Linkin Park Band • Page 114

The last time they played the album version of Crawling with any consistency was during their 2012 Europe tour (I don't count 2014 when they were just doing the chorus/first verse as part of the encore medley). It's also the song that Mike said would be the first HT track they cut to make room for more songs.

 

Hm. I didn't know any of this, and it looks like the version they did in 2017 was a piano version.

I'm curious, was there a reason they were looking to cut it? If it were me, I'd prefer One Step Closer be cut over Crawling, but that's because Crawling was my introduction to the band and I resonate with it a lot more.

 

Crawling was a really hard song for Chester to sing. Basically the whole chorus is him screaming on one note in the upper end of his register.

They were also pretty steadily reducing the importance of One Step Closer in the set. Never really cut it, but they did completely stop closing shows with it after the Living Things tour when it was their main show closer up to that point (along with Faint and Bleed It Out).

 

Understandable. I can imagine it being taxing.

 

There's an interview where Mike and Chester ask each other questions, and Chester said it was his least favorite song to sing before the piano version, because it was just one note and he said he thought it was boring. I'll try to find it


It's at 1:50

 

In Googling this stuff, I learned the following:

- The band's least favorite song is Easier To Run, in part because they think it's super melodramatic.

- The band wrote Numb as a response to Pushing Me Away and thinking they could do better.

- The band's least favorite song from Hybrid Theory is Runaway.

- Chester actually hated In The End and didn't even want it on the album.

I also read an excerpt from Chester about how him not liking In The End and then seeing the success it brought and how much it was appreciated led him to believe that as an artist, making music wasn't just about making music for himself, because he could see that stuff he didn't like could still be something someone else found meaningful.

I think that's an interesting perspective.

 

Setlist.fm is a great resource, but medleys tend to mess it up a bit as different editors will record them differently, and Linkin Park were playing a lot of partial songs and medleys by the time of Chester's death.

 

agree with them about Runaway and Easier to Run, not big on those songs

 

I'm not big on Runaway, but I love Easier To Run.

 

Runaway and Easier to Run are both top tier LP to me, dang

 

Easier To Run is my favorite song so that hurts. At least they played it a couple times in the Meteora era, I think?

 

As for Linkin Park continuing without Chester, I always envisioned a version of the band that carries on with a sound somewhere between A Thousand Suns and Minutes To Midnights.

Something in the vein of this song, with Mike's vocals, would be interesting.

 

Easier to Run is one of my favorites hah

 

I agree as far as their core sound is concerned, but I think they could, and probably would, still dip into their other niches here & there. Tracks in "High Voltage" territory would work, as would songs more in the "Heavy" wheelhouse. (I've listened to Mike's solo work pretty sporatically, but I'd say those styles are present in what I've heard.)

I also think they could pretty easily continue to play around with heavier tracks without screaming. "Rebellion" minus the bridge sounds like it could happen in a 5-piece version of the band; for some reason, I'm obsessed with imagining a version of it with elements of "Points of Authority" weaved in. And, "Papercut" is similarly close to working in that format, minus Mike needing help with some lines so he can breath, lol.

Regardless, if they decided someday they were comfortable continuing in some form, I'm pretty sure that process would start with trying to make new music together, and then going from there.

 

Post Traumatic is genuinely a great album. some of those songs with a full band workover would easily work as LP joints imo

as much as I'd love a full album of just "High Voltage" I think the ship might have sailed on that lol. the Fort Minor album, which I still love is probably the closest to that I'm gonna get

 

From Mike’s Discord

 

Been wondering what he's been up to outside of the weird nft stuff

 

Tour maybe?

 

Def not a tour. Maybe a handful of reunion shows in Cali or something would be my guess. Don't know how they'll be doing it tho, unless they do something like the tribute show and different singers with them.

 

Meteora 20th Anniversary Limited Super Deluxe Edition

 

lol, what if they keep doing 20th anniversaries for all their albums, and then finally make a new album after the 20th anniversary of One More Light.

 

Goodness Gracious. All those demos and rarities. I know some of them are just instrumentals which I've had from the LPUS, but the lost demos....... vocals?? Oh my.

 

Looking forward to hearing those demos.

 

Finally gonna get to hear this