Thursday, August 06, 2020

K in the ABC

Its so easy to shit on Linkin Park even during their heyday. Way too many an awful early Youtube animated music video was set to their music. Anime weeb fiends and girls with blue hair that rang around in cloaks liked Linkin Park. This was the glee club without the shows and recitals. These are people who grew up into 40 somethings who hopefully GOT the point of Fight Club, but probably didn't. 

Their first few albums always focused songs on some mysterious and overbearing "you" that was impossible to ID but also became a sort of everyman trouble. Recently the Trump re-election campaign set an ad to "In the End" and the band and most fans were aghast. Like, did those dicks ever listen to a Linkin Park song? I doubt they would back anything GOP. But, its an LP song. It is MADE to be layered over something.

But, that said I un-ironically ADORE Linkin Park and when I heard Chester Bennington died I broke a long standing "don't post on FB" rule to pour out just how I felt. 

When Meteora, their second album came out, I skipped Intro to Art History 1 class * to walk the three miles to the local Barnes and Nobles to buy it. And listen all the way back needing to swap out for the fresh AA batteries I brought. 

That is a Linkin Park memory...walking. My first ever Linkin Park album was (appropriately so) a remix album I bought at this oddball record store (La Casa de los Tapes or House of Tapes) which was tucked away into the back corner of a Sears appliance store. And I had to have what was playing over the store's stereo which was the Reanimation album. It even has this goofy mech on the cover! They made this in a lab for me!

This song has it all. A remix. A cinematic bombast. Those strings and kick off crooning. And I must have listened to it a dozen times walking back home from that record store. Only album I ever bought twice because I had to have this when I got my car (some nine years after its release) and it has a CD player. 






*Where I sat behind a very cute girl named Sivam who I almost went on a date with but I at the same time just started dating the person who would become my wife. This was the one and only time that I had such aplomb with the ladies




No comments:

Sunday Morning

 My father was not a man of faith That is something I stole from him, that phrase I use to politely defuse the handsome couple at my door on...