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LPLStaff

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  1. Was saying that based on comments of people saying they are "losing their ass" on their NFT investments so far. Are they trolling? Or are people really losing a lot of money on NFT items they've bought already?

     

    This musical collaboration confirms (for the millionth time) that Mike needs to collaborate with Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor. Their Ghosts releases are fantastic, and Mike is creating music in such a similar style/genre to that. This release, his Raid Redemption music, his Mall music, "fine", etc... he's gotta do it. The possibilities are endless. An EP with vocals and full songs? An instrumental album? Imagine how cool that'd be.

  2. "It's a hot motherfucker today!"

    There's just about nothing we love more here at LPLive than finding unreleased Linkin Park recordings made in years past, and we have luckily stumbled upon a brand new recording of Linkin Park on Ozzfest 2001 again thanks to our good friend and resident collector Felipe. This is actually the first recording in quite some time to surface in the LP community.

    The sixth show of the Ozzfest tour landed in Maryland Heights, MO just outside of St. Louis at Riverport Amphitheatre. LP was just getting into the groove of Ozzfest, settling down with their finalized setlist for the tour after experimenting with the order of the tracks during the first few shows. As you would expect, their set was heavy, direct to the point, and expletive-ridden to get the Ozzfest crowd pumped up. By this point in their touring career, they had mastered these Hybrid Theory tracks after performing them so many times in the past few years. Chester was quite a wild guy on stage in 2000, 2001, and 2002... talking about marijuana after 'Points Of Authority' at this show but bringing the brutally heavy screams on each and every song.

     

    This recording contains the first 5 songs of the set. Thanks to the taper Fred H., we can now hear these tracks 7,221 days later - one of the longest times since any recording has been liberated in the LP community. The setlist in the show includes 'With You', 'Runaway', 'Papercut', 'Points Of Authority' and 'By Myself'. Of note to us that collect all of the recordings... it's cool to hear Chester with a few vocals on the show intro before 'With You'.

     

     

    Check out the show page here.

     

    Again - thank you to Fred H. for the recording and thank you to Felipe for always working to get these recordings out to the public!

     

  3. Linkin Park's sophomore album Meteora turned 18 years old this week!

     

    After demoing ideas on tour for Hybrid Theory in 2001 and early 2002 as well as demoing songs at Mike's home studio, the band recorded Meteora with Don Gilmore at NRG Studios from April to November 2002. The album produced five singles - Somewhere I Belong, Faint, Numb, From the Inside, Breaking the Habit, and Lying From You. From 2003 to 2004, Linkin Park performed a wide variety of shows for the album, from an intimate LP Underground Tour to two of their own Projekt Revolution Tours, to opening for Metallica on a Summer Sanitarium stadium tour, to headlining festivals across the world and even performing a sold out arena tour in North America. Some of these performances have gone on to become some of the most legendary and well known Linkin Park shows ever, especially Rock am Ring 2004.

     



    We'd love to know some of your memories from the Meteora era. Did you see Linkin Park live from this era? Were you involved in the fan communities around this time? Did you buy the album right when it came out? Or did you get into Linkin Park later on?

  4. Ben Young, Brad's guitar tech for The Hunting Party and One More Light eras, was recently interviewed by Ultimate Guitar. The full read is pretty good - check out these highlights:

     

    What tour has been the most fun to be a part of so far?

    "I don't really think of things in superlatives. They all have their up days and down days, and it is a job after all, but the three years I spent with Linkin Park felt special. That band was so big and so loved around the world that I couldn't help but feel like I was a piece of something that was bigger than the sum of its parts, especially in European countries or South America where they love their heavier rock and roll."

     

     

    How did you come to work with Linkin Park? What is your fondest memory of Chester Bennington?

    "I got the gig with Linkin because one of my good friends was one of their studio engineers. Starting back in '07 He would call me in occasionally to do guitar setups while they were recording. Through that I became friends with one of their techs, Warren Johnson. In 2014 they needed a new guitar tech on the road and Warren gave my name to the production manager since I was already a familiar face. It worked out perfect and me and guitarist Brad Delson got along great. At first, I was nervous because I got the vibe that he could be difficult, but he was pretty easy to deal with. He just needed someone that pays attention to detail and sweats the small stuff.
     

    "One of my favorite Chester memories is when we were in rehearsals one day and Brad wasn't there, so I was covering his parts and playing. We finished running through a newer song that kind of had a strong lead part at the end. After the song was over Chester yelled 'You just played the SHIT out of that guitar.' That felt pretty good. One of the best things about Chester is that day in and day out he always gave it 100%. I never saw a show where he wasn't feeling it and decided to dial it in. He always gave a shit."


     

    What has been the proudest moment of your career (SO FAR!)?
     

    "The strange opportunities this job has brought me are insane. Back in 2014 I played three shows as the lead guitar player for Linkin Park when the guy I teched for was unavailable. I knew that potentially it could happen, so I had learned the whole set months earlier. One day we flew to Brazil for two shows and when we landed, I found out that Brad wasn't going to make it and that I was going to be playing. Linkin wasn't a band that had show-ready tracks for a missing musician in their playback, and it wasn't a route they were willing to explore. It's amazing that they put their faith in me to pull it off. I had never played in front of that many people before and I could have freaked out and train wrecked their show. Mike Shinoda put me at ease when he said, 'There are five other people in this band and we all mess up sometimes, so don't worry about it if you do.' It all went great. I ended up playing another show for them when Brad's wife was having a child. After that show at Rock on the Range in Columbus Ohio, Chester said to nobody in particular, 'That was amazing. That felt like an old school Linkin Park show.'"
     

    Check out the full interview here.

  5. Undoubtedly the hold up on any sort of DBS demos release is the label. By showing them in a stream on Patreon and talking about them, they can circumvent that. They are releasing a lot of stuff on Patreon that's definitely a "no no" for a public release. Maybe they'll find a way to post a full demo or something in this process.

     

    They were vocal about wanting a DBS style box set back when they did the Time Capsule. 

  6. 44 minutes ago, Cesar656 said:

    PT has nothing to do with this but ok

     

    Playing devil's advocate - why not? A general assumption (whether right or wrong) among fans is that the sales of Post Traumatic would lead the label to want a single like 'Happy Endings' to do big numbers.

  7. Mike also sat down to do an interview with MYX Malaysia on March 17th. And of course, we have the recap:

     

    - Mike mentioned he was excited to eat the food in Manila when he was visiting his most recent time in 2019 since he was familiar with it in LA. He went walking around and tried different restaurants which he loved.

    - He explains how #ShinodaProduceMe works. All of the artists so far have wanted to release the songs - they don't have to but he does like that they are releasing them. Fans can still send in submissions to Mike since he's still working on new tracks. He'd love to do a "futuristic dance hall" track or reggae track. He's always interested in hip hop tracks too.

    - They talk about the 'Happy Endings' music video. The director uses a lot of modern styles mixed with throwback ideas so it feels raw and not too polished to Mike. He liked that because it has a sort of indie feel to the video. They didn't all shoot together but they did shoot in the same location. Mike didn't see UPSAHL at all, they just texted, but he was leaving right when Iann showed up so they talked for a few minutes. There was a crew of just seven people shooting it. Both Mike and the director did the illustrations in the video - some of his Twitch artwork was illustrated by Mike that he sent in.

    - Mike says the reason 'Drivers License' is such a popular song is because it has a unique characteristic that when everyone listens to it for the first time, they love it. He talks about new artists he's listening to right now, mentioning Tobe Nwigwe, Mazie, and Teezo Touchdown. 

    - He'd like to be able to go out on tour soon to perform for fans.

     

    Check out the video here.

  8. Mike did a quick interview with MIX Malaysia on March 17th, here's the recap!

     

    - He explains how 'Happy Endings' came about with UPSAHL. They wrote the song, loved it, and the more other people heard, it they loved it too so it encouraged Mike to release it. He got Iann on the track before wrapping it up to release it.
    - He isn't planning an album, "but basically, the bigger the song gets, the more likely I am to release an album. If you want me to make an album, then show me you want me to make an album."

    - 'Happy Endings' was the first major label release affiliated with NFTs. Mike's label as well as UPSAHL and Iann's labels were like, "What does an NFT even mean?" And Mike was like, "Well I want to put it out tomorrow so you better do your research!" Ha. He explained that the money will go to his scholarship but he wanted the labels to just not worry about the money - only worry about the rights for the music.
    - Mike goes into detail about why he also surprised fans with the 'Happy Endings' NFTs with a bonus signed art print for the song. He expected that the 'Happy Endings' NFTs would exchange hands amongst fans/be resold when he announced that the art prints were coming too, but none of them changed hands. He speculated that this is because actual fans of his bought these specific NFTs.

    - The environmental debate with NFTs is brought up. Mike feels that it's a somewhat temporary problem (he's guessing), because so many people are working on solving it.

     

    Watch the video here.

  9. Back in November, we posted that Mike had released the 'Sleepy Track' that he created on Twitch. As it turns out, this was an accidental release and Mike has not announced an official release himself yet of the track. It has really turned into an album of thirty songs of various lengths, designed for when you are going to sleep.

     

    We said, "Created on August 28th, 2020, Mike took a fan suggestion on Twitch to create a long and relaxing "sleepy time" track. Reminiscent of "Ghosts" by Nine Inch Nails, or even Mike's "Minutes to Midnight" website clips, the tracks are fully instrumental and weave in and out of different ambient sounds Mike has created."

     

    It turns out that the project was accidentally released under the name 'Sleep for Students' on AcousticSounds.com and Hoopla on November 20, 2020, but was removed from AcousticSounds.com. As of this post, it is still available on Hoopla for fans to check out.

     

    Since then, he has spoken once recently about the project. On February 18, 2021, he said, "Dude I put the Sleepy Track in the queue. I wanted that shit out before now. I wanted it out already. It didn't happen, it's not my fault. We're going to have to do something else with it. Watch, we're just going to have to put the whole fucking thing up on Zora. It might happen. I know you guys could rip it... and whatever you want to do with it. Should we do that? You guys could just rip that.... it's just an hour of audio. Right? It kind of leaked, it didn't really leak. SoundCloud? Wait a minute, on SoundCloud can you generate income per stream on SoundCloud? Because again, the idea was to put the Sleepy Time Track out where when you listen to it every night, it generates money for the scholarship."

     

    He also spoke in January 2021 and September 2020, talking about how he wanted the money to go to his scholarship and more... read that here. Mike did say that he was probably going to change the name from 'Sleep for Students' to something else as well.

     

    On March 5, 2021 he gave another update, saying: "Sleepy time track is still being discussed. An interesting twist in the story showed up and I'm dealing with that. I can't really tell you about it. I hate that I can't tell you, but I can't.”


    What do you think? Will Mike still release the 'Sleepy Track'? 

  10. 14 hours ago, RYG4R said:

    Just release a proper sophomore album.

     

    It's like 90% that he's making one right now.

     

    The jams could be released under a different name, seems easy enough. There are enough people that enjoy them, he has thousands of Twitch followers daily.

  11. 15 hours ago, PurpleFlinstoneVitamins92 said:

    The quite big hiatus and almost total silence between THP and OML was basically due to Chester’s problems with addiction and recovery IIRC, I think OML was meant to drop in late 2016 otherwise. 

     

    Yes, that's right. But not due to any problems, LP was/is very close. Mike even visited Chester personally himself during that rehab stint in 2016. The band is so secretive about things going on with them like this that the entire band could have visited Chester at different times in rehab and we would have zero clue unless the band ever said it publicly. And they are quite private people so they likely aren't going to ever get into stuff like that.

     

    I remember Ryan Shuck said 1-3 days after Chester passed that Rob Bourdon had told him some of the most incredibly kind things he's ever had said to him, about his relationship with Chester and how he (Ryan) had helped Chester out in life, etc.

  12. Today on Twitch, Mike discussed at the end of the chat that he knows fans want another 'Dropped Frames' album. He's previously said that he likes the albums being a trilogy of three releases, so the albums will likely stop there and there won't be a 'Dropped Frames 4'.

     

    However, today he said, "You know, I have to imagine there will be a way to release them and I don't know what that's going to be. My thing was like, the ones that I really really liked, that I made, I put them on the 'Dropped Frames' ones. And I've made some since then that I got like 'I really like that one'. But there's also a lot that I think are fine, they're ok, but I wouldn't want them sitting and taking up space on my Spotify page... almost like just clutter. And I want you guys to have them or have access to. I just haven't figured out the right way to do it."

    He added, "Yeah, 'Skrrt Skrrt'? I actually like this one that is playing right now. This one is from like a year ago. I called it 'The Brooklyn Way', that was the name of the track. 'KarmaKon'? Yeah, I know you guys want 'KarmaKon'. As if I don't know!"

     

     

    Hopefully we will see some more songs released soon! Last year Mike toyed with the idea of releasing songs to his Twitch subscribers, so that could be one way that he does it.

  13. This isn't something you see often - Rick Rubin interviewing Mike Shinoda!

     

    "Since forming in 1996, Linkin Park has sold over 100 million records worldwide. Their enormous success mixing genres like hip-hop, metal and anthemic pop was spearheaded by the band’s ultra-talented founder, Mike Shinoda. In this episode Rick Rubin talks to Mike about the albums he produced with Linkin Park that helped redefine the band’s sound. Mike also reminisces about the band’s early inner-personal dynamics. And Mike talks about the community of thousands of followers he's amassed on Twitch who watch him make beats live five days a week."

    Check the full interview out here.

     

    Recap:

    - Mike explains #ShinodaProduceMe on Twitch to Rick about how the process works and what the artists actually send him.
    - Rick and Mike talk about 'A Thousand Suns'. Rick: "A Thousand Suns is my favorite of the things we worked on together. It felt like something new and REALLY good.", "If you had done ATS after Meteora, everyone would have been like, "FUCK these guys!", you had to do Minutes to Midnight first.", "The dream is to make an album that gets either 1 or 5 stars. Polarizing music. And that's what A Thousand Suns is for you guys. I love it."

    - Mike tells the story of putting NoBraiN on 'When They Come For Me' and how it came together from the contest for 'The Catalyst'.

    - They discuss Mike's first introduction to music; the first album he became obsessed with was 'Licensed to Ill' by Beastie Boys. He tried to ask for the Cypress Hill debut album for Christmas and he didn't get it. So he asked his mom and she said she didn't get it because of the names of the songs being so extreme - 'Pigs', 'How I Could Just Kill A Man', 'Hand On The Pump', 'Hole In The Head', etc, so Mike found a way to get the album the very next day after that conversation. 

    - Rick asks Mike how he became a musician after this period of time - did he want to make beats, did he want to rap, etc. Mike explained he was taught piano from an early age but loved rap. He won a songwriting contest his piano teacher did so he told his teacher he wanted to write more like rap songs, so he wanted to write blues & jazz in her class. 

    - Mike discussed how he learned how to use gear when songwriting and discussed his little group 'North Coast Killaz'. The idea was to just make his friends laugh.

    - Songwriting for early Linkin Park sessions is discussed. Rick asked Mike around 'Minutes To Midnight' if he had ever written a song with just an instrument (like piano) and vocals as the band usually didn't write that way. Mike said actually yeah, some of our biggest songs like 'In The End' and 'Breaking The Habit', but usually no, we don't write that way at all. The band was much more comfortable writing the instrumentals first and then the vocals, but the entire songwriting process changed with Rick and MTM. Mike learned to make songs without having a fully produced instrumental before he wrote vocals.

    - Mike talked about writing with Tom Morello. The band didn't end up with much material from the sessions with him but Mike's main takeaway was picking Tom's brain about songwriting and how he used gear - they had some great conversations about writing tracks. Tom explained specifically how he uses gear he's super familiar with to achieve new sounds.

    - Mike talks about how he learned how to play guitar. He had a friend that taught him some Led Zeppelin riffs but Mike's main reason for learning guitar was just because Linkin Park needed a second guitar player on stage and the riffs for LP weren't hard to play.

    - Rick asks Mike how Linkin Park started. Mike explains Mark and Xero, how they had four real songs on their demo, etc. Cool story about Mike and Mark sending the tape to Immortal Records who had Korn and Incubus, and the label couldn't believe it was just two guys in the band, they were really, really surprised the drums were all sampled, etc. Mike and Mark switched off on instruments like guitar, bass, etc. They told Mike to get a full band together ASAP and play shows, to get in a studio and record, and then come back to talk to the label because they liked the songs. Mike jokes that the guy NOW says Xero never came back to show him more songs, but Mike says "yeah, we actually did send him more demos but he just wasn't interested in us anymore. We would have killed to get on that label so we did send them a lot of demos."

    - He talks about his relationship with Mark - they became friends at 12 years old. Mike explains the reason Mark left Xero was because he was going to get a stomach ulcer from playing live - he had panic attacks playing in front of people, he couldn't get up on stage in front of people, he would freak out at the monitor engineer every time they played so he'd piss off the guy in charge of the sound. He was so panicked about playing live. He did understand it was not a good fit for him to be in the band. He loves music a lot and that's what lead him into his music management role now with System of a Down, Alice in Chains, Deftones, etc. 

    - Mike tells the story of being introduced to Brad. Brad was the first of the current members of the band to join Xero. He was Mark's next door neighbor... looking out Mark's window, Brad was right next to him. Mike didn't know Brad well in high school because hip hop and metal kids didn't co-mingle. But Mark was in a band with Brad before that. Mark shared metal with Mike, Mike shared hip hop with him. He confirms for the first time that Mark was in The Pricks with Brad, before Relative Degree. Relative Degree overlapped time-wise with Xero because Mark and Mike wrote "on the side" since Mark was already in a band with Brad.

    - The rest of the band - Brad was at UCLA with Dave, Mike was at ArtCenter with Joe, Rob was at a neighboring high school. And then the story of Jeff and Scott finding Chester after they tried out a lot of other singers. It was very obvious Chester was the best fit. The direction of the sound was clear to the band pretty much as soon as they started writing together.

    - Mike explains the process behind them finding the Hybrid Theory 20 demos and videos. He loves 'She Couldn't'. Discusses the gear used when making it and loves the line "you are not alone", which turned out to be the identity of the band for the next five or six years - the idea was just there from the beginning. The band were naturally not great friends, but they'd geek out about music because they loved all the creative aspects of music together.

    - Chester did not fit in right away with the band. He was messing around with drugs, and Rob was totally straight edge so they didn't know if that'd be an issue for one, but also because his personality was a lot different than the band's. They wanted to get to know him first as a person before they could commit to him. "We were really different, but we were really cool. We really like each other. I think we're fine." Rick says having outliers working together really creates something intense musically. The band was polar opposites in a lot of ways and friction but worked really well together - they drew from a lot of different areas. Brad loved the music by Britney Spears, for example, so they drew from a lot of different areas. He said they had to experiment with their relationships, how Brad and Joe interacted together versus how Brad and Chester interacted together. 

    - Mike discusses how the band figured out how to play songs live. Rick says it was the first group he's ever worked with where all of the music was made virtually and not in a traditional band setting (like recording together in one room). So Rick said LP didn't figure out specific parts and instruments for people until they went to rehearse to perform live. Mike thought it was bsolutely crazy that Tom Morello told him Rage Against the Machine would jam in a room for hours together, then they'd assemble it with a producer and Zach would rap over it a month later and there was their album. Mike said his mindset wanted to take a musical piece and change/edit/produce it a million different ways himself... experimenting with it before committing to how it should sound.

    - When LP would play a song live, the fans wanted to hear the album version. If the band changed how they played it, the reaction was less from the crowd. At a certain point when everyone had heard the song one way for so long, the band and fans both liked it enough that way that they both enjoyed LP playing it a new way, so LP would add new bridges, etc to songs on stage.

    - Mike considers 'Dropped Frames' like kind of mixtape-style releases. He had over 100 songs and wanted to release them in a trilogy. Mike was concerned that maybe some of those instrumental songs had portions that could be parts of bigger songs, but he was fine with releasing them. 

    - He loves the song 'Drivers License' by Olivia Rodrigo.

    - Rick asks about Hybrid Theory - Mike says the album had five singles but Chester would say that it actually had six. 

  14. Mike spoke to Input Magazine about releasing 'Happy Endings' with his current NFT fascination, and more. Check out the full interview here.

     

    Some highlights:

     

    How did you get into NFTs?

     

    "I’ve been watching NFTs for a while. Linkin Park have like a VC arm, and a few years ago we did a bunch of meetings with different companies about investment and the idea of creating blockchain-related merchandise. And I was like, “I feel like we’re ready for it. But fans aren’t ready for it. Nobody’s going to buy it.” So we just stayed away from it. And it wasn’t until this year when I was like, “Oh, people are ready.” Regular people really are collecting this stuff. And it’s not just a couple of billionaires getting involved."

     

    And since you're kind of a household name, I presume people don't think that you're going to be an “opportunist crooked jerk” about this.

     

    I hope not! I’ve tried music and visual as an NFT. I've tried just visual; I’ve tried GIFs. Those have all performed differently. I’ve yet to do one that’s just the music NFT, like a full track beginning to end, one of one. That’ll be soon. I’ll do that and see how it goes.

     

    So tell me about the sale of the NFTs of “Happy Endings.” What was the price range for those 10?

     

    "I don't quite know right now, but I can guess. So here’s the way it worked: I had already put up a couple things on Zora, and I have this I had this single called “Happy Endings” coming out. It’s basically like a pop single. So we’re all ramped up for this big release. And I said to management, “I want to debut it with an NFT,” and they’re like, “You’re crazy. How in the world are we going to make that happen?” My attitude is like, “I know the timeline’s short, but we can work it out.” And that's what we did.

     

    The highest bid was five Wrapped Ethereum [around $8,000]. The lowest was a couple hundred dollars. And as soon as the initial sales were over, I said, “Surprise, everybody who owns one as of tomorrow is going to get a signed, one-of-10 print of the art. So you have 24 hours if you want to resell it. But whoever owns it at this time tomorrow gets a print.” I kind of expected somebody to go to the person who only spent 200 bucks and be like, “I will give you $15,000 for that NFT that you spent 200 bucks on.” I expected it to change hands. And it didn’t change hands."

     

    What do you ascribe that to?

     

    "I think the people who bought them were legit fans."

  15. Mike did an interview with Kevan Kenney from Radio.com on February 25th and we're here to recap it for you! Check out the full 25 minute video here.
     

    - Mike listens to new music by jumping on streaming platforms and checking out new releases, but also follows playlists of artists that typically have around 5,000 followers~ who are releasing new music. 

     

    - He's talked to Brevin Kim about collaborating; he found them on Pigeons & Planes which he follows. Jacob, the founder of P&P is really involved with Brevin Kim but didn't want to really bother Mike about them but Mike wanted to talk to them.

     

    - When a new collaborator/artist is a super big fan of LP, it's an uncomfortable situation for Mike. He's had sessions where the artists can't get over who he is and it's weird. Sometimes the artists are able to get over it, but sometimes they can't.

     

    - He has been in a phase of "research and development." The entire afternoon after he streams on Twitch is composed of writing new songs (for himself, or with someone else). "I've got a couple of other things I'm not really ready to talk about yet."

     

    - "The idea of just going out there with one song and knowing that if this song does well, if the fans like it, I've got other songs that I can start to mold into an album. I've got other things and ideas that I can develop to follow it up with. And I'm ready to go regardless. It's a matter of keeping your tools sharp. I'm in here every day, everything is always sharp."

     

    - Mike says he is like a "creative director" of the Hybrid Theory 20 remix project. The label is who pitched the idea to him but he wasn't big on the project until artists like 100 gecs started getting tossed around. He thought at first that just remixing more Hybrid Theory songs was not interesting since the band had already done Reanimation. "We are not treading familiar territory at all by doing a 100 gecs remix." He said, "We have a few things. It's not fully formed yet, but there is some other stuff coming together." And finally about 'Crawling' remix: "In terms of the energy of the song, we'll try to go small. Delicate and introverted. I imagine it with a female singer. We've never really done that, so we'll see what happens."

     

    - "The support on 'Happy Endings' has been spectacular. I had written it with a couple of friends, one of them Upsahl. It wasn't like we made it and said, "Let's put this out!" We made it and it just sat on a hard drive. A little while later a couple of other people had heard it and they were like, "Yo, what is that song? It's so good." And I was like, "Oh! I forgot about that song." And then it ended up being other people who were like, "Put out this song." Originally Iann was not on it, it was Sam and Pete." Upsahl was introduced to Mike by Sam and Pete since they had been writing with Upsahl already. Someone else had already mentioned Upsahl to Mike around that time so he was very interested in getting a collaboration going.

     

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