Mike Q&A Summary 5/18/2020

[LPLStaff]

We're back with the first Q&A of the week from Mike and it's a big one! As we've started to do lately, we just recap the questions about songs and information about music, but not the instrument questions or silly questions. Check the full video for all of that.

 

In terms of wanting to visit places he hasn't seen before, he says he'd like to go to the pyramids in Egypt, Machu Picchu in Peru, and places like that.

 

- "How did the remix of the Enjoy the Silence Depeche Mode song come about?" -> "I think they were doing like a remaster / compilation /greatest hits thing and they asked me to do it. I don't know how my name got added to the mix but I think I had mentioned a bunch of times that I loved Depeche Mode. I didn't meet them at the time, I just did the remix and sent it. Their management sent it back a note saying, "oh the guys liked it." We never met, and then I saw them play like fifteen years later I saw them play in LA. I met the band then, and they were great. They realized, they said, "oh thanks for doing that remix."
 

- "Are there musicians you would love to play with in the studio or even one day on stage?" -> "That's a good question. I've never played with Travis Barker, like PLAYED played with him. Travis is so dope. You know who I've run into a bunch of times but it'd be the weirdest collaboration ever? This track made me think of it, but Thundercat. So random, I've run into that guy a bunch of times in just completely random places. Like one time we were in Tokyo and just walking around at night and we saw these guys get out of this car and go into this club, a lot of people were crowded around them. It was in Tokyo and I could tell it wasn't a Japanese group, and I think their drummer recognized Dan Mayo so the two of them started talking. And he said it was Thundercat. Then we went in and they were so cool... we hung out for a few minutes. So I think that was the second time we ran into each other. I don't know what we would make, but he's obviously crazy talented."

 

- "How was your experience with the World's On Fire video? Would you like to do more animation?" -> "I love the World's On Fire video. Super fun and in terms of an animated video, really fast and really low budget. So to do something with a little more time and money would be really cool. I don't know what that would be and I had so much fun doing it. I grew up loving animation and anime. I went to school for illustration, I don't know a ton about animation, like physically doing animation, but I would love to do it."

 

- "What was it like working with The Lonely Island?" -> "It was mostly just emails and stuff, like they didn't really reach out. Kind of whatever, but, we love the track... the Things In My Jeep track."

 

His favorite non-music activity is snowboarding, but loves games where you can make the game like Mario Maker. He likes Minecraft too.

 

- "Have you ever thought about working with traditional Japanese sounds?" -> "We did. I used a couple of things, I used a shakuhachi on Nobody's Listening. I think I used a koto on something else but it might have been a sample that didn't sound like koto. Maybe somebody could suggest a Japanese day."

 

- "Hey Mike is it possible for you and Joe to collaborate on something?" -> "Ah that'd be great, that's a good suggestion, I'm going to hit up Joe. Soon we'll do it."

- "No Roads Left, Across The Line, Blackbirds, WWDK were scrapped from the initial seventeen on Minutes To Midnight. What was the fifth song?" -> "We always have lots of songs that get scrapped from an album, so I don't know. The fifth? Got me, I don't know. I wish I could tell you. Probably something that is unreleased."

- "Could you make it so we can buy your jams as digital downloads and the money goes to charity?" -> "I want to put the songs up on streaming. They make it really weird, like kind of hard to donate... they make it hard to stream to donate. There are a lot of hands in the pot. If you want dive deep into a subject where you could potentially get a headache and also learn something, read about how song royalties are collected. It's crazy. I doubt that anybody completely understands how it works. The problem is there are different rules from country to country and region to region. It's a fucking nightmare. So you add the idea that some portion of that money is going to go to a charity and it gets super complex really fast. So generally what people do is they make their money from the songs and they donate some of their income. I started our campaign on my Tiltify page with a $5,000 donation."

 

- "What was the label's initial reaction to A Thousand Suns? Were they nervous about the direction? Had they learned at that point to trust the band's vision?" -> "Yes to both. When we played them The Catalyst and said we wanted this to be the first single, they were like UHHHHH. But we knew we had like Waiting For The End up our sleeves, so we were like, "look, we are going to get to this one, we just want to come out with something really startling first and then we go with Waiting For The End which is probably a bigger single." And they were like "ok", but there were people at the label who were like "I think this is a bad idea", but at that time I feel you could do it that way then. I don't think you could do that today, I don't think it would work. When we released that, it worked."

 

Mike talks about why he picks a certain guitar for each song, what sounds they make, how it helps with the aesthetic and the sound, etc.

 

- "My kids say hi, we would love to hear about times you and Chester had fun or laughed really hard." -> "Laughed really hard? That's like, all the time. A lot of that stuff made it on LPTV. All the goofy characters and voices and stuff, we were always being ridiculous. It wasn't smart humor, we were just being ridiculous. We had a few times we were doing like jokey songs... any of you guys ever heard us do Burn It Down in like a reggae style? That was stuff was just always so stupid but it would always make us laugh."

 

 

 

 

[sordomuda]

Probably something that is unreleased 🤡
literally no point in asking Mike about songs that have been scrapped from the album etc unfortunately haha

 

appreciate the summary though. 

 

[DirtyLittleHamster]

2 hours ago, sordomuda said:

Probably something that is unreleased 🤡
literally no point in asking Mike about songs that have been scrapped from the album etc unfortunately haha

 

appreciate the summary though. 

 

Has to be one of the stupidest answers ever. He remembers nothing of his own band besides the most mainstream of facts that everyone knows. And don’t give me that crap about how they have so many songs that he can’t remember. When songs make it THAT far, he should remember at least the name of the songs. He didn’t even know what And One was when they did that live stream. I mean cmon bro. If the titles of the other 4 songs weren’t listed in the question he probably would have said Across The Line or something. He probably doesn’t even know what WWDK stands for. I mean what he doesn’t have a disc somewhere of the 17 MTM songs? Pre final mix? Surely he does. He knows what it is but won’t answer anything remotely interesting about the band. Any unanswered questions the fan base have wanted to know for years, he won’t answer. He’d rather answer what his favorite color is. 

[sordomuda]

6 hours ago, DirtyLittleHamster said:

Has to be one of the stupidest answers ever. He remembers nothing of his own band besides the most mainstream of facts that everyone knows. And don’t give me that crap about how they have so many songs that he can’t remember. When songs make it THAT far, he should remember at least the name of the songs. He didn’t even know what And One was when they did that live stream. I mean cmon bro. If the titles of the other 4 songs weren’t listed in the question he probably would have said Across The Line or something. He probably doesn’t even know what WWDK stands for. I mean what he doesn’t have a disc somewhere of the 17 MTM songs? Pre final mix? Surely he does. He knows what it is but won’t answer anything remotely interesting about the band. Any unanswered questions the fan base have wanted to know for years, he won’t answer. He’d rather answer what his favorite color is. 

There is also an option that he doesnt want to tell thats why he is saying he doesnt remember. His memory is awful though he doesnt even remember which song was on which album. The quiz they once did for french interview was hilarious (i think it was french) 

[Cesar656]

7 hours ago, DirtyLittleHamster said:

Has to be one of the stupidest answers ever. He remembers nothing of his own band besides the most mainstream of facts that everyone knows. And don’t give me that crap about how they have so many songs that he can’t remember. When songs make it THAT far, he should remember at least the name of the songs. He didn’t even know what And One was when they did that live stream. I mean cmon bro. If the titles of the other 4 songs weren’t listed in the question he probably would have said Across The Line or something. He probably doesn’t even know what WWDK stands for. I mean what he doesn’t have a disc somewhere of the 17 MTM songs? Pre final mix? Surely he does. He knows what it is but won’t answer anything remotely interesting about the band. Any unanswered questions the fan base have wanted to know for years, he won’t answer. He’d rather answer what his favorite color is. 

I think you dont realize the huge amount of songs they have made through the years.

Another option is, they are not allowed to say it

[Soeffingnaive92]

1 hour ago, Cesar656 said:

I think you dont realize the huge amount of songs they have made through the years.

Another option is, they are not allowed to say it

Yes we have to consider that we fans dive into their music really often, even the demos. I don't think Mike regularly plays Across the Line or WWDK, maybe he doesn't listen to those songs since 2008 or so. I even remember Chester saying that WFTE was on LT... like LOL 

Edited May 21, 2020 by Comfortinthepanic92