Astat

This sentence pretty much confirms that this is fake - LP and The Kooks were previously combined together for an MTV World Stage episode, and LP's portion was just the Transformers 2 premiere performance. I'm almost positive this is just a re-airing of that. I mean really, what are the odds that they'd combine the same 2 bands together for 2 different performances on the same program just a year apart?

The songs are in the same key, the parts mesh well together, and the band hadn't played the original Pushing Me Away in years at the time he started doing it?

This kind of stuff from you again, eh? Was it really necessary to mock me? It's not my fault that you fall into the same category as 90% of the rest of Linkin Park fans and your musical horizons consist of Linkin Park, Linkin Park members' side projects, bands Linkin Park has collaborated with, and bands Linkin Park has toured with. But no, I'm sorry, I guess I'll shut up since you're apparently the authority on what musical artists are and aren't significant, and if you, with all your vast knowledge, have never heard of a band, they're obviously nobodies.

Cypress Hill's new album just came out a week ago and has a song produced by/featuring Mike on it (Carry Me Away). Other than that, there's nothing DEFINITE coming up, but there are a couple things that might see the light of day before the new LP album does - Chester is apparently going to be a guest on Travis Barker's solo album, and there was supposed to be an LP-related remix that was submitted for a Kings of Leon remix album, although there really isn't much information about the latter project. There's also that Uncle Kracker/Joe Hahn song "Vegas Baby" that didn't make Uncle Kracker's last album, but it's anybody's guess when/if that will ever see the light of day. On topic, for anybody who's interested, I have a guitar tab for Blackbirds done now: http://www.4shared.com/document/w6QGDasd/Blackbirds.html

Dude, Dinosaur Jr. is legendary!

Mike's parts aren't even close. Listening to the original clip from the MTM DVD, I don't hear anything different - the same guitar part is there, and you can hear Chester singing "...what I gave" at the very end. I'm starting to think the band isn't aware that there was a clip of this song on the DVD and they're trying to spin it as something entirely new.

Drop, like get up, take to the streets ? When they hock that spit up, pace to the beat ? Speak from the gut, like a rush of blood Paint red on the street to the ones you love Lay the sick ones down, and the bells will ring Put pennies on the eyes, let the dead men sing I shiver and shake through warm or cold I'm alone, on my own In every mistake, I dig this hole Through my skin and bones It's harder starting over Than never to have changed With blackbirds following me I'm digging out my grave They close in, swallowing me The pain, it comes in waves I'm getting back what I gave I sweat through the sheet as daylight fades As I waste away It traps me inside mistakes I made That's the price I pay It's harder starting over Than never to have changed With blackbirds following me I'm digging out my grave They close in, swallowing me The pain, it comes in waves (yeah) I'm getting back what I gave I drop to the floor, like I did before Stop watching, I'm coughing, I can't be more What I want and what I need are a constant war Like a well full of poison, a rotten core The blood goes thin, the fever stings And I shake from the hell that the habits bring Lay the sick ones down, the bells will ring Put pennies on the eyes, let the dead men sing Blackbirds following me I'm digging out my grave They close in, swallowing me The pain, it comes in waves I'm getting back what I gave I'm getting back what I gave I'm getting back what I gave Pretty sure that's 100% correct outside of the intro - a couple corrections in the second verse and I filled in all the blanks in Mike's rap in the bridge. I think what I have so far for the intro is correct or close to it, but I'm really not sure about the 2 lines I haven't filled in.

Across the Line New Divide Not Alone Lockjaw Blackbirds I've probably given reviews of all of these songs with the exception of Blackbirds at one time or another, so I'll just throw my Blackbirds review in here: I really don't understand the purpose of the intro. It's interesting and different, sure, but it doesn't really add to the song, nor does it have any relevance to what comes after it. I think the song would honestly be better if they just cut that part off and had it begin with the synth part that precedes Chester's vocal entrance. It would increase the impact of Mike's rap part later in the song too, because it would be more unexpected. It kind of just sounds like they were like "Hey let's try this...oh we don't really have a place to put it...eh, let's just tack it on the beginning of this song." It's really detatched. As for the rest of the song, it has a good melody and the lyrical content is a bit different than usual, but the whole thing just seems very unrefined, particularly in the instrumental department. Out of all the released songs from the MTM era that didn't make the CD (QWERTY, Announcement Service Public, No Roads Left, Across the Line, Not Alone, Blackbirds), Blackbirds definitely sounds the most unfinished. It's an interesting song with enough replay value to make it worth having, but I can definitely see why this one didn't make the album. I'd give it about a 6 out of 10.

Another story I can recall off the top of my head: When KISS toured Brazil for the first time in 1983, they were puzzled why so much of the venue's in-house equipment had "Earth, Wind, and Fire" logos all over it. Then after they flew back to the U.S. after the tour, they quickly found out why: Earth, Wind, and Fire had toured down there and never got any of their equipment back, the promoters stole all of it and used it for other shows they put on later. Every time an American band would play this promoter's shows down there, the promoter would never send their equipment back, and they'd just keep adding more and more to their stockpile of stolen music gear. KISS wound up having to sue and deal with almost 2 years worth of legal red tape just to get SOME of their stuff back - they never got all of it. Also, this isn't a music-related story, but a similar situation: During the mid-90s, one of the Bigfoot monster trucks was shipped down to Brazil to be part of a big monster truck show there. The promoters lied about what kind of paperwork the owners of the truck had to fill out, and as a result, customs agents would not allow the truck to be shipped back to the U.S. after the show was over. To this day, that truck is still stuck in Brazil and unable to return to the country.

Eww...so our BEST case scenario with this song (depending on whether or not it ends up on iTunes) gives us 2 options: 1) 128kbps crappy version from 8BR that can't be directly transferred to another device 2) iTunes .m4a slightly less crappy (but still super lossy) version with DRM protection. This isn't helping the song grow on me. For once, I'm sincerely hoping they decide to release this song as a b-side on a single later on. You know, I find it really ironic that so many people talk about LP "selling out" with MTM, yet if they were to go back to a nu-metal-ish sound, that would be the absolute EPITOME of selling out: Sacrificing your artistic integrity (making the kind of music you want to make) and making music you don't have any personal connection to just because it's what people want to hear. That's the same thing all the mega-corporate Disney pop stars do. Golden rule of writing music (as far as I'm concerned): Whatever people want/expect you to do, do something else. If you're good, people will learn to like it.

Across the Line is definitely a stronger track, as far as I'm concerned.

It has live drums and bass, which aren't on the studio version, and there's substantially more guitar. It's more than different enough to be considered another version in my opinion, but since there's no studio recording of that version, I don't think it's right to categorize it with the others either.

LP signed their contract with Warner before they recorded the demos. The only pre-Warner material that exists is the Xero tape, the HTEP, and the 2-track Esaul/Super Xero demo. Dedicated also may pre-date the contract signing, but it's owned by Warner anyway because it was released on LPU 2.0. The HTEP is also owned by Warner now after the LPU re-release.

Except then the people who go to the shows would spam all the LP messageboards about how they were the "best shows ever" for the next 5 years. The incessant talk about how awesome Brazil 2004 was finally died down a year ago or so. And LP probably would do a South American tour if the majority of the promoters down there weren't shady as hell. Just about every big-name band that has toured down there has a nightmare story about not getting paid for performances, never getting their equipment back after flying back home following the tour, venues not being set up with the proper accommodations for their live show despite being promised that they'd have everything they need, or any other number of horrible things.

Despite the fact that it's in the same key as the 6th string song, has the same tempo as the 6th string song, and uses the same beat and strings as the 6th string song. Totally. I'm sure if this was a topic about the 8BR testing event in Los Angeles (or any other testing event that you hadn't personally attended, for that matter), you wouldn't be this adamant about staying on topic. "Fort Minor beat samples" ...? Mike can re-use sample banks to make beats in any kind of song he wants, that doesn't make them "Fort Minor beats," lol. I would bet money that there will be. I'm pretty sure I hear palm-muted guitar in the clip from the trailer. I wouldn't be surprised if some work was done on it more recently, we know that happened with Not Alone and they mentioned briefly that they decided to "finish" Across the Line for the LPU CD (although we don't know how much/what kind of work that involved). Err...what? Mike said the song title/lyrics don't have anything to do with the game. That was Mike, and we've been over this. As for the game developer also saying it was brand new, no shit that's what they're going to say! The developers are only going to know what the band has told them about the song, and if the band says it's brand new... I am 100% certain that Blackbirds is the 6th string song. Nothing will convince me otherwise.

The "World Trade Center mix" you're referring to is exactly the same track as the one that was released on the special edition of Hybrid Theory, OSC single, Frat Party, etc., it was just mislabeled on the Under Attack bootleg compilation. IIRC, there were 3 "remixes" on that compilation that used WTC or 9/11 references in the title (Crawling, Runaway, and High Voltage), but Crawling was the only one that was actually a remix, the other 2 were just the unaltered studio versions with different titles.

You do realize that both Across the Line and Not Alone were referred to as "brand new" as well, despite both of them dating back to the MTM sessions? The band uses "brand new" to describe anything that hasn't been released before. The song in the game could be something like Pictureboard, and I guarantee they would still refer to it as "brand new." I don't see what's so hard to understand by listening to the A/B comparison video ernieball003 posted. The beat is exactly the same, the strings are the same...the only thing that MIGHT have been re-recorded is the vocals, as was the case with Not Alone. That still doesn't make it "new."

There are radio edits of most LP-related singles, the majority of them just vary so little that it's hard to notice. One Step Closer radio edit - Lacks the feedback noise at the beginning that continues from the end of Papercut on the album version. Somewhere I Belong radio edit - Lacks the transition from the end of Don't Stay. Breaking the Habit radio edit - The album version starts with the explosion, the radio edit has a small fade-in before the explosion. What I've Done radio edit - Lacks the transition from the end of Shadow of the Day (the last keyboard chord doesn't overlap the guitar feedback). And there are numerous others. The aforementioned New Divide radio edit cuts out most of the instrumental breakdown between the second chorus and bridge, I'm not sure if I've seen any promo CDs with it but I've heard it played on multiple radio stations.

Indeed, some of the most frequent editors of Julien-K's Wikipedia page are the band themselves: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Jkdjs They're also responsible for the majority of the significant updates.

100% positive. You're probably thinking of the third verse actually, it's easy to think of the first 2 verses as one verse because there is no chorus between them. - Around the 1:20 mark, Chester does one of those inward shrieking noises while Mike is singing.

To name a few... Breaking the Habit - Much like any other fan-made attempt at an instrumental of this song, the second verse is where things start to go wrong (since the instrumental clip on the BTH DVD only goes through the first chorus). With this particular version, they attempted to paste in the additional string parts, but some of the notes are wrong, and they have the bass notes in the second half of that verse wrong as well. The bridge is also considerably off. From the Inside - The verses are missing the clean guitar parts, and the piano has a couple notes that are wrong. The end of the second verse also has a variation that's missing (3 muted strums on the guitar instead of 4 like it is the first time), and the bridge has some more stuff that's obviously pitch-shifted/manipulated. Pushing Me Away - Pretty good outside of the bridge, which is all screwed up - the pitch-shifting to get the right guitar chords is totally obvious, and it's still not totally correct anyway. If you A/B his instrumentals with the originals, I'm sure you could find more subtle differences too.

None of those are "perfect." I suppose they are about the best fan-made attempts I've heard, but it still doesn't really interest me. Plus it pissed me off how for a while, he was labeling them as "official" instrumentals.

No comment.

I am LOVING this song. The beat is great, the way the 2 guitars and the bass all play different melodic figures that make sense when you weave them together is really cool, and I like how each chorus builds on the previous one by adding more harmony parts.

How anybody can listen to H! VLTG3's intentionally dissonant piano loop and not get a headache is beyond me. Pharoahe Monch's verse was pretty good, otherwise that version of the song is a major step backwards from the remix on the One Step Closer single - the original remix had a better beat, the instrumental fit the song better, and Chester's part was one of the best parts of the song. And it's not like Evidence worked particularly hard to make the beat on H! VLTG3, the majority of the instrumental of that song is directly sampled from "Family" by Lamont Dozier.