LPLStaff

How can anyone dislike tribute bands at face value? Even active bands have them - Hardwired follows Metallica on tour and plays around their shows, the night before, etc for example. Even Metallica brings in tribute bands for their 2 show weekends they've been doing lately, around official events. Of course LP would have tribute bands. The band has not played a show in nearly 7 years and LP is one of the biggest bands in our lifetime - there is a big want to see that music live. In the End and Hybrid Theory (PT) are doing a great job with setlists and shows. People have a great time at those shows, people who got to see LP and who never got to see LP. It's just to celebrate the music. There's no harm in any of that. The HT band's setlists are really something, that show they have from the arena on YouTube is quite cool. They even play Lost. I'd see that band for sure if they came near me - have seen In the End several times. LP is on social media and browses it, they've seen these bands multiple times online.

There seems to be bigger issues at play here, most notably that the masters for Waiting for the End and Iridescent got swapped out in 2012 and the wrong versions are literally everywhere. Just like Shadow of the Day, No Roads Left, and Across the Line were. That is going to take some sorting out.

Linkin Park has announced on social media that they will be releasing the fan-favorite "QWERTY" (live in Tokyo, Japan 2006) video on YouTube officially for the first time ever. The audio of the song was leaked online in 2006 and then included in the LP Underground 6 CD, but the video has not been officially released until now. It does appear that "QWERTY" (live) will appear on streaming with an audio release as well, judging by what the band has posted on YouTube for audio credits for the video. LPLive posted a video rip of the song airing on TV in Japan, in 2009, after a very lengthy search to track down the song - this was the culmination of quite an effort to get the video and is the commonly seen video online. The release by the band could be slightly better quality, straight from the master tapes of the show, as well as slightly longer with the Japanese fan at the beginning introducing the song. Linkin Park's show at Summer Sonic Tokyo 2006 remains one of the biggest sought-after concert releases for the band one day, following big releases by the band for Hybrid Theory 20 specifically with a Projekt Revolution 2002 proshot show, as well as an arsenal of shows for Meteora 20 that feature incredible live versions of songs. Tokyo contains the Xero track Reading My Eyes, QWERTY, and much more.

Stores are posting their Record Store Day lists. Some don't have this release at all and others have just a few copies. This release is going to go really quickly, to no one's surprise. Hopefully this incentives the label to keep putting more DBS out.

It seems the most likely chance for this show to be released is the MTM 20 box set. And that is still a few years away. There's really no celebration coming up that would warrant this show coming out besides that.

Someone that is extremely in touch with this mastering situation with LP songs (current and old, like HTEP) is Mike himself. He can really speak to the details on this. Not sure how we'd get this to him but he can really answer your question because he's so involved in this stuff.

QWERTY has to be on MTM20. Live version, studio version, etc. Unmastered version if they want. Whatever the heck they want to release with it, put it all on there. QWERTY live rehearsal 2007. Etc. lol

Nice work everyone!

Seeing some photos and reports from this event - the attendees got a pretty cool selection of Papercuts merch. Large posters (haven't seen these anywhere else online), some nice Papercuts cups/mugs (?), and other stuff. They recorded a video for the band telling them to come to Brazil and play, and Mike & Brad recorded a special video for them thanking them for making Sao Paulo the top city for their Spotify listeners.

Pretty thankful they did so well with Meteora 20. No problems at all besides not including One Step Closer (LPU Tour 2003) right? No songs on that Live disc are included twice on the disc though, so maybe that was a conscious decision. I'd have put it in there, though.

Rob has never been in the spotlight and has always been sort of "off the grid", that isn't new. He used to do more interviews, sure, but if the rest of the band is handling these right now then in his mind, why does he need to jump in? It is weird, though, for the BIG releases like M20 to not have the entire band in one spot for the release.

I think it's the opposite - the idea of the band was to just release the album versions of it all. And then the label somewhere along the way tried to remove a few transitions, but they never used proper Single versions for them all. There's no excuse to have different Physical vs Digital releases for the same release. And we are seeing reports Physical is two different versions. lol. Wild. What's insane is Faint's intro is cut on all of it. They don't have access to normal Single edits of all of the songs?? How many releases was this wrong WFTE included on since 2012? Was ATS repressed on vinyl (or anything else) since then? All of the vinyls/CDs made with the new Warner Records name instead of Warner Bros... is it on those? And what digital releases is it on? So WFTE has been replaced just about everywhere with an incorrect version? This is a pretty significant discovery martinez, nice work. It's like the real WFTE is being erased...

But what about the "got" at the end? That is an effect on the vocal, instead of a pitch correction, right? It sounds more "watery" if that makes sense (not a musical background person with this stuff). So it could be a different vocal treatment of the entire acapella?

This makes sense. If they are closing the CB chapter out and are ready to move on, this was a way to do it. If the female singer thing is true, they may be able to move in that direction this year (publicly).

The problem is these people didn't work with the band X amount of years ago so they have no idea what the right versions of the songs are. This explains how No Roads Left, Across the Line, and Shadow of the Day were messed up so badly that they not only were issued digitally incorrectly for many years, but ALSO on the picture vinyl for Minutes to Midnight - a true tragedy. Also the Walmart yellow vinyl has the wrong song versions. The Shadow of the Day situation with that is still "unresolved"... if there is really a new guitar part on it as Astat claims, then *where* is the OG master of that song? The process to produce something like this is probably so extensive that the LP team (and band even if they wanted to) are unable to even get their hands on exactly what the label is using because the label controls all the distribution and owns/has the masters. Unless Mike is emailing them the files himself (not happening for a greatest hits, but there is a chain of process where eventually something from Mike would make it onto a box set with demos, sure - not Papercuts though) then they are liable to fuck this up. What makes no sense is - is the label's organization and labeling of all these song versions THAT bad that they keep having this happen? And how do you even have different versions for digital versus physical of the same release? It's sloppy. The attention to detail isn't there from Warner because they aren't hardcore LP fans and aren't looking at 0.5 second, 1 second, 2 second differences or vocal effects, or *whatever* (synths, drum beats) in the song versions... only people like us will catch that. It just is confusing how they don't have it simply labeled as "Minutes to Midnight (24 bit masters)" and then there are the 14 or whatever files. How do you find something like "Waiting for the End (Different CB Acapella Vocal Treatment)" or whatever? lol. The HT20 shortened songs error made it all the way through the entire process, along with DVDs that were misprinted/mislabeled, without anyone catching it until the public had it in their hands.

How in the world did your ear catch that the first time? Diving into it, there are definitely different effects on the vocals. The "got" at the end is the most evident of this. More importantly - how many versions of these songs does the record label have and how could something like this have gotten into a Waiting for the End release? Are they just pulling random masters/versions of songs?

Yeah. This has zero to do with the band and is a label issue. The more removed we get from LP's peak of their career, the more errors that pop up on releases. They learned with HT20 because Meteora 20 was quite well done in my opinion, but this Papercuts is again another mess. At the very minimum they need to fix the versions on streaming/digital to match the physical (even if the physical versions are also wrong....). How can anyone at the label listen to this and not notice the Faint intro is cut, things like this?

First observations on CD vs digital - (any mention of the word "Single" in this sense is referring to the single LP released of the song when the song first came out, NOT referring to Papercut Singles Collection): -Faint intro is cut on both, which is a shame. -CD: Papercut ending (to OSC) that goes into BTH... it could be edited for 0.1 seconds longer to segue into BTH. Anyone else hear that on the CD? -Breaking the Habit on digital goes into From the Inside - it is not there on the CD. What is frustrating is the BTH Single from 2004 has a great intro and they didn't use it at all on this. The crash is also slightly shorter than the Street Team version from 2004. -Waiting for the End digital goes into Blackout with the segue - it is not there on the CD. -What I've Done - follow me on this, this one on digital comes from the > transition from SOTD but the CD one is the album version with a cut intro that's faded in - that's my guess. Neither of them are the Single version. Digital has that 0.1 longer transition on this WID that makes it sound like it has that very final transition keyboard/whatever note. CD does not. Regardless, you can safely argue that the intro of WID is cut like Faint's intro is. -Leave Out All the Rest digital has the party on Bleed It Out after it (album version), CD does not and ends like the Single version. We need a rip of every single physical format release of this. Knowing the label, they could have put different versions on different formats of physical releases. We need the cassette, every vinyl (every pressing of those vinyls), and every CD pressing. Goodness.

Don't think a few seconds before/after the song is that big of a deal and likely not very noticeable to the general public (who this is catered to) outside of hardcore fans. Definitely noticed ASAP. At bare minimum, it'd be nice to have the Faint intro fixed to the full intro on streaming for this. BUT if that messes up Meteora transitions then don't do it. It may be harder to have multiple song versions on digital streaming than we think and have them all count for the same play counts. Are there examples of this in music? Like if they put the single version of What I've Done up? It isn't on Spotify.

They for sure know if they've paid this close attention to forums/social media/fan requests for the Projekt Revolution 2002 DVD, "thoughts that take away my pride", Pictureboard, She Couldn't, etc. They are doing everything right with the box sets. 10/10.

What about the MTM 20 box set? Perfect chance to release it as it was an "escape from the studio" run of shows, and has a new song on it from the MTM sessions.

The video is well done by Mark Fiore. It encompasses footage of the LPTV episode from Japan 2006, Making of MTM DVD footage, and some unreleased cuts throughout, along with Phoenix (modern day) talking about the song. It's a great feature on the song and explains its history well. Ironically what I thought was Third Encore 2006 rehearsal footage (Mike talking in the dressing room, not the band on stage footage obviously) is actually from Zepp Tokyo 2006. There is more Tokyo footage, some Sendai footage, and more proshot QWERTY 2006 footage (including Kotaro). With what exists, he crushed this. There is obviously no fall 2006 footage of them recording QWERTY in the studio or else that'd have been here, which is interesting. Maybe they recorded it at the Korn Studio immediately after Japan before they started bringing Mark in to film for MTM. Next big thing... fingers crossed... that full Summer Sonic Tokyo 2006 show would be huge for a release. Man.

Linkin Park has posted a two and a half minute "behind the song" video for "Friendly Fire" from the One More Light sessions, which is featured on the "Papercuts" greatest hits release. Of note in the video, footage of Brad and Mike working on the song in December 2023 at Mike's home studio is featured. Brad Delson said about the song upon its release, "Friendly Fire was always one of our favorite songs from the One More Light sessions. Something about it wasn’t quite right so as close as it got to the finish line, we chose to set it aside for later. When we started looking for an unreleased track to include on our greatest hits collection, I was blown away by the power of the song, the power of the storytelling, the power of the vocal, the sonic landscape and I actually thought that it was closer than maybe we had realized at the time. We got together to work on it and connect some of the missing pieces that for whatever reason hadn’t revealed themselves during the recording of One More Light. I can't wait for people to hear it. It’s such a beautiful, compelling, heartbreaking, hopeful story and it really resonates with me today." He added later, "I went to Mike's house to work on it together and just connect some of the missing pieces that for whatever reason hadn't revealed themselves during the One More Light writing sessions and it pretty quick stride. We completed what is now the finished product. It just raised its hand at the right time like a little magic trick and privilege of being able to finish it. It's certainly about conflict and despair and it's just as much about hope and love. It's such a beautiful compelling and hopeful song."

Linkin Park has started upgrading their music videos on YouTube from their original quality to 4K to celebrate the release week of the "Papercuts" box set.

Linkin Park has announced two upcoming events during the week of the "Papercuts" release, in Brazil. Thursday, April 11 - Rio Sunday, April 14 - Sao Paulo The events will center around a listening party for the greatest hits release, but will also feature Brazilian cover band Linkin Park Experience that features none other than our friend and long-time community member Wesley Carlos, as well as raffles of merch and more.