Sunday, February 11, 2007
Linkin Park's Projekt Revolution tour mixes rock, rap in crunchy style
July 2008
Mike Shinoda, Chris Cornell and Sam Endicott (from the Bravery) are all on the line looking back at the 1992 Lollapalooza, a groundbreaking tour for the then-fledgling genre of alternative-rock. Along with Cornell's seminal band Soundgarden, the stage was stacked with Pearl Jam, Ministry, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Ice T, among others.
Shinoda and Endicott were just kids then going to the show. "That was one of my favorite concerts I've been to," Shinoda says in the teleconference.
"I was pretty young when Lollapalooza was happening, and it was really kind of a formative thing for me," Endicott says. "It was a really big deal. And I feel like Lollapalooza changed the face of music, because I remember going early on and thinking how can you have a rock band and then like a rap band and then an industrial band right next to each other? That's just crazy, you can't do that."
But they did, and during the '90s, it was one of the most popular concert tours, now turned into a standing festival in Chicago.
Lollapalooza was a blueprint for Projekt Revolution, a tour created more in headliner Linkin Park's image. The California rap-rock band, having just risen to the main stage of Ozzfest in 2001, took along a piece of Ozzfest's nu metal and opened the doors to the crunchier side of hip-hop.
"When we started this tour, our idea [was] to showcase groups that were doing something revolutionary, something original, something different," Shinoda says.
On the rap side, the initial Projekt Revolution in 2002 put Cypress Hill and DJ Z-Trip on the stage, and then in 2004 it was expanded to Snoop Dogg, Ghostface Killah and M.O.P. When the 2008 edition was first announced, there was no rap at all (other than Shinoda), but they have since added Busta Rhymes, who worked with Linkin Park on "We Made It," the single from his forthcoming album, "Blessed."
When it stops at the Post-Gazette Pavilion on Friday, it will feature Linkin Park, Cornell, Rhymes, The Bravery and Ashes Divide on the main stage, with a Revolution Stage featuring Atreyu, Hawthorne Heights, 10 Years, Armor for Sleep and Street Drum Corps, a punk percussion ensemble.
"When we described them to the rest of the band I think we called them a Punk Rock Blue Man Group," Shinoda says of Street Drum Corps. "It's almost like Stomp ... but it's obviously a lot less Broadway. These guys are little punks, which is great. I love their attitude, and their look is just so cool."
Cornell, sporting one of rock's most distinctive voices, comes to the tour as a solo artist once again, having split with Tom Morello and Audioslave in early 2007. Cornell released his second solo record, "Carry On," last year, and a new one with producer Timbaland, of all people, is due in September.
"For me it's kind of ideal," Cornell says of this tour, "because being a solo artist after all this time and having two bands, three bands really that I released records with, as well as a lot of solo material, it's a lot of diversity. And I noticed in the last year playing festivals worked really well for me because I can mix it up and do some of the heavier rock that I've ever written, as well as turn around and do songs where I'm just singing and playing acoustic guitar."
Shinoda recalls that he had always been more of a hip-hopper than a rocker, but that when he was a teenager his friend Mark Wakefield (originally in Linkin Park) turned him onto Soundgarden and the Seattle scene.
"I remember getting 'Badmotorfinger.' I really was not listening to almost any rock at that point, but albums like that were so universal and had such a great sound -- those were the exceptions to the rule for me. It's really enjoyable for me to see him put all these songs together with a band that's capable of representing all the different types of sounds that he's made over the years, whether it's a Soundgarden song, or an Audioslave song or a solo song. It's almost like a greatest hits set."
The Bravery, a band from New York City with a New Wave edge, released its second album, "The Sun and the Moon," in March 2007, then re-visited the project earlier this year with "The Sun and the Moon Complete," a two-disc re-do with a darker, more electronic tone.
"We just put out the 'Moon' half of 'The Sun and the Moon,' " Endicott says, "and so we're going to start putting in these new versions, kind of like remixed versions of the songs. So we'll start busting out a bunch of those on this tour. It's awesome, it's a wide range of stuff that we have now, from very rock, to very disco-y and then even some more like acoustic, like mellower stuff."
Linkin Park is also between albums, having released "Minutes to Midnight," a slight departure from its more bombastic nu-metal sound, in May 2007. What can fans expect from the headliners?
"As far as the Linkin Park set goes," Shinoda says, "we've been trying to build in as much wiggle room for improvisation and kind of screwing around with existing songs, as much of that as possible, and we'll continue to do so. We haven't actually figured out what the set for the summer is going to be. But I feel pretty confident saying that we'll be working more towards that end."
Whatever it ends up being, Shinoda knows it has to rock pretty hard, coming seven or eight hours after the first band.
"It's a little trickier for the people who play later, because now all the fans have been there since 11 o'clock, they're tired and we have to work extra hard to get them into the set and keep them excited, which we are happy to do."
thanks to lptimes.com
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