LPLStaff

We've got an update! Emails!

The devs are definitely checking Reddit, fansites, social media, it's very easy to do and to be able to fix stuff. It's a good start, let's see where things go from here.

It looks like it's time to start the #HybridTheory20 celebration! Linkin Park's official website has been updated.... or rather, taken BACK to a 2000 version! The original website intro is hidden as a teaser in the Sasquatch Browser and it looks like there's a LOT yet to come! Check the readme.txt file and you'll see a message from Mike asking for help from fans. Let's get going! "READ THIS BEFORE YOU DELETE ANYTHING Hey here's some more info on what I need your help with on this thing. I just booted it up for the first time in like 20 years and it's a mess. I'm having a hard time locating the files we need for that thing I told you about, can you help me dig through it and find anything we could use? Places to start: 1. I tried getting this thing to connect to my old server but no luck, maybe you can figure it out. 2. I think my old email account is still set up on this, maybe a few of them are in there? 3. I have no idea what the passwords are for most of this stuff, I'll keep digging on my end but there's a chance they might just be gone. GOOD LUCK, YOU'LL NEED IT -m" Check the MShinoda Music Server and you'll see some files! 05_Reading_My_Eyes_4424_20.wav 06_Rhinestone_Mix_4424_20.wav 07_Esaul_4424_22_20.wav 08_Stick_N_Move_demo_4424_20.wav Wow!

Of course. That's what I meant by the tiered options. Just different stuff for different fans. For example, we'd never spend $500 on Recharged. Didn't even buy Recharged for $10, lol

Metallica's box sets are $200 and as of right now, are the gold standard in the music industry for how to do the best box set imaginable for a band. Truly incredible stuff, go look up Master of Puppets or any of their other box set releases - the amount of content is INSANE. Muse is $150. DMB Live 25 is $175 and is just 25 live songs picked by fans + merch. Beatles is $200. Didn't mean hardcore fans only, or mean to imply that only hardcore fans are the ones who pay $500. What I meant is that the higher priced packages are usually catered to those fans who are not casual fans of a band. $100 isn't enough for a box set release. It needs to be at least $200+.

Mike recently sat down with Travis Mills on Beat 1 to discuss "Dropped Frames" for about half an hour. If you have Apple Music or iTunes, you can check it out here. Deviating from the "Dropped Frames" questions, Mike was asked about Fort Minor turning 15 this year: - "This year we are celebrating The Rising Tied's 15th anniversary. You had collabs with Common, John Legend, etc. What was your favorite memory of making that record?" -> "Wow my favorite memory. I had a bunch of different things. I remember coming up with the beat for Remember The Name and being like, "Ok, everything revolves around this, the record revolves around this. This is what I'm shooting for." I also remember getting the verse back from Black Thought. I got a verse from Black Thought, it's one of my favorite verses he's ever done. Like I'm a fan of his and it's one of my favorite verses he's done, and it's on my record. That was bananas to me. It also made me so, like, almost embarrassed to be on the song (in a good way). Like there was a creative competition that I wouldn't go back and rewrite my verse, I think doing that at a time like that is inappropriate. I had already written my verse, he sent his, and I was like, "Ok, he killed it on the song." It made me want to step my game up in making the record. And I think some of the lyrics on other songs got better because of those collaborations. I just felt like, "I've just gotta be better.""

The simple solution to that is to make package tiers. $100 casual fan + $250 mid tier + $500 hardcore fan.

Mike's second song with AmirSaysNothing, the artist he toured with for part of the North American Post Traumatic Tour and who he produced a song "Clockwatch" for, will be coming out soon. As he did with "Clockwatch", Mike produced this track as well. This song had a music video shot on January 5, 2020 already with director Dylan Park. On July 28, 2020, Amir said that he received the final mix of his album "Engless Brightside." On August 3rd, he teased the album with a screenshot of the video, saying, "all the Linkin Park fans gonna love this, produced by Mike Shinoda and it ain’t Clockwatch ;)" More details soon on a release date.

It seems like Jeff Blue, the band's original A&R guy in the Hybrid Theory era, is getting in on the Hybrid Theory 20 celebration with a new book titled "One Step Closer: From Xero to #1: Becoming Linkin Park". From Amazon: "The dramatic story of the unlikely partnership that led to “Hybrid Theory,” the biggest-selling debut album of the 21st Century. From the unique perspective of the executive who discovered them, One Step Closer reveals how Brad Delson’s college internship was a catalyst for a group of young musical visionaries, led by Mike Shinoda, which gave rise to a band that survived countless rejections, exceeded everyone’s expectations but their own, and became the voice of a generation. This against-all-odds story chronicles the early days of Linkin Park, from their first demo and Whisky a Go Go performance as Xero, through their tireless efforts to perfect their iconic sound and the discovery of Chester Bennington. Jeff Blue was there when no one else believed—first as their publisher, then as their A&R guy. This is his memoir of that incredible journey. Riveting and inspiring, One Step Closer is a testament to perseverance, as well as a detailed behind-the-scenes account of the building of a dream and what it takes to make it. " The book will be released on December 8, 2020.

Here are the highlights from July 29th when Mike answered some questions on the stream. Mike talked about some of his favorite film scores, mentioning Hans Zimmer, John Williams, and more. - "If you could collaborate with any band from the 1990s who would it be?" -> "90s? Smashing Pumpkins comes to mind. Oh, Rage, they did come out in the 90s didn't they? Massive Attack, I did a Massive Attack remix at one point." He explained that because of the way routing and expenses are set up, he can't visit everywhere on tour, giving Ukraine as an example on the Post Traumatic Tour. He doesn't know if "The Waltz" will be on Dropped Frames 3. - "Was the "High Voltage" remix (MS remix) done while writing Hybrid Theory or at a later time? Thought it was interesting the remix featured strings from "Cure for the Itch."" -> "So I had this rack mounted keyboard unit and I forget what it was, it was a Roland keyboard unit with these certain string sounds and I used those on a few songs at the time. I forget which ones I used it on. I used it on those two, I think I used them on "By Myself." I used them a couple of times, so that's why that sound popped up, because I liked that sound and I used it on a few things." - ""The Last Line (Ammosick)" was worked on during Minutes To Midnight and A Thousand Suns, then was released on The Mall soundtrack. What made you keep coming back to this one? It's a good quieter song by the way." -> "I felt like, I liked it and thought that it belong... it should have gone out during the Minutes to Midnight era. And then it just didn't seem to fit the thematic stuff on A Thousand Suns. So that's why. And then we were like putting The Mall thing together and we were like, "Oh we have that song, that song is so good, that will fit here." It just felt like it would fit." - "How did your high school or college classmates react to you becoming famous? Did they contact you after Linkin Park huge?" -> "Now of course, most of them did not reach out. I wasn't in touch with most people from high school. When I went to college, I was in touch a couple dozen people, maybe at most 30-ish. But there were certainly some people from back then that were like... there were some who were like, "Oh man, congratulations, that is so cool." And it was like, "Oh, that's really nice." But you've got to have boundaries. In terms of being in that situation, I've always had limited space for new friends. I love to meet new people and I love to get to know people, for sure, but I'm not the person to meet somebody at a bar and is then like, hanging out with them. I've joked about this with other friends before, like when I meet new people, I'm very social and I love hanging out with people. An introvert gets exhausted from being around people - I am entertained by hanging out with people, but there's a point where I get tired. I'm in the middle, more leaning extrovert. When I meet people and someone presents me with an idea of like, "Here's an idea of something you can do, or work with me on" then I do not warm up to those ideas quickly. It takes me a while." - "What inspired Linkin Park to give each album a different theme/sound?" -> "I have a theory that artists lean towards being either being the kind of artists that feel good about making the same type of thing each time and really establishing that sonic brand and doing it over and over. And that's how necessarily a bad thing, like, look at Japanese sushi chefs. They perfect its craftsmanship, they perfect this very specific and repetitive task. So a band like Metallica when they go outside of that, people like, "What are you doing?" Even when it's not them, it's like the engineering and recording of the thing. They make a similar thing when they make a record. And of course there's tons of variety in that thing. They're for example, not putting keyboard on the next album probably. They're not doing sampled beats. They don't give a shit that trap hi-hats are cool or whatever, that's not happening. And then there's like, us, on the other side of the spectrum. I sometimes wonder if some artists just can't think outside of... their brain like naturally makes a certain thing and they can't even create outside of that thing. I don't know." https://www.twitch.tv/videos/694360103

It sounds like we are getting close! From Kerrang!: Mike Shinoda has told an audience of Kerrang! readers that he and his Linkin Park bandmates have been putting the work in to create something special for the twentieth anniversary of Hybrid Theory in October. Speaking as part of a Kerrang! Face-To-Face video, Mike revealed that they’ve been working closely with key people from throughout Linkin Park’s history to celebrate the 20 years since they arrived back in October 2000. “We’ve done our best to go to a lot of people who are family, in a sense, and say, ‘What do you think we should do? What would be a good celebration of Hybrid Theory?’ and try our best to do a bunch of those ideas,” he says. “I would urge the fanbase to just let it happen,” he continues. “The Linkin Park fanbase is always one of the most creative and active fanbases out there. So always, the problem for me is that if I’m not allowed to divulge information because I want it to be a surprise, then the creative fanbase starts jumping out and imagining things. They come up with their own great ideas – and then once in a while those great ideas are better than our ideas!”

Happy Album Release Day! Mike Shinoda's second album from the "Dropped Frames" series is out now worldwide! "Dropped Frames, Vol. 2" comes one month after the first edition and will be followed up by at least one more rendition of music. As of today, Mike has at least 70 instrumental songs that he has composed on Twitch and Instagram Live since March... that is a LOT! Tracklisting: 01. Transitions 2:59 02. Crystalina 3:30 03. Julio's Revenge 1:49 04. Isolation Bird (feat. Money Mark) 3:03 05. Side Scrolling 3:24 06. Dungeon Crawler 1:33 07. Dog Whistles 2:14 08. Astral (feat. Elise Trouw) 2:24 09. Sunset Drive 2:39 10. Channeling, Pt. 2 (feat. Dan Mayo) 2:30 11. King Paprika 2:22 12. Party Meow 1:44 What do you think of volume 2? Do you like it more than volume 1? For more information on the album, check out the Linkinpedia page!

We'll get around to transcribing the good stuff about this. He said this about Faint: "I always struggle with titles. In my process, usually a song ends up having a title because of the lyrics. The session, the file on my computer usually has a different name. On our second record Meteora, the song "Faint", the reason it was "Faint" was we liked the word "Faint", the session title, more than the actual idea of "I Won't Be Ignored" or whatever. Like those titles felt so overwrought, so the idea of using the session title was cooler to us."

Kerrang! has released a new video interview with Mike, where fans were able to submit questions via video. "Mike Shinoda joined Kerrang!’s Digital Editor, Luke Morton, to tell us about his new album, Dropped Frames, and answer a load of your questions. Check out Dropped Frames now!" Check out the full 40 minute interview video here.