Astat

He's said in numerous interviews that he's only in the studio with LP when he's needed, which is usually to put his vocals on songs that are otherwise finished already. He's also said that Mike accounts for most of "the Linkin Park sound." Just look at the LPU9 CD, Chester only contributed to 3 of the 9 demos, and really only 2 of them were anything major (he's only on Faint during the bridge, and all he does is whisper/scream "I" and "You"). It's a well-known fact that most of Hybrid Theory resulted from song ideas Mike and Brad came up with. A bunch of the Minutes to Midnight songs were almost entirely written by Mike, both musically and lyrically. How many non-vocal contributions has Chester made to Linkin Park songs? The acoustic guitar sample that turned into Somewhere I Belong, the piano piece that became the Shadow of the Day guitar solo...that's about all that I can think of. He writes barely any of the music and maybe a third of the lyrics (Mike writes all the rap parts and also a lot of the singing parts). He's by far the least important member of the band when it comes to writing. The other 5 guys could write an entire album without him and just call him in when it's time to record vocals, and nobody would know the difference.

I really don't see how Dead By Sunrise is holding up the Linkin Park album when Chester's only needed for maybe 5% of the recording process of a Linkin Park album. We all know Mike is the primary writer in the band, both musically and lyrically.

PLEASE KROQ, can you just once have a webcast with decent audio? Pretty please?

FYI for anybody wondering "wait, I thought Hybrid Theory had sold 10 million+ copies and got a Diamond award from the RIAA?" RIAA certifies albums based on copies shipped, not copies sold. Plus, not every copy of an album sold goes through the Nielsen Soundscan system (although most do), so the RIAA's number is always going to be higher than what's actually been sold, and the Soundscan number is always going to be slightly lower.

Not to mention that as far as I've been able to tell, the zooming bug only applies to the MIDI interface of Pro Tools - meaning it's not even a problem when it comes to recording any of the live instruments (guitar/bass/drums/piano/vocals). Mike says on his blog that they've been trying to fix the problem for over a month, does anybody REALLY think LP has been sitting at the studio accomplishing absolutely nothing for the last month, waiting for a computer bug to get fixed?

Well when you only release one album, being a "one-hit wonder" really isn't a bad thing. Also, they really need to get their facts straight...Where'd You Go was far from "starting off big," it was actually the 3rd of 4 singles released from the album, almost 5 months after it came out. Where'd You Go peaked at #4, not #2. Remember the Name peaked at #48, not #66.

Both of those song titles (btw, the second one was called "Still Standing") were nothing more than fabricated rumors. No truth to them whatsoever. Timbaland produced the beats on the original versions of Dirt Off Your Shoulder, Big Pimpin', and Jigga What...

When members of the band are totally clueless as to what bonus tracks are being released on various editions of the album, you know you've got a mess on your hands.

No. Just because he can't zoom in doesn't mean he can't record.

3 or 4, depending on how you look at it. The HTEP version, the version that was released on the One Step Closer single, Frat Party, and the Hybrid Theory special edition, and the Reanimation version. The live version is similar to the version on the OSC single, but they added more to it (live drums, additional guitar parts, etc.) and the arrangement is a tad different. I believe the 9-track demo CD is still up on LP:Fuse, but the site isn't working for me right now.

I wouldn't call 5 times out of a 29-show tour "a lot." The band obviously didn't like the song and cut it from several Set B shows even before dropping it altogether following the Toronto show. QWERTY was also played live before it was ever released on an LPU CD, it doesn't really count. Plus when they played it live after releasing the studio version, they didn't even play the studio version live. I will personally send you an entire one of my paychecks if Across the Line is ever played live. I'm that confident that it won't be. Mike will not say anything more than what he's already said about She Couldn't. "Legal reasons" for keeping quiet don't just magically go away. And what don't we know about it anyway? We know about as much about it as any other 1999-early 2000 demo.

Stupid question. Why would a band play a song live that was discarded from an album that came out 2 and a half years ago because they didn't think it was good enough? They haven't played No Roads Left live, they haven't played Announcement Service Public live, they haven't played Dedicated live, they haven't legitimately tried to play A.06 live, they haven't played a full HTEP song live since 2002... Zero possibility of Across the Line ever being performed live, if you ask me. Also, instead of asking Mike about the VMA score, I think it would be better to specifically refer to the LPU promo video when asking about it, "Mike, can you tell us more about the song at the beginning of the new LPU9 promo video and if it will ever see the light of day?" or something like that. We know it's from the VMA score, so that will inevitably be part of his response, but if you ask him about the VMA score, there's a chance he may not even mention the song in question, which is what everybody really wants to know about. Full Rock Am Ring 2010 lineup has already been announced. KISS is headlining Day 1, Muse is headlining Day 2, and Rammstein is headlining Day 3. Same 3 bands are also headlining Rock Im Park. http://www.rock-am-ring.com/

Or maybe they don't play Give Me Your Name live because there are a million vocal tracks on the chorus and nobody in the band to sing them.

Damn, if you still had Guitar Pro I could do a GP tab for you so you'd have the MIDI sounds...what about Powertab?

I'll have to check and see if it works for me later, I've got a Best Buy code that I haven't been able to use, although my account doesn't expire until sometime in April I think, so it's not like I need to rush.

The Best Buy codes don't work for renewals - they haven't since the beginning of LPU8. The only way you can renew with a Best Buy code is if you let your account expire, then renew with the code. It won't work if you still have an active membership. Typical Sparkart glitch that's taken forever to fix.

No Walking in Circles?

Well considering I probably didn't even watch the VMAs in 2005...yeah. I watched a few clips from it online but that was it. Now that the mp3's been posted, I vaguely remember it. It doesn't sound exactly the same though, the LPU9 one sounds...updated I guess? And I still don't understand why it would be used in the video anyway, unless it's got something to do with the "exclusive content from individual band members" that's coming up.

Wanna Snuggle is out now, and I guess the Uncle Kracker song w/Joe will never see the light of day. Haven't heard anything new about an official release of the Gold Guns Girls remix, or any updates on Kenna's EP or the Kings of Leon remix album. The Cypress Hill album is called Rise Up and has been pushed back to sometime in 2010, the first single "Get 'Em Up" was released over the summer.

And I'm 99% sure that it isn't. I seriously doubt Fiore would use a non-Linkin Park song in the official promo video for Linkin Park's fanclub. Also, is it just me, or do the chorus vocals on Across the Line from the promo video sound a little different than they do on the CD?

There was a problem when they switched over to Clique ID that kept the email system down for most of LPU6, but they fixed it late in the year and it's been working for most people since then...I know a few people still can't access it for reasons that have really never been explained, but I guess you just have to chalk that up to typical Sparkart glitchyness that is never uniform for everybody. Some people also get hundreds of spam messages a day in their LPU email inbox even though they've never used it for anything, yet I've never gotten a single one. Why? No idea.

It's been there every year since LPU 1...?

Alright, it's December 3rd where I am now, so I've posted the LPU9 guitar tabs I've done so far (A-Six, Faint, and Across the Line) on my 4shared account - http://www.4shared.com/dir/24770908/98336cea/LPU_9.html I'll have tabs for the remaining songs with guitar in them up in that folder soon. Drawing and Fear will probably be done tomorrow since they're very similar guitar-wise to the final versions. Figure.09 probably won't take too long...Drum Song, I'm kind of iffy about.

Alice in Chains isn't every awards show's favorite "hard rock" band though. If Nickelback is nominated for any mainstream award show's "hard rock" category, they're pretty much guaranteed to win because they're edgy enough to get played on hard rock stations but accessible enough to get played on pop stations. If the Jonas Brothers played metal, they'd probably sound like Nickelback.