 was rehearsed, but not ever done at a show...

 

After this show, Linkin Park sadly has four weeks off. They headline Amnesia Rockfest in Montebello, Canada on June 20th, and for now, that's the next show. The band closes May with just three shows played and five due up in June. That's not exactly a big "comeback", but we'll take it. For the rest of the 2015 tour dates and past setlists, visit the 2015 tour page here.

 

Setlist:

01. Papercut (2015 Intro)

02. Rebellion

03. Given Up (Ext. Outro)

04. One Step Closer (Ext. Outro)

05. A Line In The Sand (Keyboard Intro)

06. From The Inside

07. Runaway (Shortened; Transition ->)

08. Wastelands

09. Castle Of Glass (Experience Version; w/ ATS Interlude)

10. LOATR/SOTD/Iridescent (Ballad Medley)

11. Robot Boy (Shortened Instrumental)

12. Joe Solo Medley

13. New Divide

14. Breaking The Habit

15. Darker Than Blood (Shortened)

16. Burn It Down

17. Mike Solo Medley (w/ Remember The Name)

18. Numb (Numb/Encore Intro + Outro)

19. In The End

20. Faint (Ext. Outro)

21. Waiting For The End (Apaches Intro w/ UIB; Wall Of Noise Outro)

22. What I've Done (Ext. Guitar Solo Bridge)

23. Bleed It Out (Ext. Bridge w/ Sing-a-long)

 

Show Notes:

- Since the band's performance at Rocklahoma was cancelled due to severe weather the night before, this was Brad's first show back after having to skip out at 2015.05.17 Rock On The Range due to family issues.

 

Other Notes:

- This will be Linkin Park's first show in San Antonio since February 2004. They last played the nearby amphitheatre in Selma, TX in August 2007.
- Before the show started, Mike went on Periscope and did a short stream from their production booth and walking onstage. Earlier in the day, Mike and Joe streamed their visit to the Alamo with Dave.

[RogueSoul]

What the fuck happened to the discussion here? lmao

 

updating the main post and Twitter with the setlist.

[crazygolfer]

I can't speak for others, but personally, I'm tired of the mostly same setlist every show, with the exception of a couple changes here and there. I'm also tired of BIO closing every show, like damn. It's just getting old and stale now.

[Justin]

It's been established that LP are not comfortable with changing the sets to any great degree. There are singles they play every show that will never be dropped again, and the non singles they play don't change very often. It's just the way it is now.

[HyruleKing]

I have to admit. Initially i was really not a fan of this set. But after saw Rock On The Range, i think it is just fine. The main thing that made me enjoy the last phoshots is the disappearance of shortened stuff (except Runaway). One full song is better than two short songs in my opinion. I think that with the adding of a couple of jams in the last part, this could be a really good set.

[Astat]

Drop Ballad Medley, Runaway, and the Darker Than Blood intro to BID, and add Final Masquerade and APFMH. BOOM. Instant improvement. Move WFTE somewhere higher up in the set too and have APFMH between Faint and WID.

This set is SO CLOSE to being good, lol.

[sharwood1]

Drop Ballad Medley, Runaway, and the Darker Than Blood intro to BID, and add Final Masquerade and APFMH. BOOM. Instant improvement. Move WFTE somewhere higher up in the set too and have APFMH between Faint and WID.

 

 

 

This set is SO CLOSE to being good, lol.

 

Agree! That would make it amazing!

[FLAME-XIII]

FTI & BTH... finally they are back in setlist B )

[Jani]

Why do people care so much about the set if they aren't even going to the shows lol

[castro78]

9-18 are incredibly boring. I'm sorry, but for me, this ruins the set. It starts off on fire, and then for some reason they've decided they need to ruin all the momentum, and slow it down for 40 minutes. It's ridiculous.

Edited May 25, 2015 by castro78

[hahninator]

Drop Ballad Medley, Runaway, and the Darker Than Blood intro to BID, and add Final Masquerade and APFMH. BOOM. Instant improvement. Move WFTE somewhere higher up in the set too and have APFMH between Faint and WID.

 

This set is SO CLOSE to being good, lol.

 

Perfect. ROTR turned into a snooze fest mid show. Someone texted me last night at RCRockFest and said the same...

[Twiilite]

9-18 are incredibly boring. I'm sorry, but for me, this ruins the set. It starts off on fire, and then for some reason they've decided they need to ruin all the momentum, and slow it down for 40 minutes. It's ridiculous.

The band seems to have real trouble keeping momentum with their setlist design... They've been advertising their live show as some insanely energetic show where they play all of The Hunting Party and "none of this Iridescent stuff" and then they go ahead and bog down the set with 40 minutes of ballads.

 

That said, they've debuted A Line In The Fucking Sand and are keeping it on the setlist. Easily the most ambitious and technically difficult song they could have picked from The Hunting Party. That's good enough for me for now.

[JordanLP]

The only reason, I could think they would add the medley and other mid tempo songs, is to preserve chesters voice for the future. They should add by myself, I thought it still sounded great from the download festival recordings.

[Astat]

The only reason, I could think they would add the medley and other mid tempo songs, is to preserve chesters voice for the future. They should add by myself, I thought it still sounded great from the download festival recordings.

Some of those mid-tempo songs are among the hardest for Chester to sing (Burn it Down, New Divide, Breaking the Habit).

[Tyleronlplive]

I've just always viewed it as the rest section for the guys, especially Rob. He said in his last chat that Rebellion is the hardests to play when it is in the middle of the set so that's another reason why it got moved to the front for this tour.

 

Plus, Nine Inch Nails had a similar thing a few tours ago when there was a slower section in the middle, with parts that were basically acoustic.

[hahninator]

I think he also said Rebellion and ALITS are the 2 hardest songs from THP to play. I'm surprised they had both in the same set. I thought at ROTR that they'd drop ALITS (due to no Brad) so that was why they were playing Rebellion, ha.

 

Yeah the NIN 2008 tour - Lights in the Sky. Trent broke that shit down huge. Mainly to do the Ghost songs, but he had Piggy stripped down and a few from Year Zero. Cool tour.

[Jani]

ALITS

 

[hahninator]

For how much they discussed WANTING to play this song live (all the way back in the Rock am Ring 2014 interview, which damn was almost a year ago and even Mike in the German interview in the fall), they really nailed it. Wonder why it didn't get debuted in the winter. The sad thing is that they'll drop it after this year. See it while you can.

[Jani]

The sad thing is that they'll drop it after this year. See it while you can.

Assumptions, assumptions..

[RogueSoul]

The same guy who uploaded the viral video of Scott performing Vasoline uploaded a good portion of the show on Youtube.

 

https://www.youtube.com/user/gsxrc1300/videos

[hahninator]

I messaged him on Facebook today to see if he'd be willing to share the Woodlands and San Antonio master files if I promoted his page on LPLive's social media. Seems like a good trade to me, more in his favor if anything.