hahninator

The Fan Meetup is just a Facebook event we created to meet fans since there isn't an LPU M&G. The LPU M&G for NYC was under Contests the whole week before the show.

I think the USA will get a substantial (3x the size of Fort Minor) tour to make up for LP canceling the last 2 USA tours.

40-45 min set time, wow. Longer than KROQ. Should be great. Mike at 6:45pm. Fan Meetup info is here, 5:30: https://www.facebook.com/events/196138054340729/

Great news Germany! After rumblings that Koln could be the only German show of the September European Tour for Post Traumatic, Mike has added a second German show in Offenbach on September 6th. This comes as no surprise after the Koln show sold out almost instantly and Post Traumatic debuted at #2 on the German charts. The LPU presale begins on June 27th at 10am, check the LPU for details, and the public on sale is June 29th here. This venue only seats 3,000 so look for another quick sellout... get your tickets fast if you want to attend. With a $10 LPU membership pretty much guaranteeing you tickets, it's a wise purchase, but that's just us! Shockingly, Offenbach is a city that Linkin Park performed in once in 2001 but never returned to. Mike has actually been to this exact venue before, because Linkin Park opened for the Deftones on March 12, 2001 there. The Post Traumatic European Tour is now up to 9 shows in August and September, the same length as the Asian Tour. This show also puts Mike at three shows in three days again, but he has proved he can handle that with no issue. Look for at least two more European Tour shows to be announced due to the lengthy gap (September 2-5) in the touring schedule! Who will be attending this show? Check out the full setlists, show pages, upcoming tour dates and more for the Post Traumatic Tour here.

He didn't do it at the show, just at soundcheck. Like Phoenix testing out the gear on Blackout before using it later in the cycle.

Looks like Mike might start using drumsticks on the bridge of Crossing A Line soon. Check this NYC soundcheck video.

Lift Off has like a vibe of... Freestyle, Carousel, a slightly more aggressive Dedicated, Part Of Me, etc all mashed into one. Or Reading My Eyes. All of these songs have really great, old school Mike Shinoda rapping. It's a distinct vibe that he gives off in those tracks that is absent in a lot of the mainstream LP stuff (BID bridge is cringeworthy and ALTNC verses are too). Returning to this style just on one song is very welcoming. Fiends by Xero maybe too. The flow and his word pronunciation and swagger remind me EXACTLY of hi verses Unreleased w/ The Visionaries. It's interesting he even reuses the Space Shuttle Challengers line SOMEWHAT from Dedicated. Those early Mike songs really kick ass, I fell in love with Mike's rapping on those early tracks ESPECIALLY High Voltage (Live in London 2001) on LPU 2. Maybe one of his best rap performances of all time, to me. I'd love to see more stuff like this. Damn, that High Voltage is really incredible....

No surprise it's Pitchfork. https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/mike-shinoda-post-traumatic/ "His clunky flex raps and flat crooning remain lifeless." "It’s jarring to hear Shinoda struggle with such fundamental elements of songwriting." "Throughout Post Traumatic, you can sense how unmoored Shinoda is without that spectacle. His chest doesn’t puff out as far as it did on Fort Minor. His compositions don’t detonate like his best work for Linkin Park. His bandmates aren’t there to lift him up when he falls short. He sounds abandoned."

Anyone have any favorite lyrics from the album? I guess my favorites are different than the ones that I relate to the most. The first verse of About You is badass to me. "This is that gather 'round it and wonder where I found it This is that wake up make your agent have your tour re-routed This is that drama comma pain and ain’t no way around it 'Cause somehow still it's hard to know what I can say about it I buckled up told myself to suck it up I was scared to death to get up there and spill my fucking guts I was saying pull your stupid self together buttercup Get it crackin' Back in Black until you have em Thunderstruck But" The whole Lift Off verse is really great. This is some old school Mike here. "I flow poems out to Saturn and past it Easy as a standard anti-gravity backflip Satellite tracking can’t map out my tactics I spit the same shit they split an atom in half with" This line in I.O.U. is great: "I'm ‘81 Reagan with that nonsense, miss me" I relate a lot to Over Again verse 2 and Hold It Together verse 1. "And all I wanted was to get a little bit of closure And every step I took I looked and wasn't any closer 'Cause sometimes when you say goodbye, yeah you say it Over and over and over and over" "She said, "Are you okay?" And I'm staring into space It's making her nervous cause one thing is certain I don't have my head on straight We're trying to get through each week On two or three hours of sleep I say to be patient That we're going to make it I have to admit that I'm struggling" And I'm still trying to decipher Can't Hear You Now. That track sounds pretty dark but I can't figure out exactly what it is about. It sounds like he's talking directly to Chester at parts.

You are right. Saw some great stuff lately. And Camden is next. I hope Apple posts the interview soon so we can get all that song information on Linkinpedia.

Finally my album review. First of all, let me say I am SO GLAD I waited to hear Ghosts and Running From My Shadow. I am inherently a little old school and I truly hate all the pre-release/instant grat tracks that artists do these days. Mike isn't a rare case, he is just going with the trend in the industry. It's fine, it keeps the hype for the album going and people LOVE it. It also works well if he's debuting songs gradually over time before the album release and he drops those studio versions. That is almost exactly what happened here with About You, Ghosts, and Running From My Shadow. The first three songs are just SO impactful to so many people, including me. The release of those three songs like really shook things up for me because of how emotional they were. In January I was probably doing the worst overall in the journey from July until now. I thought I was going to hit rock bottom in January... each month was a little worse than the previous one from July to August to September to October (the show was a great time but I had to get out of LA immediately the next day... really in a bad place mentally/emotionally). No one asked for any of this to happen to us (Mike either, obviously) and the impact that those first three songs had is immeasurable. They were raw as fuck, really well concocted (hell, Over Again went #1 in the charts), and emotional as it gets. I connect with those three so much and I might even say no release of music has ever affected me as much as the Post Traumatic EP. Coming from someone who truly listens to music to rock out, etc.... that EP is the first piece of musical work that I connect to emotionally so much and that has truly helped me in a bad place. I absolutely love Place To Start, Over Again, and Watching As I Fall. Over Again might be my favorite song Mike has ever written and I've easily listened to it hundreds of times over the course of six months. Nothing Makes Sense Anymore has a Thrice Alchemy Index vibe to it, I like it a lot. Dustin Kensrue, the singer of that band, wrote songs like this for the second half of that album. The music for that one might be the best one Mike has released for PT too. About You has both my favorite instrumental and my favorite rap verses on the album. Mike goes so hard, I love the aggressive style he has and he blows up on it live. It is such a shame Blackbear is on this one because the song completely tanks after the second verse and is almost unlistenable. Another chorus, verse, Mike breakdown bridge, and final chorus would be about 60x better. Blackbear takes away from the song huge for me but I still am a huge fan of the first half. Verse two COULD be my favorite verse on the album (hard to beat Over Again though). Brooding is cool. I am surprised it isn't in the live show yet too to open the encore or something. The second half reminds me of Space Station 2.0. Promises is where we see some great Mike production and you realize after About You that Mike has greatly evolved in his production capabilities. Shoutout to that little sample that sounds like Joe scratching, that might be Mike scratching a vinyl right there. Cool track. Crossing A Line is my least favorite song on the release, which is funny because I really dislike lead singles MOST of the time anyway. It just doesn't fit the vibes of the album to me and I am blown away they chose that as the lead single instead of literally anything else, especially Ghosts. CAL doesn't do much for me but I don't HATE it. It's a skippable track though. The lyrics actually aren't bad, it's just the instrumental and delivery. Hold It Together is another one you can connect to really well. The first verse is almost all of us in July and August. Darren from Mutemath sounds great on it too. At first I didn't like the chorus on it but I grew to like it a lot. The "struggling" line is sung nicely. This seems like an easy one to play live. Ghosts! The first time I heard this one was in context with the rest of the album. HOW was this not the lead single? Catchy as hell and a super fun instrumental. It delivered live, and everyone already knows it. I love the semi-fast delivery and the breakdown before the chorus. This is one where Mike can showcase his singing skills as a frontman and he does a good job with that. On Make It Up As I Go, it's hard to deal with K.Flay's voice immediately. It's just so radically different than anyone we've heard guest with them, lol. This song sounds like it came RIGHT from the Linkin Park vault, which it really did as it was for One More Light. In the Apple Store interview, Mike said he had to re record this one a LOT to get the verses right. The reason it wasn't on OML is because the chorus was there but he told Brad in order to fix the song up to standards for the OML album, it would take too long and would run into the album's deadline. Basically the WBR deadline is what caused this one to not be on the album. HOLY production after the second chorus - I LOVE that drop. And live it fucking explodes with the lights. And you've got this organ sound on the bridge too... all in all Mike really delivered a great one here. This one could easily be a single too. Catchy as hell. I blew up when I heard Lift Off. That VERSE deserves its own thread on LPLive and praise for decades. Mike delivers HARD right there. It sounds like some damn 1999 Mike Shinoda shit. I'm not even sure I heard this delivery and swagger-style on any Fort Minor song before this. A+ lyrics and that verse... fuck. 12/10 for me. Chino is flawless just like on Razors Out which tells me as weird as it might sound, a Mike and Chino EP would be very welcoming. His soaring vocals fit Mike's production very very well. Machine Gun Kelly I thought would be a total dud and even though he talks about drugs in his verse, it's extremely relatable to the song topic and fits. It's long and he does well, and doesn't wreck the song. PHEW - that could have really been a disaster. He is appropriate as a guest here because he was at the Bowl but also opened some Europe shows in 2017 (last LP tour with Chester, and had JUST talked to Chester in July about covering Metallica (!!!) in the LP encore starting in Mansfield. Damn. He was so fucked up from 7/20... I'm good with him being on this album. What a track. I.O.U. stands out even more than Lift Off with the topic of the album. You can tell both of those were originally Fort Minor songs, which Mike confirmed about I.O.U. at the Apple Store. He got super in depth about how hard he worked on the lyrics lol, he really is proud of this one. It was badass live. Super dark sounding beat and modern sounding hip hop song. It's great. "Play major, my minor's my main fort" - the crowd roared this at the show. Cool stuff to see a very different Mike song. Running From My Shadow. Shit, this was such a surprise when I listened that I rewinded it no less than 5 times on the spot. Mike goes hard on the verses and it's a HEAVY song for hip hop. Bridge fucking explodes. I am so, so glad I waited to hear it with the full album. This is an absolute jam - truly love it big time. And as a closer live? Fantastic. World's On Fire is about Anna and their kids. It starts pretty basic but I like the synth (keys?) that come in on it. Mike doesn't really write love songs outside of Where'd You Go but this is definitely one. It's good for the album because he's showing extreme appreciation to Anna for being there after July for him and also undoubtedly, his kids provide a huge highlight in his life. Think back to when after weeks of trying, Anna finally convinced him to go to lunch just down the street from his house. TMZ saw him and fucking assaulted him verbally (harshly) about Chester and Mike said it wrecked him. Anna is the true hero here as she is the one keeping Mike afloat behind the scenes. Quite appropriate to have a song about her on it. Can't Hear You Now. I love this track a lot. It's hard to figure out the exact lyrical meaning behind it so I need Mike to do a Genius annotation for it or a track-by-track. Good song to end the album and it's dark, but also in a way it's ending on a positive note. It's like a fucked up situation but then it has an overall positive message. As a whole the album really is something I loved instantly on the first listen. When have I been able to say that last? Minutes To Midnight. ATS I think is a damn masterpiece but it took me a very long time to fully grasp and appreciate that album. Living Things, The Hunting Party, and One More Light all have some duds in those. This album? I love it all. Mike did a phenomenal job. I don't know what I want more - another solo album like this or LP to come back in 2019-2020. Both would be exceptional and we are in a very great place where either is likely. One thing is for sure - Mike won't stop making music so we aren't going anywhere. He was writing all the time just on the NYC visit this past week. And he says he cut songs from the album too. He must have a substantial amount of songs in his arsenal just from recently (summer 2017 to now). Awesome job here and I look forward to whatever is next.

One thing I have really learned is that people who review the album early give CRAZY track descriptions. Derek from LPA actually did a great one with AltWire for 5 songs from The Hunting Party, I remember that one. And that one was spot on. But mostly they are really wack and describe the tracks badly lol. I think we've talked about this before Geki with people who do track by tracks or whatever before a leak really give some odd descriptions of tracks. I learned I can't trust that stuff at all. You know how songs grow on you and your favorites change all the time, especially for new albums? For Post Traumatic ASAP it was Lift Off, Ghosts, and Running From My Shadow. Then it was Make It Up As I Go with that nasty production drop after chorus 2. And now it's Can't Hear You Now. The lyrics are awesome. I agree that Nobody Can Save Me is dark as fuck. I actually think OML as a whole is one of their darkest albums but the pop sound was maybe deliberately chosen to bring a lighter tone to such a dark album. I really love NCSM (Mike can sing it with LP in the future, too). Anyway, yeah these lyrics are dark too. Mike says he's really having a hard time. I agree with the parts about where he might be talking about Chester. That's gotta be deliberate by Mike for the last song... really interesting. "I waited too long, I listened too much" - if that's about Chester then damn. Very emotional song. I love the synth and dark feel, and the lyrics are well done. Great closer.

It'll be great but it's going to be hard to beat NYC, maybe ever. It just is one of those lucky circumstances where the entire crowd was diehard fans and knew everything... I mean just around me it was so hard to hear Mike because everyone was rapping and singing everything so loudly. It was so much fun. I had no idea NYC had crowds like that for LP stuff... smaller venues in that city truly is a special deal. We saw an incredibly intimate performance with people who clearly came to throw down in the crowd lol. 10/10. At Camden I'm looking forward to hearing About You/Over Again/Papercut again. Besides that, I'm down with anything he will play. Set is probably going to be like Welcome, Castle Of Glass, Ghosts, About You/Over Again/Papercut, In The End, Crossing A Line, Remember The Name, Running From My Shadow. A+.

Next up! This will be shorter and in a bigger venue but I'm really looking forward to it due to how many people we have going. Lots of LP fans.

Aaaand biggest highlight of the show to me... maybe When They Come For Me. It was as if that was a top LP single or something. Or Watching As I Fall, the place really blows up on that one. Whole setlist is awesome, I actually don't dislike anything in the set. Crossing A Line is still my least favorite song of the show but it isn't bad.

Here's the rundown of the event. Upon arriving at the Apple Store, I see that Lorenzo really hooked the LPU up and gave them actual row 1-3 seats at this event... pretty sweet. Everyone else stood just behind them but I mean even then, you are like 5-7 feet from Mike max. It was super intimate, maybe around 100 people max. The video portion of the event... Rob Markman said Apple was going to show us "exclusive new music videos" so I thought, "wow Mike already has a few new ones done, this is going to be cool" but it was just Crossing A Line and Ghosts lol. The interview was alright, it wasn't GREAT but it wasn't bad. Mike went more in depth on Place To Start, Over Again, Make It Up As I Go, and IOU. He got in depth with lyrics and the stories behind those songs, more than he has in interviews lately. It's worth a listen so I hope Apple posts it soon. The questions from the LPU were not great picks by Rob, he just asked what Mike's favorite song on the album was and the other one was which one was hardest to make (I guess that one is ok). I was hoping for a little more detailed stuff. The first song of the performance was Crossing A Line. The crowd was super loud for only 100 people but I guess that's no surprise in NYC as the show at Gramercy was insanity. Then Mike asked how many songs he could still perform due to the time and they told him ONE. He was asap like "oh no I'm at least playing two more" lol. RFMS was a surprise to see as I thought he'd play Ghosts next. He was rapping it literally like in peoples faces and he went into the "crowd" for the first part to get people to sing. And after the bridge he basically jumped over the three rows of seats, went to the standing crowd, and everyone swarmed him to do the last part of the song. He performed Castle of Glass last and made a joke about "inciting a riot in an Apple Store" lmao. After Castle he walked to the front of the seats (literally like 2 steps) and told everyone to come in for a group hug, which of course made the place explode and he took pics/signed stuff for people. That continued until they had to usher him out the back door to get to The Today Show, they literally walked out and drove off ASAP due to how much stuff he had booked for the day. Cool to see him constantly interacting with fans at every single performance. I'm glad to have gone to this because I was kind of bummed I didn't get to see Fallon live in person at the Rockefeller Center, but this made up for it just for the fact that I'll never be this close to an actual performance again.

Wow where to even begin for this? This is easily one of my top rated LP events ever and I finally was able to see something in a super small venue. Except for this one, it was like the whole 500 person crowd was LPU. It was the LOUDEST I have ever heard a crowd at LP in terms of singing the songs, etc. I was really shocked. Everyone knew literally everything except the Sorry For Now verse. Mike at the Meet & Greet was super chill, signing anything and everything for people. The legendary Bojan photographer who shot the last European Tour and got those epic shots of Chester was there to shoot the show and do the M&G photos, which are like as HQ as it gets. Mike was like, helping people design tattoos, all sorts of stuff. Lorenzo runs a great operation with these M&Gs because it has like two phases. First, Mike comes by and signs whatever you want and he will legit spend 2-3 minutes with each person if you want to. Some people don't say much but some say a lot. Then, you get an individual photo with him after that so you technically "meet Mike" two times. It's efficient, fast, but still intimate and you get actual time with Mike. I know it's much more different to do that with an entire band, but this is fantastic. Renew your LPU, $10, if you want to do one... I loved it. In line for the M&G we heard him soundcheck Watching As I Fall, WTCFM, About You, Papercut (no Over Again, but same version of Papercut we heard), and Make It Up As I Go. No IOU. The fans outside were cool as hell. LP has established such a "community" vibe that you've got people who have never met and are attending the show that are like becoming new friends, adding each other on Facebook, sharing LP stories. It's really cool to see, totally unlike other lines I've been in for shows. The show started right at 8:30, which is shocking to me because Mike was still meeting fans at 8:10 downstairs in the M&G lol. I said no way he begins at 8:30, but he did. The extended Welcome intro is great, with Mike doing the whole "New York, you guys ready? I can't fucking hear you, I said are you ready?" and rolling out in a hoodie Fort Minor style. From the first line of Welcome until the end of the show the crowd was all over the songs. Place To Start was good and then it was like a bomb dropped on Watching As I Fall, you just hear people yell "EXCUSE ME WHILE I KISS THE SKY" and then roar the chorus. Mike immediately said the crowd was super loud and he was very grateful to be playing his first ever headlining solo show that night after all of those random events lately. WAIF might have had the best crowd reaction all night, I mean it might as well have been a #1 Billboard single to all 500 fans in the venue. I love the new Castle version. WTCFM exploded HUGE, the crowd blew up massively... I put an awesome video on Instagram. I'll share it to the LPLive IG soon. That might be my favorite song of the show... it was wild. Whole crowd knew every word. I had no idea people liked the song that much. Mike fucking rolls across the stage hard on that one, like it was the ATS era. He can technically perform more of the song but I see why he cut it there... the part at the very end is all Chester so I bet he doesn't want to do that, and cutting it just after the bridge is awkward. HHH came out of nowhere after a speech about the Parkland kid David being at the Fallon show the night before. He wanted Mike to wear a ribbon but Mike said it was too political for him and he didn't want to do it, but felt really bad since the kids went through that and he told the crowd to not follow in his footsteps in that regard because he feels like he made the wrong choice basically. He forgot some of the words which is expected since it wasn't on the setlist but it was a nice treat. He had a speech about the modern political climate being fucked up and then after HHH said strongly, "do you hear what I am saying?" Then the moment we were waiting for - Kenji. I thought he was going to drop it from the set and wow it was A+ - I can't believe Fort Minor didn't play it in 2005-2006. Watching him with his rap "moves" and all going at it on stage is badass. "Prisoners of war in their own FUCKING country what for?" Roads Untraveled was next and sounded great. I'm glad to have seen that song twice since October. By the time Ghosts came on I forgot it was even in the setlist anymore LOL I thought he was going to put it after Castle aka 3 songs prior so by then I just assumed it wasn't in the set. Good song, a lot of people had the Boris sock puppets made and had them up for that. Mike said "you guys bring your stuff for this song?" lmao WFTE/WYG was good, the crowd went off when the WFTE sample dropped. Sorry For Now... really glad to see that and Mike sounded WAY better than he did at Identity singing it. He needs to get closer to the mic and fully embrace that song. Give it some time and it will be even better but I see big improvement already. The new verse was good - he sounded weird doing Chester's verse so this one is much better. That'd be a good LPU demo someday. Crossing A Line was next. Then In The End. And after that was one of my favorite moments of the set. About You goes hard with the verses and Mike just blows up on stage on those. Big energy. It sucks he cut the Over Again first verse but it's just too emotional for him it seems. Papercut... everyone started JUMPING around me when he started rapping the first verse. When he held the mic out to sing Chester's parts it was so loud. The verse and chorus on that, I mean the crowd was louder than Mike. He went into the crowd on it too. At the end of the song he held his head down for 10+ seconds like Chester used to do after Catalyst, then he said the song was really hard for him. I think he has Chester's vocals in his ears on that one... I mean if it's too difficult then don't perform it, we don't like REQUIRE Papercut in the set. Make It Up As I Go was good without KFlay - the crowd just sings the chorus and they all KNEW it which was good. Good Goodbye was hilarious because the SECOND the intro sample dropped the fucking crowd was like doing the OHHH OHH OH OHHH OHHH singalong and clapping, just like on OML Live. Very hardcore crowd, they knew exactly what to do. Then they knew the verse obviously but after the verse they fucking ROARED the chorus. Mike was like "holy shit"...was very shocked and held the mic out for fans to do it, before he went into BIO. The song is better that way but can only be done at headlining shows where the fans know the chorus and can sing it loudly. Encore was a lengthy break, like at least 5-6 mins. He came out, said "I'm going to play something not on the setlist and I am going to call an audible" - bam IOU debut with some badass lights. Really good stuff. He said at Apple that he didn't even rehearse the song at all and no one on the crew knew he was going to play it. He just decided to add it during the encore break. Remember The Name was cool, then RFMS just goes off hard live. Mike fucking crowdsurfed. And then he just stayed down in the crowd to end the show, so like 100 people got pics and autographs afterward. I love it, I told him at the M&G that RFMS is an excellent closing song too. All in all a totally great show with an insane amount of energy from the crowd that I didn't see at all in any videos from the previous shows. That was a very special show with so many people who were just diehard fans. Check out the videos. Sometimes a crowd can make or break a show but when they are that into it, it makes it so fucking good. Afterwards we rushed to Madison Square Garden to see 30 Seconds To Mars play 2 songs ($6 lol) which was cool. Hope to see a USA tour soon!

Set: Crossing A Line Running From My Shadow (shocked, thought it would be Ghosts) Castle Of Glass Ill review the event when I get home tomorrow. Had a good time and Im not bummed about missing Fallon anymore. Intimate performance, I mean maybe 4 feet away from Mike max. Really cool.

Amazing show. Huge set. I had so much fun and the crowd was WILD.

The backing studio vocal track bothers me for some reason. I feel like Mike doesnt need it below his live vocals.

Set will be around 15-16~ songs. No opener. I bet he doesnt debut anything else.

Ahaha I think that guy is in jail. Havent heard from him in ages. Headed to NYC now, really looking forward to it.

I thought more about Petrified, In Stereo, and Cigarettes not being in the set. It's an impossible balance to fit all the songs. Rotating sets is obviously the only answer but I'm not going to say Mike SHOULD do that, hell i'm just grateful he is even touring.

I think that's because it's so much harder to do the show as one person versus a band. If you had Phoenix, a drummer, a DJ, and a guitar player up there with Mike, you'd have a different sounding show. LP at the Hollywood Bowl obviously sounded much more complete playing Roads Untraveled than Mike does solo.