So my ticket says this:
KROQ/GOLDENVOICE PRES
LINKIN PARK
A THOUSAND SUNS TOUR
WWW.LINKINPARK.COM
STAPLES CENTER
WED FEB 23 2011 7:30PM
Since this is me leaving suburbia and arriving in downtown LA at 7:30, what can be an hour drive was sure to be closer to two. So I left a little before 5:30 (after cooking all day lolol so precious, off to my big bad rock concert).
It was pretty backed up, and there was at least one crash on the shoulder. But it was alright, I had Mumford & Sons to chill me out. Did some impressive and dramatic lane changes getting from the 101 to the 110 and then again to the 110 three yards later. Actually! I ran into the most trouble of the day once I actually got into the Staples Center at around 7:20.
(Side note: as I was waiting to get in the doors, the plaza started playing Mumford & Sons' Little Lion Man, which had been playing in my car when I parked, so it was a little surreal.)
I've only been in there once before, back in highschool when we took the Germans to a Lakers game. (The Timberwolves won) And even though the streets and area around it are fairly familiar (the AX is right next door at the Convention Center), the interior was a big ol' mystery. I wandered around and around, all the while the clock ticking closer and closer to 7:30.
My ticket says PR13, and all these signs say, like m115, so I had no clue where I was supposed to be, and mentioned as much to at least three ushers. Finally it was revealed to me that I was in "VIP" seating! And need not traverse upon this level, among the crush of the common folk buying their hotdogs and beer.
But seriously, the one lady told me to "turn right, go past the kiosk, and then turn left." And this is with the auditorium behind me....I followed those directions and it was still behind me, so you can see how I might have been confused. I went up escalators. I went down them. Finally when I found the VIP doors, the honest to goodness directions after passing through were "go down, then up."
At 7:42 I texted my mom: Ok I finally found my seat. It's pretty awesome
The PR on my ticket stood for Premier seating, which was the second tier of bleacher seats. I was one row down from the top, right on the aisle, which was cool except for the rail in the aisle was a touch into my line of sight. But that ended up to be not a problem at all.
The stage seemed really close, probably even closer than I was at the Citizen's Business Bank Arena. It was actually set, um, diagonally into the floor? Like instead of being this platform across the one end, it pointed out into the middle, so the farthest spot forward was the corner of the stage, and it tapered back to the sides, so there were people seated nearly behind it, but I bet their view wasn't so bad.
At around 8:20, the opening act took the stage. I think they were called The Prodigy, and they seemed to be some sort of... band... from England. This is what I recalled about them, to entertain you with.
There were two guys in the band. One was the drummer, and he really owned those things. Really impressive to watch, he was a madman. The other guy seemed to be running at least four Macbooks, a keyboard, a synthesizer, and a sampler, and who knows what else.
Oh, there were also two guys whose job it was to hop up and down, holler rhythmically, and point at the audience. There was also a guy who did a fair amount of hopping, and he wore a guitar. Sometimes he wore a bass at around his knees, to little or no effect.
They had the most ADD strobe and lights effects I've ever seen. I had to look at the audience on the floor or else I might have had a seizure and/or exploded. They didn't seem to be too into it. As I watched, a lone man started heaving himself against those around him, all of whom gently swayed back into formation. He tried again (moshing and surfing were actually plainly discouraged by signs all over the doors), until a guy in a white shirt shoved him pretty hard. They faced off for about two seconds, and then everything went back to being perfectly still, like ice frosting over a deep and silent lake.
They played until almost 9:00, and I clapped when it ended. They were to Linkin Park what John Mellancamp was to Bob Dylan: something I wanted to nap through.
But the boys took the stage about fifteen after, and the house went crrrrazy. Apparently it was sold out, and LA is the band's home turf. And Chester's son (his youngest, I gathered) was in the audience with his buddies, and it was his first LP show. So it was really special.
So, you have Joe Hahn running the turntable and the touchpad synthesizer and stuff like that, Rob Bourdon back there on drums, Phoenix on bass, Brad Delson hopping around all over on guitar and also some drums and the megaphone, Mike Shinoda singing and rapping and rocking the keyboards and also pulling on a guitar, and Chester Bennington singing and screaming his lungs out and also drumming and a tiny bitta guitar.
Everybody was singing/shouting along. I didn't, at first, because I wanted to listen, but then it just got impossible not to go along with it. And also because Chester wears himself out and stops being perfectly in tune with the rest of the guys (something I knew from videos), so by singing with him, with everybody, it wasn't so much about listening to the performance but more like... experiencing the experience.
But dude it's soooo much fun to keep pace with Mike during, say, When They Come For Me or Bleed It Out.
They played most of A Thousand Suns, out of order, starting with Wretches and Kings. I know they didn't play Burning in the Skies, probably not Robot Boy, and I don't think I heard Blackout. But the rest of it was all there, including the historical spoken word, which was accompanied by the actual footage of the recording on the big screens behind them. Joe remixed some of it (I think? audio and video) on the fly, to great applause.
Actually, there wasn't much that happened that wasn't received with wholehearted screaming. Well, it's not the Beatles, so maybe not screaming, not like that. More like a mixed-gender, mixed-age crowd roar. But it was like
Chester: You guys are f***ing loud.
Crowd: SCREEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM
Chester: Thank you!
They did quite a range of numbers from every album, even though mostly it was ATS. They are touring for that album, after all. But there were three or four, four or five from each older album. At least from Hybrid Theory and Minutes to Midnight...songs from Meteora I forget which album they came from. But they did Breaking the Habit, and that's surely off that one. But no matter what song came next, be it something brand new or that song from the second Transformers movie (or the first) or track one off album one, it was the right one.
Their first album, Hybrid Theory, came out ten years ago, so the older stuff was pleasantly nostalgic and appropriately so. They wrapped with... was it Crawling? I think so, because that has been a long favorite of mine, sort of the one you're subconsciously waiting for -- are they going to play my favorite? And it's excellent, and then they left the stage, leaving one guitar ringing on an endless reverb loop.
But I knew that wasn't the end, the perfect end would be the last two/three tracks off the new album, they were designed to end a concert. So they came out, and what do you know, Mike's in the spotlight at the keyboard, playing Fallout....then it builds and you're in the middle of The Catalyst... and then it roars to a close and Chester starts The Messenger, giving an warmhearted intro to it, saying it was written like a letter to his kids who are starting to grow up.
And even though this was the encore, and they just performed the ending of all endings, The Messenger isn't the end. They do...something old, I think. At this point, I was just trying to appreciate every moment because I hadn't realized time was almost up until it was too late (luckily the encore was like, 20 minutes. Or seemed that way). I don't remember what they played between The Messenger and Bleed It Out, but suddenly that's rolling along, and everyone's energy is back up to 120%. And then that ends, and in the middle of the noise, Mike steps up and says something about bringing us all back ten years, and then suddenly we're playing A Place For My Head. And then that ends and we're back inside of Bleed It Out.
Oh goodness, so amazing. Looking at other setlists from the tour, I feel like they did In The End and What I've Done in the encore. Probably their most popular singles of all time, now that I think about it. And In The End is so iconic of "Linkin Park." I was pleased and surprised that they played it-- played their older material with as much enthusiasm and energy as anything else. And man, those ones really stood out, with their undefined genre style and unrelenting force. ATS, that can very readily be labeled alternative or electronic, but olden Linkin Park.... there just are no words. Just sit back and listen to them blast it at you.
And then it was all over. Super happy I went.
Oh wait, I forgot about during Crawling, Mike was so excited about the crowd singing along, he stepped down off the stage and sort of...on top of everybody. Immediately sixty hands came out to grab him and pull him into them, but a guard clamped his own hand on the back of Mike's pants and held him in place on the edge. So Mike just slapped hands and waved the mic over them all, and it was super exciting.
It was a really great, enthusiastic, and appreciative crowd. Of all ages, but mostly people in their 30s, I'd say. Some younger kids--when the young Bennington was allowed up to the side of his stage to hug his dad before the encore, he looked ten or eleven. No elderly people, but everyone else from there on down. Not really at all the crowd I had been imagining and fearing all this time. Well, I mean, look at me, I was there.
A Thousand Suns, as an album, was a surprise, something that caught me off guard but in the right frame of mind. It's probably my favorite album out of any album out there, from any artist. This was the right time for me to go to a concert like this. The right time and place, everything. I can't wait to see what they do next.
-Steph
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