LPLStaff

In his recent run of press interviews for 'Happy Endings', Mike did an interview with ALT 99.7 in Columbia, South Carolina. "Amy sits down with Mike Shinoda to talk Linkin Park, why he's helping his fans produce their own music, and how tech is changing the landscape of music." Mike gave an update on the possibility of a new solo album which he has been teasing the past month, saying, "In a bigger picture, I don't know if I'm headed towards doing an album. I've done enough albums that it almost doesn't feel the right kind of ambitious right now. I love ambitious projects and albums do take a lot of time and care." So there we have it... maybe no album after all!

Mace said the band decided that and thought it was a good idea.

That is correct. The Amends project (titled "New Sun Tomorrow" at that time) was originally started because in early 2017 Chester had meetings with (at least) Sean (Sean says other members too) about re-recording music. This is a statement of fact and this has been confirmed to me by sources other than Sean that I trust 100%. That part should not be in any sort of dispute at all, and I'll throw the full support of LPLive behind that one statement by Sean. Can't confirm or deny the VOCALS part of it but Chester was absolutely fully involved in the re-recording of the album (whether instrumentals and vocals together, or just instrumentals, or however they were doing it) before he passed. That doesn't need to be something that is denied just because we are angry at GD themselves - this was something Chester was actually doing. At the time the reunion show was announced, Jason Barnes and Mace had already shared photos of them working in the studio with Sylvia Massy - again, this was before Chester passed and was 100% with his knowledge and direct involvement. Due to Sean saying they were going to send a producer out with Chester on the OML tour for this project, we believe vocals were going to be re-recorded - yes. Anyway - didn't mean to derail the thread but needed to say that because that isn't something that needs to be up for debate about the facts.

Except it wasn't an entire album inspired by Chester's death, part of it was Fort Minor that was going to be released in 2017.

The rolling synths and sounds in verse 2 are really similar to the work Atticus and Trent do. It'd be a great collaboration. Look how good Mike's collaboration with Chino was on The Raid - he could create something epic with the NIN team.

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.

But a digital item will lose its value over time much more than a physical item. That's the problem.

And add Cumulus?

"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!

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Hopefully HT 20 sold enough to justify a Meteora 20. It's gotta be their best era for live shows too. And the amount of demos we have never heard, etc.

The demos have a lot edgier/rock sound versus the extremely polished studio versions. Let Down and Walking in Circles are even better in the demo forms. Fire and My Suffering indeed are darker.

Mike has released the official music video for 'Happy Endings'! The video was directed by PIX3LFACE and was filmed on February 24 in Los Angeles.

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'?

Got it as that's one of my favorite releases!

Out now

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.

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.

What are some ways he could release them? - LPU download - Twitch subscriber download, like make a compilation for them - Release them to streaming under another name so he still gets paid for them

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.