Astat

The piano is in the studio version...and the piano/drums have been played at every performance.

Probably not Pooch's problem. You most likely got an incomplete download of those 2 files from downloads.linkinpark.com. It's happened to other people before, and there's really no way of knowing it's happened without manually checking every file since they don't include a .md5 with the downloads (something I think they should really start doing). I think I'm going to buy Herning and see if the same thing happens to me, I'll let you know what happens. On a completely unrelated note, I noticed that they've fixed the issue with Berlin where Wisdom, Justice, and Love/Iridescent were one mp3 file originally, so I might re-download that one as well. *Edit* Just finished re-downloading Herning, and the same 2 photos are corrupt for me. Obviously a problem at downloads.linkinpark.com's end. Not too happy that I just spent $10.74 on nothing, but at least nobody else has to worry about doing the same thing now.

The download of Herning that's up at "the usual place" is corrupt, or at least the file chester.guitar.jpg is. Haven't had a chance to check on the mp3 files to see if there are any skips, but that one photo was definitely a corrupt download from downloads.linkinpark.com (the photo doesn't load completely).

That post you're talking about was in reference to live performances. I also never claimed that the band doesn't use Auto-Tune, I just said how it annoys me when people call things Auto-Tune that aren't Auto-Tune.

Possibly, but then again, there are backing vocal parts on the studio versions of older songs that they're still playing live that have always been left out in the past, and they aren't using the other members for those, so I'm thinking they'll just use Brad/Joe/Phoenix's backing vocals strictly for ATS songs now.

Herning is up now...no idea how long it's been there, but apparently I'm the first one to notice?

It's apparently all 6 members of the band on the "amen" part on the studio version. The "with hands held high..." part at the end is Mike layered 3 times on the studio version, but it's him, Chester, and Phoenix live. Phoenix sings the middle of the 3 harmony parts at the end of the live version.

You guys are aware that LP has been using Auto-Tune since Hybrid Theory, right? Antares (the company that makes Auto-Tune) has been included in the "Linkin Park uses" section of their album credits since the beginning of their career.

For what it's worth, the "unconfirmed" February 13th date in Cincinnati was on the list of shows in the email that the street team just sent out.

Clearly fake. Yeah, the one on Frat Party would probably be the earliest version. I'm not sure when the 8-track demo was released, but the 9-track was January of 2000. I don't think She Couldn't and Be Yourself are related, I think I made a post right after She Couldn't came out that said something about the guitar parts being kind of similar, but they sound different enough that I don't think they're related. The "legal reasons" Mike referred to likely have to do with the sample of "B-Boy Document '99" by High and Mighty that's used throughout the song. They probably never got legal clearance to use that sample. I also can't help but suspect that it probably falls under the category of "the band won't talk about anything Warner doesn't want them to talk about."

I actually legit lol'd at this. I agree with whoever posted earlier that "Does it Offend You, Yeah?" is one of the worst band names ever. I don't mind The Prodigy too much, and Pendulum/DIOYY? show some potential, but none of them are acts that I have any interest in. I've endured far worse to see LP (Hawthorne Heights anyone?), but I really wish they'd get some better opening bands. Then again, part of me is also just bitter that I missed the LP/Coheed and Cambria/Chiodos tour, because C&C is one of my other favorite bands.

Looks like between tickets for at least 2, possibly 3 people to St. Paul and a trip back home to Ohio for Christmas, Astat's bank account is going to be thoroughly exhausted in the near future.

The Xero tape was probably recorded in late 1996-early 1997, but it was definitely released in 1997. The Stick and Move demo on LPU9 was done AFTER the one on the Xero demo. The only part of Stick and Move that was recycled in Runaway was the guitar riff and the general feel of the beat, and the LPU9 demo is probably a transitional piece that was done after they had scrapped the original song, but before they had built up a new one. And yes, Chester re-recorded vocals over the top of an instrumental version of the Xero demo, that was his audition tape for the band. We even know the exact date that happened - March 20th, 1999, because Chester's stated he spent his birthday in a studio recording the vocals for his audition tape. Yep, it's pretty reasonable to assume that Sad and Oh No are the earliest versions of By Myself and Points of Authority, as they're the most undeveloped demos of both songs. I'd say Oh No was probably recorded around the same time as Sad, which would likely be early 1999, right around the same time Chester joined the band. Anything with Chester singing on it has to be from 1999 or later, as he joined the band in the spring of that year. Mark Wakefield is credited as a writer of A Place for My Head, Forgotten, and Runaway (as well as all subsequent versions of those songs on Reanimation), because those songs date back to the Xero days. There's also a BMI catalog entry for Pictureboard that credits him as a writer of that track too. That Xero live setlist going around is FAKE. It's been confirmed that In the End was written by Mike one night when he stayed at their rehearsal space alone, which was after Chester had joined the band and the name had been changed to Hybrid Theory. So Carousel was never called Explode either (nor was Part of Me called The Team). I'd assume Mark will be credited as a writer on Coal as well, just because of the timeframe it dates from, and LP has always been pretty consistent about crediting all the members of the band as writers of songs, even if they don't perform on them. Yeah, that's the painting on the wall in the Papercut music video, it's an updated version of the Xero cover. Nobody has any idea what happened to that painting though, one of the crew members on the set of the video took it home after the video shoot was done, and it hasn't been seen since.

I don't think Second to None would work, the tempos are far enough apart that Mike would have to really spit fast to get that one to work. Bleed it Out is a bit tougher of a song to mash verses up with than Points of Authority was just because it's at a considerably faster tempo. Mike's mostly limited to verses that are at faster tempos to begin with, which is why he's sticking to stuff like Reading My Eyes and APFMH (as well as Papercut and There They Go, which he's done in the past). Forgotten would work pretty nicely over BIO though.

Maybe a bit slowed-down, but I can sort of hear a resemblence to the bridge of Numb with the double snare hits. I think that's probably just coincidental though.

F1 isn't nearly as popular over here for a couple reasons, one being that NASCAR and IndyCar are huge here and kind of saturate the TV market (NASCAR alone gets coverage from ABC, ESPN, Fox, TNT, and SpeedTV at various points throughout the year), the other being that since the F1 series doesn't race in the U.S., a lot of the races end up airing really late at night/early in the morning because of the time difference. It still has a pretty sizable following though, enough so that most of the races are televised live on SpeedTV.

The South American shows will be put up after the European shows are all mixed and made available. They did advance promotion for the DSPs being sold on the European tour, but there really wasn't any for the South American shows, so the European shows take first priority. I'd imagine the South American shows will be up around the end of the month, probably right before they head to Australia.

The relationship between Oh No and the final version of Points of Authority is clearly obvious...listen to the beat that comes in at 0:50 in Oh No, then listen to the drum beat in the chorus/bridge of Points of Authority (0:50-1:15, 1:36-2:56). They're identical. The metallic "ping" noise on the snare hits totally stands out in both tracks. Not to mention that they're at identical tempos and the 3-note riff based around Eb, E, and Db is present in both versions (the one in Oh No is just an earlier version of the riff, which makes sense, as Mike confirmed years ago that the guitar riff in Points of Authority is a chopped-up and re-arranged sampling of an original riff Brad played). And as I already said, instrumental or not, a demo is a demo, and most of the band's demo recordings, particularly prior to 2007, probably exist solely in instrumental form, as vocals were always the last thing they put on a track. If a song isn't a finished idea, it's probably not going to have vocals. They said we'd get 10 unreleased demos, we got 9 (with the 10th being debatable, as it IS different from the previously released version of the WID remix). It was confirmed practically from the beginning when Pretend to Be was released on A Decade Underground that it would also be one of the LPUX tracks. A Decade Underground is supposed to be a sampler of LPU tracks from throughout the history of LPU, so how else would it have made sense to release it on that compilation?

It wouldn't be any worse than Snoop Dogg's crowd on PR04, trust me.

Like I've already said, it's not EXACTLY the same as the Distorted Remix...probably about 95-98% identical though. Anyway, I typed up a review, so here goes: Unfortunate - Pretty standard-issue intro track, sounds fairly reminiscent of some of the concert intros Joe used in the 2000-early 2004 period. The strings sound like they're from the same sample bank Mike used when he did Drawing. Nothing wrong with this song, it's a nice little track, but we've heard this type of stuff out of LP plenty of times before. What We Don't Know - Sounds like this is another fully-finished Minutes to Midnight b-side! That makes what, 4 that we've gotten (No Roads Left, Across the Line, Blackbirds, What We Don't Know)? In that case, there should still be one other one lying around somewhere, unless the original versions of Not Alone or Pretened to Be were among the final 17 tracks they recorded. Anyway, I like this song a lot better than Pretend to Be. There's some pretty cool instrumentation going on, and it has a great melody. The lyrics aren't the greatest, but still a nice performance from Chester. Oh No - This is kind of in the same vein as Stick and Move/Runaway, there's barely any resemblance to the final track, but it's still cool to hear where it came from. The heavy beat that comes in about a third of the way through the track is clearly what they retained and built the rest of the song around. I Have Not Begun - I love how this song comes across like one big, rambling verse from Mike. I know there's a repeating "chorus" part but his delivery still never lets up. It's like he just picked up the mic and spilled everything that was on his mind. It's a bit faster than Mike's normal delivery too, it's been quite a while since I heard him rap like this. The echoing vocals at the beginning/end of the song remind me a LOT of the effect he used on the intro of Do What We Did. And like I've already mentioned, this continues a trend of Mike debuting unreleased verses in a live setting and then putting the full songs they're from on LPU CDs (Dedicated, Standing in the Middle). Pale - I know a lot of people are in love with this song, and I can see why, it goes into some pretty epic territory. But I think it's a bit too slow of a buildup, it gets a little monotonous in spots. And then when the heavy guitars finally do come in, I feel like it still could've been taken up another notch. This is one of those tracks that I really wish they would've kept working on, because it definitely shows a ton of potential. Pretend to Be - I've reviewed this song before, and my opinion hasn't really changed. I don't think it's anything special for the most part, some fairly interesting instrumentation (Rob in particular shines on this track), but easily forgettable from a lyrical standpoint, and unlike What We Don't Know, Chester's vocal performance isn't very redeeming either - the melody is pretty dull, which is actually a rarity for a Linkin Park song. Still nice to have another fully-finished song on the CD though. Divided - This track reminds me a bit of A.15 from Mike's VMA score tracks, or at least the intro does. In fact, the whole track is very reminiscent of the style of those VMA tracks. It sounds like this could easily be an all-Mike track, so it wouldn't surprise me if this was something he was working on around the same time he did the VMA tracks and some of the Fort Minor stuff. What I've Done (M. Shinoda Remix) - As I already pointed out, this isn't TOTALLY identical to the Distorted Remix we already had, although it is very similar. Regardless, it's still easily the biggest throwaway/filler track on the CD, and it really makes me wonder if this was a last-minute substitution for another track that they couldn't get clearance for or something. But having this track on the CD did make me realize that this is a much better remix than I remembered it being. I hadn't listened to it in probably a year or so, so at least this CD got me to listen to it again and give it a second chance. Coal - Haha, this track is so weird, I love it! It sounds like a mashup of a bunch of sound effects from 90s horror films or something like that. I have a feeling a lot of people will be let down by this track, as it's really monochromatic, but it's probably one of the most unique tracks we've ever gotten from them, and hey, let's face it - this is the only song that's surfaced from this far back other than the 4 tracks on the Xero tape. This song is 13 years old! The novelty of it alone makes it worth having. Halo - Hmm, I can't decide if I like this song or Pale better. Pale has more meat on it, but I can't help but love the distorted guitar harmonics that make up the "melody" on this one. This is a lot more interesting than some of the other stuff they were coming up with around this time, I wonder why this song didn't get finished for Meteora? Oh, wait...it doesn't follow the verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/chorus structure. Warner and Don Gilmore never would've allowed outside-the-box thinking like this to appear on THEIR album!

I know he uses 2 of them for the first part of The Catalyst. Other than that, not sure.

http://lplive.net/shows/20101107.php - Jornada Del Muerto wasn't played at this show.

An update on something I posted previously: The rack of 5 "timbale-like" drums that Rob has added onto his kit are actually just additional trigger pads for samples, they're just built into acoustic drum shells to make them look like real drums. He has a total of 9 trigger pads on his set now: The 2 regular Pintech ones that he's always had next to his hi-hat, a third one above his ride cymbal on his right (previously a third Pintech pad, but it's now in a drum shell), the big rack of 5 of them to the left of his hi-hat, and one more regular Pintech pad that sits parallel to the ground below those. Also, I can confirm 100% that Rob is NOT using a double bass pedal. There are plenty of overhead shots of him on the EMAs footage that show he only has one "dot" on his bass drum for a single beater. As for Mike, the second microphone he uses for vocoder effects is a Shure (I think the rest of the band's vocal mics are Sennheise'sr now), it looks like an SM57 but it could really be anything from their "7" line. He also has some kind of effects processor on the ground next to his sustain pedal for his keyboard, I'm assuming he uses that to control the handful of vocal effects he uses. And as for the theremin, it's definitely a Moog Etherwave, and I know he at least uses it on New Divide and When They Come For Me for various distorted/filtered synth effects.

Yup! The Wake Up Show appearance was sometime in late 2001/early 2002 I want to say, and Standing in the Middle was mashed up with Nobody's Listening at the handful of UK shows they played in November 2003.

Probably not the first show of the tour, but with the way they typically route their U.S. arena tours, St. Paul is usually one of the dates near the beginning of the tour.