Astat

Why does it matter exactly if they head into an EDM direction? Why does it matter if they head in any direction at all? Music itself is an art form, meaning it is flowing, evolving, changing, and growing. Restricting music to little boxes is useless and stupid. It makes it stale. Instead we have music that is evolving, that is changing, and you know what it's awesome. Without any kind of musical change we would still be listening to classical music, because no one would have taken the chance to branch out. We would never have Elvis, we wouldn't have Led Zeppelin, we wouldn't have The Ramones or The Misfits, we wouldn't have Metallica, we wouldn't have D12 or Tupac, we wouldn't have Tiesto, we wouldn't have Linkin Park. You know why because if someone hadn't made the conscious decision to make a change, made that conscious decision to try something new we'd be stuck.

/rant

 

I personally appreciate musical growth and evolution. I think it does an artist good, because it shows what they are doing right now, what they are thinking, etc. The same way you can glean information about a painter from their paintings, you can glean a little bit about an artist from the music they are making.

 

Now, you can all quit your bitching and appreciate that they are actually making more music that is different, or go sit in a corner and complain about how an artist isn't making music that you specifically like. Personally I feel you'd have more success in the first endeavor, because guess what an artist doesn't give a shit about what kind of music you like. They care about what music they like, and what makes them happy. If you happen to like it good, if not well you're shit out of luck then.

The only reason it would concern me if the band went in a more EDM-style direction AS A WHOLE (I'll never be bothered by them experimenting in any particular genre, provided they don't suddenly start writing entire albums of songs that sound the same) is that the nature of EDM wouldn't exactly provide the best creative backdrop for instrumental contributions from Rob, Brad, and Phoenix. I think the band has always done a pretty good job of balancing out whatever styles they incorporate though, so as long as EDM just becomes another element of the same "hybrid theory" the band was founded on, and not a "new direction" as whole, I'll be fine with it. The same could be said for a lot of other styles - if The Rising Tied/Out of Ashes were Linkin Park albums, I'd probably hate them.

It might be 1998, because Hybrid theory 8 track cd was released 1st january 1999 according to linkin park wiki

LOL @ quoting the Linkin Park Wiki as a reliable source of info.

 

http://lplive.net/features/exclusivehtdemo.php - "There has been some conflicting information about the timeframe this CD was produced; the seller of this disc on eBay reported that it dates to 1998, but in fact, the earliest it could've been made is the summer of 1999. This is because 'She Couldn't' features a prominent sample of the song 'B-Boy Document '99' by High & Mighty, and that song was released in the summer of 1999. That puts this demo CD in the timeframe between the release of the Hybrid Theory EP and the 9-track demo CD, which still makes it some of the earliest demo material from the band."

 

Obviously Mike forgot about it.... ^^

I'm pretty sure Anna Shinoda's convenient timing of posting all the Xero flyers wasn't coincidental. We can probably consider that the extent of Mike's "getting to the bottom of it."

I've seen 7 of those 9 songs live (8 of 11 if you include LOATR and By Myself). The only ones I haven't seen are Pushing Me Away studio, By Myself, and My December. Had an opportunity to see My December (Cleveland 2004), but couldn't work out a way to make it to that show.

This touring cycle started off with SO much potential with the resurrection of a bunch of songs that hadn't been played in recent years, but it just kind of...fizzled out afterwards. We only got one new song debut post-HCT (Castle of Glass), and of the 5 songs from early in the cycle that wound up being dropped (In My Remains, WTCFM, Blackout, FTI, Runaway), at least 4 of them are almost universally considered fantastic live songs. Instead, we got to hear more played-out singles. Yay. The Game of Thrones intro to With You being ditched was also a bummer.

 

For the next cycle, I'd like to see the following songs dropped, at least temporarily:

-Points of Authority

-Breaking the Habit

-Given Up

-Lies Greed Misery

-Ballad Medley

-Victimized (okay, I don't WANT this one dropped, but we all know it's gonna happen).

 

In exchange for those 6 songs, here's 6 that could be added to spice things up a bit:

-Crawling (I'm normally not one to suggest singles being added, but this one is MUCH higher on my list of must-plays than half of their other singles. Drop Given Up, and maybe Chester will actually be able to sing this one decently for the first time in 5 years)

-Don't Stay (if this cycle was one where they "gave love" to Hybrid Theory by resurrecting some songs from that album, let the next one be one for Meteora)

-From the Inside (see above - also, play Lying From You regularly!)

-No More Sorrow (this would be a VAST improvement over Given Up in terms of MTM material)

-Iridescent (full version - more ATS material should be in the set, and this song is vastly superior to both LOATR and SOTD anyway)

-Either In My Remains (in exchange for Lies Greed Misery), or another Living Things song that hasn't been played yet. I don't expect them to debut all of the untouched material from this album on a touring cycle for another album, but at least give ONE of those songs a shot. There's no reason I'll Be Gone can't be played live, at the very least.

-

So the studio Finals 5/7/00 and the Ozzfest versions are both the same??

Yeah, Studio Finals = Now I See. The version of One Step Closer on the Studio Finals disc is also identical to the one on the ECW Anarchy Rocks soundtrack. It was basically the same thing that happened with Blackout in Fifa World Cup and The Catalyst in Medal of Honor years later - the songs were submitted before the final mixes were done.

- Not being performed since August 15, 2006 in Japan, 'With You' was resurrected on May 18, 2012 in Los Angeles. This currently stands as the biggest "liberation" in Linkin Park history (meaning it is now the song with the longest time between performances....almost six years).

Disregarding the Reanimation and piano versions, the original version of Pushing Me Away was actually longer.

The end of POWERLESS is a synth noise and not backing vocals? In the instrumental you can hear it and Astat said this is synth. Sounds like vocals to me. And I always sing that part when I listen to it LOL. But I also thought IMR's main synth sound was a vocal clip too until I saw it live.

It's both. It's a vocal part doubled by a synth and a guitar track.

As is the case 9 out of 10 times "eww autotune" comments are thrown around on the Internet...LOL. The effect you people are bitching about is literally almost the EXACT same vocoder-style effect used on Mike's voice in Fallout and Chester's voice on the chorus of Lies Greed Misery. The only difference here is that it's being used on a clean, relatively non-effected vocal track.

This is kind of two questions in one, both about No Roads Left. Does Chester have ANY vocals in the final version of this song? I know Mike said Chester told him "Don't even use my vocal" but it made me curious. Secondly, if it is all Mike, is this the only non-instrumental/non-interlude song in their studio discography that Chester isn't featured on in any way?

I Have Not Begun is all Mike, and there are a few unfinished-"half-done vocals" tracks that have been released through LPU without Chester on them (Asbestos, Debris, etc.).

 

All of the "main" vocals on Hands Held High are Mike too. I'm sure Chester's mixed in with the gang vocals, but I've never been able to specifically pick out his voice.

I just got tonight setlist!

Heh, if you were to go post that over on the LP.com or LPU forums, just about every single person on there would probably believe it.

Am I the only one who thinks COG DOESN'T sound very good live? Pretty much any song where Mike sings the main melody and Chester's supposed to harmonize with him (or at least double him), Chester usually way over-sings his part and goes off key. This goes all the way back to the MTM era with In Between and the outro to Hands Held High, and has continued with songs like Burning in the Skies, Waiting for the End (it sounds okay live now, but it took a LONG time before it got to that point), and now Castle of Glass. Actually...you can even take it farther back to when they did Numb/Encore/Yesterday and he tried to harmonize with Paul on the last few lines of the song. That was easily the only weak point of an otherwise legendary performance. Chester definitely isn't a backing vocalist.

So, Living Things is the only album that has the titles in all caps? I hope they don't do that again for the next album. It bugs me. Haha.

Reanimation's song titles are generally referred to in all caps too, but I think that's more for aesthetic reasons like QWERTY. With all of the symbols and numbers in the song titles, it looks a lot neater in all caps: "P5HNG ME A*WY" vs. "P5hng Me A*wy"

QWERTY was never mentioned anywhere NOT in caps, although a lot of the official places it showed up are places that would typically list a lot of stuff in caps anyway (back cover of LPU 6, show setlists, etc.). I guess it just makes sense because of a regular QWERTY keyboard being stylized in all caps (the phrase "QWERTY keyboard" also typically uses the same capitalization).

 

I believe the Living Things "ALL CAPS EVERYTHING" deal came from Adam? I recall someone with an official connection saying that they chose to incorporate that as part of their marketing for this particular album. I still don't even adhere to that, personally.

I thought it was on PR07, but it was definitely at some point on the MTM tour when they were doing the consistent rotating A-B-C/R-S-T/X-Y-Z sets.

http://lplive.net/shows/20130803.php - This was the first show in over 10 years (dating back to the start of the Meteora touring cycle) where Brad didn't use the red soldier PRS guitar at all. The nut on the guitar broke right before the show, so Brad had to use a backup guitar for all of the songs he'd normally have used the red soldier PRS on (the backup was also a red PRS, just without the soldier graphic).

What is the "Mardi Gras mix" in the BIO bridge live? I could not find a video of it. Being from New Orleans it makes me curious.

 

EDIT: Just found a video with a full 2008 show listed as having the Mardi Gras mix but it was basically the same as the Road to Revolution version except RME was also over the bridge. Basically my question is, where does the Mardi Gras name come from? Lol

When LP first introduced the rotating Set A/Set B/Set C format on PR '07, they had a different "note" for Bleed it Out on each setlist. One was "Mardi Gras Mix," one was "Party Mix," and one was "Keg Stand Remix." None of them actually meant anything in terms of the arrangement of the song, I think they were just having some fun with the setlists.

The remaining songs could very well just be instrumental stuff, especially if it's all for LP Recharge. The beta already had 5 or 6 short instrumental tracks in it, I'd imagine those will be in the full game as well. Working with Steve may just be a matter of churning out enough music to fit in the game, with A Light That Never Comes being the reward for finishing it.

So we moved on from Brad not being in a good mood on stage? haha

 

I think Catalyst was a great live song, I liked it. They should have kicked out LGM a while ago, there's no reason to keep the song in there, it's just not good enough live. IMR was really good too.

Brad's probably the most hit-or-miss member of the band in terms of stage presence, except for maybe Joe. Chester and Mike always bring the energy, Phoenix is USUALLY pretty good about it, and Rob...well, he does what he can while sitting down, haha. Joe seems to go through phases where he's totally uninterested for a streak of multiple shows, then randomly gets his energy back. Brad is totally random from night to night though.

Haha, I remember when this song was going around as a fake LP track! This takes me back...this had to be around the same period My Reason by Spiritfall was all over the place labeled as an unreleased LP track (9-10 years ago, maybe even a little more). I remember finding out the name of the band/song many years ago, but I had totally forgotten this existed.

Astat would you (and everyone else) like to see No More Sorrow instead of Given Up? I feel like NMS with that long intro, even if it was played from 2007-2011 (over four years), was still an amazing song live.

 

I agree about WTCFM. Mike on that song is legendary ("sing that shit motherfuckers!")...his energy is all over the stage and the song comes off flawlessly live. Blackout is my favorite song on ATS and I'd love to see it live and back in the setlists, even if Chester wasn't NAILING it live, but he sure was sounding good.

 

LGM I have disliked ever since it debuted in Lisbon. Even seeing it six times live did nothing for me. I'm not a fan of it and Chester doesn't even scream the end like he does on the studio version.

 

I liked Catalyst a lot and I am surprised it's not in the setlists anymore either. I'd rather see that than WFTE. It's a shame they only opened with Fallout and Catalyst at two shows....that was a neat opener.

 

For me, if they swapped LGM for Blackout, GU for NMS and added WTCFM, it'd be an epic set.

Yeah, if you did a straight swap of MTM songs, I'd take NMS over Given Up. I feel like that song sort of overstayed its welcome by the end of the ATS tour, but it was still a solid performance nearly every night (save for when Chester screwed up the ending, he randomly started doing that a lot on the ATS tour), and for a non-single, people really seemed to react positively to it. Great part of the light show too.

 

But alas, Given Up was a single, so according to the band's (warped) logic, that automatically makes it a superior song to No More Sorrow, even if Given Up only charted at #99, was all but gone from rock radio within a couple months of its release, and hasn't been a particularly big crowd pleaser at shows for the last couple years...

I don't SPECIFICALLY miss The Catalyst, but I'm honestly VERY surprised at how quickly the band abandoned playing almost the entirety of A Thousand Suns live. At the very least, I figured The Catalyst/WFTE/Iridescent would all be setlist staples for years. They've also completely ditched two of their best live songs in WTCFM and Blackout.

 

Also, for the love of what little is still right in the world, PLEASE ditch Given Up and Lies Greed Misery. The former is destroying Chester's voice more and more every night and sounds like shit these days, the latter is just an all-around terrible song that has no business being played live in favor of nearly every other song on Living Things that isn't currently in the set. Ditch those two and bring back In My Remains and WTCFM, and this is an excellent setlist.

Aww, thanks guys...after the weekend I just had (screwed up my debit card, found out Katie and I don't have a wedding officiant like we thought we did, car got broken into, got food poisoning, found out one old family friend is in a nursing home and another got t-boned by a drunk driver and is in a coma...oh, and I didn't make the top 10 on LPU Sessions), this is a nice surprise to come home to.

 

Funny you post this when you did, because my "official" 10th anniversary as part of the Linkin Park community is in 4 days. I signed up for the old LP.com message board on 8/17/2003. Good timing!

 

I never like...consciously tried to be "that guy who knows everything." I just joined the community at a time when Linkin Park was SO big, there was a lot of conflicting information going around. There were so many fans on the message boards, so many fansites, so many rumors going around, that it was hard to keep track of things. When I first joined the boards, I literally couldn't get a straight answer as to whether or not Breaking the Habit had ever been performed live. People thought that Xzibit coming out on Nobody's Listening was just some crazy rumor that couldn't possibly be true. The fact that Mike played guitar at all, let alone on 5-6 per show, was SHOCKING news to some people. For a band that was damn near the biggest band in the world at the time, their fans sure didn't seem to know much about them...and with the amount of activity on both LP.com and LPU, a lot of good information was quickly buried by things like "What's your favorite LP song v7.0" and "Is Mike hotter with his hat forwards or backwards?" I figured I'd just start sifting through as much information as I could, mentally cataloging anything that I felt was actually important (at some point, I realized my brain can't ACTUALLY hold that much information and recall it at will, so I started keeping notes. Several thousand Notepad files later, here I am!).

 

In particular, the lack of input from actual musicians in the LP fanbase always bugged me. The few people who actually WERE musicians mostly seemed to hang around the message boards solely to mock the band (anybody else remember the old "Tabs" forum on LP.com, which was mainly inhabited by JOHNPETRUCCI, who liked to rant about how much Brad sucked for "just playing powerchords" on a daily basis? Basically a 2003 equivalent of Joe? Yeah, that guy!). As an aspiring guitar player who wanted to learn Linkin Park songs, this frustrated me, but what frustrated me even MORE was that nobody on the "mainstream" guitar websites seemed to acknowledge that Brad played Don't Stay on a black Ibanez, With You/Runaway on an orange Ibanez, Somewhere I Belong/A Place for My Head on the grey soldier PRS, and everything else on the red soldier PRS. I KNEW they were using different tunings, but every tab I could find seemed to assume that Db Ab Db Gb Bb Eb was Linkin Park's "standard tuning," and they NEVER deviated from it. So I just figured "screw these guys, they're all obviously wrong, I'm going to figure it out myself." That led to me constantly correcting people, which led to me transcribing tabs myself, which led to me posting Youtube videos...and somewhere along the line, I started collecting pictures of as many of Brad, Mike, and Chester's guitars as I could find. That led to the creation of the Guitars of Linkin Park website...which ultimately led to Sean Paden getting in touch with me and inviting me to help out with Green Guitar Project! Crazy how far things can go just because some idiot on Ultimate Guitar can't tell the difference between a 6-string and a 7-string.

 

I'm getting older now and don't have nearly as much time to dedicate to the community as I once did, but I'd be shocked if I ever left completely. I've made too many friends and learned way too much. Hell, I'll probably still be yelling at people on Youtube in another 10 years.

LMAO! I guess Mike settles it right there then.

That's hilarious. We can't remember everything but that's one of the funniest things I have seen in a while

It's funny because that was back in the pre-Twitter days, when we didn't have Summits, M&Gs were still done in "assembly line fashion," and band member chats were few and far between. That was when "HOLY SHIT MIKE ANSWERED MY QUESTION" was still such a big deal that you'd quote/screencap it and immortalize it in your signature for all eternity. Crazy how times change!

1. Grecian is in 6/8. QWERTY is in 4/4. Totally different song ideas. Rob confirmed that Grecian was the song they quit working on in favor of QWERTY.

2. QWERTY WAS in consideration for Minutes to Midnight at some point, Mike confirmed that in one of the LPU chats: http://lphahn.diandian.com/post/2008-04-01/40030476645

 

"mshinoda says to (19:21): we didn’t write QWERTY “for” japan…we were writing it for the album. i don’t know if we’ll ever debut another song live…maybe!"

 

Also, I think the fact that they came back and recorded a proper studio version/re-worked the song arrangement AFTER Summer Sonic is enough circumstantial evidence to support that as well, even without Mike's confirmation.

 

Also, LOL @ Mark saying QWERTY wasn't an MTM seed when the Mike quote I just posted was in response to a question he asked.

The game itself hasn't been available for play in quite a while. The beta was only up for a test period, when they closed registration for it they also took the entire beta down.