Mike Q&A Summary 5/11 and 5/12/2020

[LPLStaff]

Mike mentioned a few interesting things on his Q&A on May 12th, so here we are with a recap of a few select questions!

- "What was the most difficult LP song to play on the Post Traumatic Tour considering you only had two people on stage backing you?" -> "I chose Matt and Dan... with Dan, I wanted somebody who had a lot of unique style and groove, who played differently from Rob. I wanted that because I thought it would be more conducive to that and the Fort Minor stuff. Every drummer plays differently like there are subtle differences, and especially based on what kind of music they listen to and play to. Dan has a jazz background and he loves old breakbeats and stuff. He really filled that stuff in. I told our manager I wanted somebody who could play as many instruments as I could or more, and hopefully could do back up singing as well. And Matt can do that, so we covered a lot of ground. I don't think any of them were tough for us. Couldn't really do ones with dual guitars plus bass very well, that was a little a tough. The answer is none of them were really hard. It was just getting creative about how to approach things."

 

Mike talked about bridges of songs being a lost art in modern music. "What's a good example? Rage, "fuck you I won't do what you tell me." Woah. It's the same mode of thinking as the bridge in "One Step Closer." If not for the "shut up" part in "One Step Closer", the song would have been like... that's a good metal song / nu metal song / rock song, whatever. We finished that song, we were ready to send it out to mix. The guy who was A&R'ing us at the label, who you guys know we had a difficult relationship with... he didn't send it to the mixer that we wanted. Before we got there, he basically sent it to his boss to get mixed, his boss was a mixer, he was a good mixer, he was just not the mixer we wanted. And then they sent back the song, completely changed around. He had edited out the bridge, the "shut up" part, and put it at the start of the song. And then it happened again in the bridge. Na man. No. That is not how that works. That's like watching the movie "The Sixth Sense" and at the beginning of the movie they go - hey FYI, the main character is already dead. That's a three minute movie."

- "How is The Catalyst a positive song?" -> "In the playoff bracket, they had pitted the song "The Catalyst" against "Breaking The Habit." Without getting into the personal backdrop stories of each of those songs, I will tell you that the personal stories related to each of those songs. The "Breaking The Habit" one was very negative. "The Catalyst" one was more aspirational, like it's about more adversity and overcoming it. Like we are the oppressed and we are tired of it, we are tired of being scapegoated and oppressed. So for me, those two things beside each other... I also have more positive memories of how it related to life."

 

 

 

[LPLStaff]

Wanted to add something from May 11th, the day before this:

 

- "What's your favorite song from The Hunting Party? What do you remember the most about that process?" -> "I was really into some specific heavier bands, hardcore bands. They weren't all part of one genre, it'd be like Helmet, Bobby Hundreds got me on to Gorilla Biscuits, Inside Out, there's a band called Gallows... the record where Andy Wallace mixed it, ah, that opening song that Riverbank song... the way they mixed it, brutal, in the best way. I was listening to Gojira a little bit. I listened to "Mark The Graves" the other day because a bunch of Peruvian Linkin Park fans did a playoff bracket of Linkin Park songs and a couple of people were like, man, "Mark The Graves" wasn't on there! "Keys To The Kingdom" was, "Guilty All The Same" was, and those are two of my favorite tracks off the record for sure. But "Mark The Graves" wasn't and I went back and listened to it, and I was like, 'Ah that was one of my favorite songs on the record. That was a really fun one, that was a cool one.' But that whole record, like "A Line In The Sand", those are some of my favorite ones I think."