Astat

As fickle and incapable of being satisfied as the majority of Linkin Park fans are these days, I find it questionable whether or not they really deserve to win this.

Mike and Chester's parts were freshly recorded for the album, but they may have been written before that. Mike's verse sounds a lot like some of the early Fort Minor stuff he was writing around that period (Strange Things/Start it All Up), and Chester's part sounds a lot like a leftover verse/chorus idea that might have been written for Meteora and never finished. That whole song sounds like a bunch of random pieces of music thrown together, so it's fairly likely they came in with that material already written. There really isn't a whole lot of info out there about this song...the band never made any kind of statement regarding its release back in 2004 (they usually do some kind of press for their collabs, this was a strange exception), and the only time a band member has even acknowledged its existence was in a post made by Mike on the Fort Minor message boards, where he posted the lyrics to his verse.

After thinking about it for a long while, I've come to the conclusion that the LPU would've been just fine if they had added the LPU Summits (and stuff like the ATS album release show/laser show) to the previously existing site/membership/"experience." I would've even been fine with them jacking the price up for that. My problem with the new LPU isn't the cost or the fact that the Summits aren't accessible to a lot of LPU members, it's the fact that they completely fucked up everything that was already good about the old LPU. 90% of the LPU9 membership was stuff that didn't need to be addressed whatsoever - what came with the membership, what the website consisted of, what kind of opportunities were presented to members throughout the year. All LPU needed to do was fix some nagging issues (the outdated technical support system that never got you anywhere, the fact that the e-mail system still didn't work for some members, and the login system being a bit complicated), and preferably come up with a way to bring the band closer to their fans (which they accomplished with LPUX - the Summits, the video chat, and the improved M&G system are all great). There was no reason to mess with anything else. If it ain't broke, don't fix it - well, they went and "fixed" just about everything. If LPU were to revert back to the pre-LPUX website/system and retain all the new stuff that was introduced this year, I would gladly drop $60 on a membership tomorrow.

99% sure that there were never any stems posted with the original entry.

Mike said this same thing about "finishing" the LPU demos and his VMA score tracks, and nothing else ever came of it, so I wouldn't get my hopes up that this will turn out any differently.

His headphones aren't wired, the only thing he wears under them is ear plugs.

Probably not without purchasing the rights to the recordings first.

This could mean a lot, it could mean nothing. It depends on a couple factors: -Whether or not the new owners keep the old management team in place. Considering Tom Whalley just retired in September and a new management team was put in place at that point, I'd say they'd most likely be retained. -What kind of wording is in LP's contract. Generally, higher-ups can't change a contract without consulting with the other party/parties involved first, otherwise they'd effectively be voiding the contract. However, some contracts have clauses in them that are tailored to this specific situation - if Warner's ownership changes, there might be a clause in LP's contract that would keep them bound to it, provided that the new ownership doesn't change the existing terms. I'd imagine a lot of Warner's major artists have this type of deal in place, because if they didn't, their entire roster could conceivably walk away if the company changed hands, which would be no good. -And there's always the biggest "what if" involved - Even if LP was legally permitted to walk away should the company change hands, who's to say that they would? Ever since LP re-negotiated their contract with Warner about 5 years ago, the relationship between the two sides has seemed pretty amicable.

There are plenty of other videos where you can see him playing that "one note" part (it's actually 2 notes - an octave interval on E), so my only guess is that the part where the drums drop out is sampled. Brad's the only guy in the band who doesn't wear in-ear monitors, so he can't hear the click track - he relies totally on Rob and wedge monitors on the side of the stage to keep in time. I forget what show it was, but there was one occasion where Rob played a prank on Brad by getting up from his drums and walking away during Bleed it Out, and Brad totally lost track of the tempo. I think he did play the piano throughout that section during some earlier performances, because I know I've heard him get off track there before, so they probably made a change at some point. Also, yay for more "ZOMG THEY AREN'T ACTUALLY PLAYING THEIR INSTRUMENTS" crap.

The tour at this point is probably going to go Europe > Asia (no PR this year, Singapore could very well be towards the end of the Asian leg), and then a break for a couple months to work on new material. I'd imagine we'll see them pop up again towards the end of the year for a few shows in the U.S. (I'd honestly be shocked if they didn't do KROQ Almost Acoustic Xmas again), then depending on how far along they are on making album #5, they'll either do another round of dates or go back into the studio.

Comment posted by Lethal on his Soundcloud page... I'll leave it at that. I don't particularly care what someone who ceased to be relevant to the mainstream music scene 7 years ago has has to say.

WTCFM is only on the digital version of the BITS single (iTunes, etc.). This has actually been a fairly common practice for LP in recent years, the physical single will have 2 tracks while the digital will have 3. A couple of the MTM singles were the same way.

Okay, seriously? This is like the third time various Linkin Park members have had their names associated with bit parts in this movie, and every time, they've been subsequently removed. I honestly think there's no truth to this, someone just has a strange obsession with editing this movie's IMDB entry with false information.

That deal was something they did when they launched the previous version of the DSP website (sometime in 2009, I believe). It may have even been an LPU-only promotion, I really don't remember. But yeah, that's probably been gone for a while now.

Not that I can think of off the top of my head...I suppose you could also include "What I've Done (M. Shinoda Remix)" on the list, as it differs slightly from the Distorted Remix version, but they're still pretty much the same remix.

I think they should just mute out the speech on the DSP releases. I'd rather have the song still be there and be missing the speech than have it omitted completely. I'm WAY too big of a completist to be content with downloading shows that are missing an entire song that I know was recorded in the first place. I like the idea someone else mentioned earlier in the thread too, have someone re-record the speech and use that instead. But that's something that would most likely have to wait until after the tour is over, so the instrumental version would be the best short-term solution.

The Ill Audio and Digitalomat remixes of The Catalyst were also officially released through LP.com.

The crowd's reaction and how much the band enjoys playing it really doesn't have anything to do with the song sounding like shit live, which it does. I think the only song that sounds as bad live as W&K does right now is BITS, but BITS is already improving considerably. *Edit* On a completely different note: http://www.xcelenergycenter.com/videoplaye...;MM_FILE_ID=267 Proshot clips of Papercut and Lying From You from St. Paul!

Well then. I've had a personal policy for the last few years that I don't download incomplete shows (it stems from a bunch of really annoying situations I dealt with during my trading days), so looks like I'm not bothering with DSPs anymore until the band stops playing WJ&L. *Edit* They're even pulling the song from past DSP releases on http://downloads.linkinpark.com. It was originally released in the Sunrise and Tampa DSPs but is nowhere to be found on the website anymore.

Yeah, I couldn't see it from where I was but that's pretty sweet that it ended up on the stage! And I finally watched my videos from the show, that sample that played at the beginning of WFTE scared the crap out of Brad and he didn't start playing the piano part until the drums came in. Yep, that would be you! A couple other things to add to the discussions going on here... -W&K being dropped: I can understand why. Compared to how a lot of the other ATS songs are translating live, W&K is really sub-par at the moment. Mike sounds out of breath on it a lot, Chester's always off with the timing on the sampled parts he plays, and they're sampling the majority of the guitar/bass so Brad and Phoenix stand around doing nothing for a good portion of the song. Yes, it's a high-energy song that a lot of fans like, but so is Blackout, and Blackout sounds a lot better live at this point. I doubt W&K is gone for good, it's still a potential single at some point, after all. They just need to work on it. -The encore: I honestly don't have a problem with the encore, although it started off kind of slow. Each song in that encore has more energy in it than the one before it. Generally I like encores that start off with a high-energy song, and Iridescent by itself would've been a terrible choice to open an encore, but with WJ&L before it, it really worked in my opinion. Sure beats My December/Pushing Me Away piano versions and Breaking the Habit as the first encore in some of the 2008 sets.

Based on crowd reaction alone, I think the following songs fall into the "MUST be played live" category: Bleed it Out One Step Closer In the End Numb What I've Done And arguably Breaking the Habit/New Divide. I still can't stand Numb as a song, but I have no problem with it remaining a live staple. They perform it well, and it typically gets the second loudest reaction of the night at any given show, behind Bleed it Out.

Meh. My footage isn't particularly high quality to begin with, I'd rather not if at all possible. I'll throw my videos up on my Youtube either way, whether they use my footage or not.

Well shit, apparently the video uploader for this only accepts .mov video files. They aren't going to get many submissions when they rule out the majority of people who film video at any given show... *Edit* It also accepts anything in a .zip file...I threw my footage into one, hopefully that'll work for them, but I'm not holding my breath.

Hey guys, back from the show. Had an AWESOME time. Met up with a couple guys from LPA (Ben and Zane), they were pretty cool. Zane got his guitar signed by the band. I met an LPL member in line for the M&G, had a great conversation with him but I'm totally blanking on his name, sorry man! If you could post here, that'd be great. The band was late getting to the show, we lined up for the M&G at 7:30 and then were told their flight hadn't even landed yet. It was around 8 before we got in, and they originally said the M&G was only going to be with Mike because the rest of the band was still on the way, but they all ended up showing up. M&G was actually held in a restaurant type section in the basement/backstage area. I ended up getting the setlist from the show I went to on PR08 signed. Brad was really interested in it, he actually spent a bit looking over it. The guy next to me was having a conversation with Phoenix about the Super Bowl, I chimed in on that about how I'm a ironically a Steelers fan from Cleveland, and Joe responded to that with the quote of the night - "Oh, the Cleveland steamers, they're MY favorite team!" I told Joe I was excited to see the new video, someone else in the M&G asked him about Transformers 3 and he said it will be Iridescent in the film. I asked Rob about how he has his trigger pads built into real drum shells now, he said it's just to make it look cooler, said he'd like to get lights put inside his drums too. I told him it makes his drum set look bigger, "not Neil Peart huge, but it's getting there!" Chester responded to that by saying "we're working on it, that's our ultimate goal." Finally I asked Mike about being pulled up to play Faint (gave Pez a shout-out in the process), and he said that the band voted on it before the tour and decided they weren't doing it at all for this leg of U.S. shows (I honestly think with all the regulations in the U.S. these days, it might be a liability issue). Anyway, the show was really good, they had a barricade that split the floor into two sections, we started off right up against the barricade in the rear section, but got up in the front section during the encore and wound up about 20 feet from the stage. Setlist was as follows: 01. The Requiem/The Radiance (w/Mario Savio speech) 02. Papercut 03. Lying From You 04. Given Up (w/short extended outro) 05. What I've Done (w/new piano outro) 06. Empty Spaces 07. When They Come For Me 08. No More Sorrow (w/long intro) 09. Jornada Del Muerto 10. Waiting For the End 11. Burning in the Skies 12. Numb (piano transition into...) 13. The Radiance (live version) 14. Breaking the Habit (w/acapella ending) 15. Fallout 16. The Catalyst 17. Crawling 18. One Step Closer (w/extended outro) 19. Bleed it Out (w/APFMH over bridge, drum solo, and extended outro) Encore 20. Wisdom, Justice, and Love 21. Iridescent 22. Shadow of the Day 23. In the End 24. New Divide 25. Faint (w/extended outro) There were a bunch of interesting little details about the show that I remember... -The new piano outro to WID really caught me off guard. I don't know if they've done that at any other shows on this tour, but it faded into the crickets and stuff at the beginning of Empty Spaces, probably went on for about 20-30 seconds. -No Spanish part from Brad on WTCFM, just the siren on the megaphone. -Before Jornada Del Muerto, Mike asked anybody who had cameras to pull them out, in reference to the live video of Waiting For the End that's being filmed using footage from the Chicago and St. Paul shows. -There were some technical issues starting with Jornada Del Muerto, the long "droning" keyboard note at the beginning of the song cut out at one point. -At the beginning of WFTE right when the intro sample kicked in, there was a really loud bass noise that obviously wasn't supposed to be there, not sure what that was about but I'd bet it'll get fixed on the DSP. -Brad's guitar didn't work for the first few notes of Burning in the Skies, but other than that, the song sounded really good for a U.S. debut. -Crawling had a lot of sample issues, Joe played the first note of the intro, then stopped, and they restarted it. Then, during the verses, some of his samples were either being played back at the wrong pitch or just didn't sound right (hard to tell with how loud it was in there), but his tech came out and was working on his gear for a solid minute or so during the song. -Bleed it Out with APFMH in the bridge and the drum solo totally DESTROYS One Step Closer as a closing type of song (last song before encore or end of the show), I don't care what anybody else says. People went NUTS for APFMH. -The encore really threw me for a loop, but I think it worked pretty well, it had a constant energy build over the course of those 5 songs. -Just noticed this for all the gear heads, Chester's playing Fender Telecaster on Iridescent now. -Joe and Phoenix were fucking around with each other during Shadow of the Day, Joe kept putting his mic up to Phoenix like he was trying to make him sing, then later on in the song they were clapping each other's hands together, haha. -I don't know if this was intentional (it might transition better into Faint that way), but Joe didn't play the last note in the New Divide outro. -Brad threw in some licks in the Faint outro solo I've never heard him play before, up until this point I've always heard him stick with variations on that tremolo picking part starting around the 12th fret on the D string, but he was all over the neck tonight. Another random observation: The LPU M&G passes still say "A Thousand Suns World Tour 2010" on them. Whoops. Anyway, I had a great time. Definitely the most fun I've had at an LP show, this is the 4th time I've seen them. The people running the M&G (I can't remember their names other than Hugo) were awesome, I was a little worried about the atmosphere of the M&G based on some past stories, but they made it really fun. I also have to be at work in...6 hours and 17 minutes. I think I'm gonna try to sleep now.

We'll see...apparently I have some competition amongst the M&G participants tonight. Somebody might beat me to it.