Mike Q&A Recaps - Early September

[LPLStaff]

Mike hasn't answered questions on every stream lately but he does take a few occasionally. He gets questions about literally everything, so we wanted to post some of the more interesting answers that we are adding to Linkinpedia.

 

There is no real order to any of these - it's a mix of Linkin Park songs, live tracks, other songs, and solo stuff. Enjoy.

 

The Little Things Give You Away: “I remember the moment I wrote it. That song came very quickly. I remember sitting in the corner of the live room in this little studio we were using that I think Korn actually owned the studio, strangely, and that whole chord progression of everything up to the second chorus, everything up to the middle spot where everything changes, it all came together in almost one sitting. It was crazy. One of Rick’s ideas as we were finishing that album, he was a proponent of putting that song first on the album. We were like, “I get it, that’s a huge statement.” Because remember, people were coming off of Meteora, they were like, “This band is about One Step Closer and In The End and Breaking The Habit and From The Inside and whatever, that’s what this band is about”, and then long break and then first song on the album, Little Things Give You Away… people would have been like, “What the fuck are you guys doing? You’re idiots.” Numb, Collision Course to Little Things Give You Away.”

 

Sleepy Time Jam: “Yeah we’re working on it, I don’t have definitive news yet. But Sleepy Jam is on the horizon, I want to get it out as quickly as possible so you guys can start using it for your sleepy time music. Remember if I told you if I put it on streaming services that it’d make royalties when you listen to it? My concept is actually, I have a scholarship at ArtCenter College of Design that I funded forever ago, and I realized, “Ah I’d really love to do something with the income from the Sleepy Time Jam that’s really cool.” I want to try to send those royalties there, I want it to help fund the scholarship. When you are doing something like that, if I donate it from my royalty income, it gets taxed on the way to me and then I can donate my portion to the school. So I’m like, “Is there a way I can do it where just donate the album itself to the school?” So if it makes $1,000, then the thousand dollars is taxed and then a portion of a thousand dollars goes to the scholarship. So I’d rather the whole thing go, if it’s possible. My scholarship at ArtCenter, it’s big enough for a graphics or illustration student based on financial need and merit. So they have to be really good and they have to need the money, and they need help going to school. So we’ll figure it out, that’s why it’s taking an extra second. We aren’t going to just put it up on SoundCloud or let you download the thing, I want to do something like that with it. It’s complicated enough… the government doesn’t want you to use charitable donation as like a tax loophole basically. So you’ve gotta do it the proper, legal way and I’m not super educated on how that works so we’re figuring it out. So that’ll be that with the Sleepy Time Jam.”

 

Melodic Metal Jam: “It’s not on Dropped Frames 3, like I said, I’ve gotta figure out a way to get these all of these other tracks to you guys. I don’t know… some of them I actually like and want to develop them for something and eventually do vocals. I don’t like the idea of doing vocals on stream. That one in particular is not on my list of ones I’d do vocals on. I feel like some of them I could see developing somehow.”

 

About You/Over Again/Papercut (Live): “I liked the idea of mashing a few things up in the live show. I thought especially when I was doing certain Linkin Park songs in the set, I wanted them to sound different than the Linkin Park sets. Like because it was my solo set, I didn’t want to be estimating Linkin Park especially without Chester singing. The songs were already going to sound different so I tried to take them further outside of the norm so they sounded… if I played them too similar I think your brian would have been comparing it right away and it was not going to be able to be compared. My solo version context wasn’t going to be better. I’d rather make it way different and you’re like, “Oh, it’s a totally different take on the song.””

 

It's Goin' Down (X-Ecutioners / Mike / Joe):  “The X-Men, known as The Executioners, got signed as a group to Loud Music, Loud Records. And Sean C who works with Jay-Z, he’s been in the game forever. He’s like a legend. He was their A&R guy and he came to us and said, “Hey, would you be down to work with these guys?” And I already knew… on the East Coast to me, I was trying to think, to me, would there have been a group of DJs who were more legendary. There were radio DJs there were, but in terms of scratching and performance, I think they were the dudes. Because individually they were so dope and then they got together and it was like, “Woah, a super group of DJs.” And Joe and I loved their stuff, we were way into it. I produced and wrote the track myself. Did they send drums? I feel like maybe they sent some drums and I did all of the guitars, and Joe did the scratching and they did some stuff. I don’t know if they sent some drum tracks with some scratching on it or not. But I produced it; I forgot who mixed it actually, I think they might have actually picked the mixer.”

 

Sorry For Now: “The high pitched voice on Sorry For Now, I think it was just a scat version of the chorus. So it may be saying “Sorry For Now” and stuff and I just chopped it up. Or it may be saying gibberish, like some version of that. I think it may be a little bit of “na na na.””

 

Pop NSync Song: “It is not on Dropped Frames 3 unfortunately. We’ll put the NSYNC one with the Melodic Metal one.”

 

Powerless: “I don’t know why it wasn’t played live. I don’t have a good answer for you. Other songs got picked. It was funny, we basically figured out how to play it… ish, kind of figured out how to play it, in order to do the video for it. Super weird movie.”
 

In Pieces: “Chester did most of the vocals. I did more melody and he did more lyrics. That one was more of a Chester-vocal song and I did more of the music. Brad did something on that one too. I know what Chester was talking about, where he was at. I did the chorus, he did the verses. The music was mostly me and Brad. The steel drums were keyboards.”

 

[Somebodyangry]

Love the first answer 😂😂😂 that’s what the 15 y.o. Me thought listening to MTM.