Park Lipki

This week lots of people like me felt mixed feelings when announce about Linkin Park rebirth was posted. Of course, I am happy that Mike Shinoda is over as he sang a few years ago. And I am very proud that they could pull themself together after 7 years, find a new vocalist, and recreate the band with the new songs. I can't wait for their new album to be released. But at the same time - this is gonna be a fully new story, not a revival of what was before. Let's talk a little about it.

Linkin Park was the main band of my teenage years, to be honest. I understood nothing at all from what they sang back then. Literally - 0%. But I felt the energy, the pain of not being understood, the pain of psychological violence, the feeling of being not like other bully guys around the yard. Linking Park told me somehow - that's OK, there are people like you out there. Across the ocean in particular.

Linkin Park members (except Chester himself) were educated and smart guys, very musical and deep. Chester Bennington was much different. He was kind of an outcast from an unfavorable family. Together they were able to translate all those feelings and problems into the music. It gained a lot of attention because it was true about millions of young people. It still is, in a way. I probably won't get deep into Chester's childhood traumas and addictions. Enough to mention, after long years of Linkin Park success all over the world, having 6 own and adopted kids, and having a loving wife, Chester still was not able... to go on. He ends up his life alone in his California house in the summer of 2017. Exactly on the birthday of his best friend Chris Cornell, who also unfortunately killed himself not long before that.

This is very sad. I heard about it in 2017 when I was traveling with my family. We arrived at a hotel room in Moscow and were unpacking stuff to spend the night, I turned on TV. It showed Linkin Park videos and then the speaker talked about Chester's death. I kept standing still there for a while, couldn't move. And the whole next day we talked about it with my wife while driving back home.

It is especially sad, that after the first couple of albums with all that teenage pain screaming out of Chester's chest in concerts, the band started to transform a little. Music started to be more complex, and more interesting to me. I love later albums a lot and I felt like musicians are going over some transformation with their music to reflect it. One More Light is one of the best songs from my perspective. it's calm, even simple, but I almost cry when I hear it. I have goosebumps right now when I imagine it in my head. It's like Chester sings of himself about to go. But in fact it's about another person.

The problem was, that fans didn't quite like that transformation. There was a huge amount of hate on concerts and the internet. Fans just wanted to hear the first songs. This is the old story in the music arena. Fans love certain emotions related to the music, and usually, they do not transform and grow with the musicians. Which is sad, music is really capable of supporting your stepping up. Not just whine with you.

I'm afraid, a similar thing might happen now. 7 years after Chester passed away, Linkin Park got reunited and they got a new vocalist - a girl Emily Armstrong. And they called an album From Zero. That totally makes sense. I wish they would even restart the band naming to show - we are something else now. We cannot stay the same and cannot pretend to be the same. I hope they will deal well with all the critics around. I am sure, it is very very hard for them right now.

I might return to this topic again sometime later. It's a lot to think about. But here we go with a couple of nice facts. The band name was made up to be unique so that they could host a domain name with it. Initial Hybrid Theory was occupied. Chester suggested - let's call us Linkoln Park cause I'm walking through it every day to the studio. It was occupied as well, so the name was simply reduced. When I lived in Saratov - I walked through Lipki Park almost every day listening the music.

What I didn't know, is the roots of the second album cover. Initially, they invited a cool artist to do graphity drawing for the album. While he was busy doing it, the photographer shot him in the process. This particular shot was so good, so into a moment, that the band took it for the album cover. This is about those little things, which are unplanned but could define a lot. Life is full of it. This is way it makes sense to go on no matter what.