Astat

There have been rumors going around about an "upcoming" LP greatest hits album for at least 2 years. This is nothing new, and nothing has ever come of it, despite several reliable sources reporting on it (Billboard.com's 2008 release date calendar released at the end of 2007 even said one was scheduled for November of 2008). I'd say there's about a 98% probability that this WON'T happen.

I've got 2 new pieces to my collection coming in the mail, a Japan LOATR single (the one with the remix and PR07 live version, plus the music video and RTR live video), and a 3-track What I've Done single.

With the current tour schedule the way it is, a fairly quick run of some festivals, makeup dates for cancelled shows (sort of), and a few headlining shows in between, I say they'll probably do something similar to what they did in 2006: Probably play one new song, break out a couple unexpected treats, and switch the order up a bit from what we're used to seeing, but play most of the same songs that they played on the MTM cycle. I kind of doubt they'll even do rotating setlists for these shows, honestly. And if they do, since it's a short run, they may just do 2 sets instead of 3. I also doubt they'll be playing 20+ song sets like we've been used to for the past couple years. Around 18 is my prediction.

Have you ever done an NCAA March Madness bracket? A good bracket isn't about playing favorites, it's about looking at stats and predicting which team is more likely to win. I love Cleveland State because it's my hometown team in the tournament, but I picked Wake Forest over them in the first round because they had a better record, were seeded far higher, and were heavily favored to win (Cleveland State ended up surprising everyone and pulling off an upset win, but that's not the point). I love Linkin Park, they're my favorite band, but I picked Aerosmith over them in the first round, because let's face it, Aerosmith has had a far longer and more widely successful career than Linkin Park has. LP being put up against Aerosmith is like putting a young #16 team with a bunch of talented young freshman players up against a #1 team with a bunch of seasoned senior starters who are all about to get selected in the NBA draft. Against a band like, say, Guns N' Roses, it would be like putting them up against a top NBA team. And in the case of the Beatles, that would be like putting them up against Wilt Chamberlain, Larry Byrd, Michael Jordan, Shaquille O'Neal, and Kareem Abdul-Jabaar all in their prime. Can LP get to the level of some of the legendary bands they're up against in these brackets someday? Absolutely. Those freshman players from that #16 college team can grow up to be NBA legends one day. But it'll take quite a while for that to happen, if it happens. LP's accomplished a lot in a relatively short amount of time, but it's pretty silly to even try to compare them to more established acts like these, that have remained immensely popular for decades. Look at Elvis, he's been dead for like 30 years and he's still more popular now than a lot of the current acts on this list. And really in general, I've always thought all these fan-based "band vs. band" voting things were kind of dumb anyway.

Who called it?

I HIGHLY doubt that there will be anything different content-wise compared to the standard DVD.

My collection: http://s19.photobucket.com/albums/b168/bul...l/LPcollection/

I'd rather not listen to Chester's voice cracking like an adolescent teenager, which it does on most 2001 performances of Crawling.

http://www.lplive.net/shows/20080809.php Instead of: "- Brad missed his cue on 'Bleed It Out' not once, but twice. This is the first time that this has happened that we know of. On the 3rd cue, Mike just launched straight into the verse, without waiting for the intro to the song." It should be something like: "- Brad played a prank on Rob at this show by purposely not coming in when he was supposed to after Rob's drum solo on Bleed it Out, not once, but twice. On the 3rd cue, the rest of the band finally launched straight into the first verse, without waiting for the intro to the song." http://www.lplive.net/shows/20080810.php Add a note (this is related to the one above) something like: "- Rob paid Brad back for his prank the previous night, once again during Bleed it Out. After Rob's drum solo had ended and Brad began playing the guitar part again, Rob stopped playing drums and actually left the stage, leaving Brad all by himself for a couple minutes. He eventually returned and the band finished the song." All of this stuff is covered in the most recent LPU video.

So LP has NRG completely to themselves right now? I figured with it being a pretty large, popular studio that there would be more than one band recording there at once.

I'm starting to get kind of confused about this. They're now playing TEN shows, with more likely to be announced. This is quickly turning into a full-fledged tour, but I don't understand why they'd be playing this many shows without a new album out. Sonisphere and Summer Sonic made sense, the Switzerland date made sense, but I'm really scratching my head over the rest. Why do a full-blown tour in the summer of '09 after a year-long break, when your album isn't going to be out until spring of '10?

Bonner Springs '08. Love the Reanimation intro with Hands Held High over it, but I didn't like Chris Cornell's voice on Crawling, so it's between Bonner Springs, Albuquerque, and Maryland Heights. You can't hear Mike's guitar at all on Maryland Heights, and I think Bonner Springs is a bit better of a performance.

Crawl Back In might have been one of the songs on that original list, some of the titles on there seem awfully working title-ish, like Wall of Sound, Introutro, Instrumental, and 20¥2. I think it pretty much speaks for itself that there were 14 songs on that list and 6 of them have been confirmed for the album already.

That's referring to the 2005/2006 dispute with Warner where LP demanded to be released from their contract, and Warner had to re-negotiate a new contract with them. It was HUGE news at the time, it was all over all the LP fansites...it obviously DID happen. And anyone who complains about a 2010 release is stupid. LP never promised an album in 2009, they merely gave an estimate that it MIGHT be out this year. That's all. They've been saying all along that this album won't take as long as MTM did, and as long as the album is out before July of 2011, they will have kept their word. Nobody has any right to complain.

"Into You" = not new. "N 2 U" is one of the song titles that was originally on the song list found on Julien-K's website. The only confirmed song title that wasn't on that list so far is Crawl Back In.

Would you rather them not play any shows at all? The attitude of some people about LP's show announcements baffles me. ANY show is a good thing, regardless of where it is.

They're at NRG, the same studio where they recorded HT and Meteora. They wouldn't rent out a studio of that calbier just to be their rehearsal/writing space, they'd get another cheap place like the Korn studio where they wrote stuff for MTM if they were going to do that.

Kudos to LP for at least playing places in Germany that they've never played before. I still don't quite get why they play so many more shows there than anywhere else in Europe though. Anyway, I think they're just adding some headlining shows between the festival dates to fill out their schedule, instead of having 5 days off between Russia and England, and 6 days off between England and Japan. I really hope all you people in Sweden get a show!

So what should we call this tour? The "We need some live material for the LPU9 CD" tour?

I had forgotten about the cancelled Sweden/Switzerland shows from last year, this is probably a sort of unofficial makeup for that. And if that's the case, I wouldn't be surprised to see a Sweden date announced shortly. I also wonder if they'll make up some of the China shows later in August, since they'll be in Japan for Summer Sonic?

Judging from the way the line up page is arranged now, it looks like the bands on the left will be playing one day, and the bands on the right will be playing the other. Looks like Machine Head is playing both days and the second band on the day LP is playing still hasn't been announced. I'd put money on that band being Jane's Addiction.

Jesus christ, Linkin Park isn't even TOURING, and people are already going to start complaining about where they're not playing? They're playing festivals, that's it. If there's not a festival going on somewhere that fits into their schedule, they won't be playing there, simple as that. Linkin Park has played Germany TEN TIMES in less than 2 years, while they've played Russia twice in their entire career, and yet you think it sucks that LP is playing Russia and that they should be playing Germany instead. Unbelievable.

LPU and LP.com both sent out emails confirming this.

And I ask you once again: Why would someone print a fake setlist for a show that already happened? Why would they make the fake setlist only have a couple differences in it? It's been confirmed since the day after the show that Reading My Eyes was on the pre-show setlist, that was the biggest difference. Why would they go to all the trouble of faking a setlist for the sake of switching the order of 2 songs and replacing LFY with DOYS/LFY? And why would they only post it on their personal photo album on LP.com, where it would hardly be seen by anyone? It would be completely pointless. That picture had been uploaded for 4 months, and had like 12 total views when I found it the other day. The fake PR08 setlists were posted EVERYWHERE and seen by EVERYONE, were posted well before the tour started, and they were completely unrealistic and inaccurate compared to what the real setlists were. This setlist is the exact OPPOSITE of everything that those fake setlists were. The person with the setlist was at the show, has been to several other LP shows in the UK, provided us with a photo of his ticket stub, and pointed out exactly where he can be seen on the Road to Revolution DVD. He was given the setlist by one of LP's production team people at the front of the stage. The setlist is 100% real, period, end of story.

I REALLY can't see that song working at all as a "heavy" tune, it's a total ballad. It obviously will have more stuff going on musically since the live version was just Chester, Ryan, and Amir, but I'd be extremely surprised if the basis of the song wasn't similar to what was played live.