Was gonna say this. I know it sounds like we're complaining but this is something worth bringing up. I don't know any other band or artist that is so partial to their early material as LP is with regard to setlists.
Fuck those older fans. It's not everyone else's problem that they haven't kept up with their newer material. What I don't understand is why LP continues to please the older fans instead of playing some new ones that current fans are dying to hear. And I'm not saying play every single song from the new record at least once live. But could they shoot for maybe two thirds or three fourths of the songs played live?
Writing and recording albums full of tracks designed to be played live, LT and THP, only to then not ever play a large number of them, must be pretty unsatisfying and frustrating for any musician surely? Seeing how a crowd reacts to stuff you've put a lot of time and effort into writing is one of the biggest payoffs of being in a band imo MTG for example is a very well composed track, but it will never be played live by the looks of it. That would seriously piss me off if I'd written it.
Exactly. It's hard to say it without coming across as ungrateful, but Linkin Park's songs aren't difficult to play, surely it wouldn't be too hard to rotate in a rarity or two every night. Every other rock band their age that I follow has at least 3 or 4 slots that rotate between 15 or so fan favourites that aren't essential to play every night. There are so many songs that the band absolutely kill live, that have been buried and forgotten. It's just infuriating to see any band ignore so much of the great music they've written.
Linkin Park have enough material to do at least a 2 hours concert. I went to a few big concerts and all of them lasted more or less between 2 hours and 2 hours and a half. I don't know why LP don't do it, this really pisses me off.
I wouldn't say every artist, but definitely almost every artist who is relevant nowadays is good at putting together those kinds of sets. To be honest, the way Linkin Park puts together its setlists these days reminds me more of nostalgia acts like Paul McCartney or Electric Light Orchestra--both has-beens who ostensibly release new material but only really ever play old hits--than modern, "relevant" rock acts like, say, Fall Out Boy, Radiohead, or even Deftones. Considering Linkin Park is supposedly still an up-to-date and "fresh" rock band, this is pretty depressing. It feels like they've fallen down the same road as other old, tired nu-metal bands like Korn and Limp Bizkit--even though LP is a good deal younger than them and arguably has/had far more artistic potential.
I get why they don't play a portion of the good part. There are plenty of reasons, all very logical from their perspective. Doesn't mean I'm fine with it, however.
Chester's voice is shot to hell and he can barely sing in key anymore without Auto-Tune? Brad is a lazy POS who never bothers to learn any of the songs on guitar and leaves it all to Mike? Joe Hahn is completely useless on about half the songs and just barely has a role on the other half? Oh, they got reasons all right. ...Suffice to say I'm a little salty about it. I just wish the band would re-evaluate how they've been doing things lately. The way LP is going, in 10 years Chester's going to sound like an old coffee grinder, Mike'll end up being the only instrumentalist, and all they'll ever do at live shows is play Hybrid Theory backwards and forwards 5 times.
Linkin Park is my all time favorite band and I listen to them everyday though I would have to say my greatest disappointment is quite a common one when Linkin Park left the Nu-Metal Genre in 2006. Another disappointment that I have isn't with Linkin Park at all instead it's the fact that Chesters voice sounds nothing like it use too. I don't blame Chester for that as he can't help it and him and Mike Shinoda will always be my favorite musicians though I strongly believe that if Chester sounded the same as he did from 2000-2004 their current songs would sound so much better.
They made a song called Crawling, made it a single and became one of the most popular Linkin Park song ever. It has the most disgusting lyrics ever but why everyone love it so much???
To their credit, I don't think that Linkin Park have ever tackled the subject of sexually-transmitted infections in their lyrics since then. /s