Xero (Demo Cassette Tape)

Background

Mike and Mark started a new band called "Xero" in the winter of 1995/1996. After one or two writing sessions, they enlisted the help of Brad and recorded a demo containing 4 songs with a few of them having guitars done by him. They sent it to an A&R representative from an indie label/publishing company whose mailing address was included in one of the CDs they owned and got a phone call from Paul, the representative, a day later asking them to come over. He was shocked to learn the duo recorded a professional sounding demo on a 4-track in Mike's bedroom and encouraged them to put a band together and start playing shows. The demo tape was eventually passed out to friends and new fans and sent out to record companies to try and get signed.

Writing and Recording

The songs were mostly written by Mike Shinoda and Mark Wakefield from 1996 to 1997, with Brad Delson and Joe Hahn also being credited for "Rhinestone".

The demo was recorded in 1997 in a makeshift studio set up in Mike's bedroom with gear he had been collecting one by one, starting when he was about 13 years old. The songs were recorded straight to tape on a Tascam Porta 07, a little 4 track recorder, without any live drums. Mike would record on three of those tracks and bounce the recordings to the 4th, then record over the initial 3. The final products would be bounced out to a separate cassette recorder. Since nothing touched the computer, no master digital files exist for these exact versions of these four songs.

Guitars were played on a Fender Strat guitar (Mark's first and only guitar) with a Crate G20 Amp. A Yamaha PSR 510 was used for keyboards, mostly bass. All vocals were recorded with a Shure SM58 microphone. A Roland MS 1 (that played up to 4 samples and was meant to be played by hand) and an Akai S900 (a 12 bit sampler that saved on floppy disks) samplers were also used. Since those samplers didn't have an internal sequencer, Mike used an Alesis HR 16 drum machine as his sequencer.

Releases

There were two issues of the Xero tape, both with the same tracks but different covers. The black and white shopping cart was the first issue and is very rare, having a small number of copies made.

Only one known copy of the shopping cart version exists in the current Linkin Park community, owned by "JomJom" / Giorgio from Italy. According to BPercy from LPCatalog, "A lot of people thought it wasn't legit until Mike confirmed it was legit at a meet and greet in Europe before A Thousand Suns was released. My buddy Giorgio from Italy owns it and showed Mike and asked him. Giorgio and myself actually started the first catalog in 2005 (known as lpcollectors.com) and ran it for a couple years. Then life got in the way. Mike Shinoda told him, the shopping cart was actually a joke for a cover for the demo tape but then they actually had some made before the baby version was made.. If I remember he implied fewer were made. Most hardcore LP fans know how rare a Xero tape is. Try and find one for sale (needle in hay stack.) Now the shopping cart version is like a needle in outer space in my opinion. There might be 2 or 3 in existence that didn't get tossed."

This version was apparently a joke between Mike and Joe, who said while in a grocery store that the first release they had would be of a shopping cart. In 2003 or 2004, a second shopping cart version was listed on eBay and known collectors were outbid; the buyer has never surfaced in the community. To date, only JomJom's, Anna Shinoda's, and the mysterious eBay auction's tapes have been the only three confirmed to exist outside of possible copies that the band still might have.

When JomJom showed his shopping cart version of the tape to Linkin Park in 2008, they proposed adding "Reading My Eyes" to that night's setlist for him. While Chester said no, this was the first time that Mike decided to rap a verse of "Reading My Eyes" over "Bleed It Out" (Heineken Jammin' Italy, 2008).

After the shopping cart issue, a version with a blue cover featuring a baby was made and is now most the most commonly associated cover when referring to Xero and the tape. More copies of this version were made, and these are the source for the current rips of the tape circulating online. No rip of the shopping cart version has been made, but due to JomJom's copy, we are able to confirm that the tracks on both issues are the same exact versions. While more copies with the blue cover were made, only a few of these are also known to exist in the Linkin Park collectors community, outside of the band.

The shopping cart version of the tape was confirmed to have been made in 1997. According to Anna Shinoda's story of meeting Mike after a Xero show in February 1998 and Mike handing her a shopping cart version of the tape, fans have speculated that the blue cover version could have possibly been made in 1998 after this meeting. No more information on the subject is available.

Track Listing

No.	Title	Writer(s)	Length
A1	Rhinestone	Brad Delson, Joe Hahn, Mike Shinoda, Mark Wakefield	3:36
A2	Reading My Eyes	Shinoda, Wakefield	2:58
B1	Fuse	Shinoda, Wakefield	3:19
B2	Stick N Move	Shinoda, Wakefield	2:41

Personnel

Xero is:

• Mike Shinoda
• Mark Wakefield
• Brad Delson
• Rob Bourdon
• Dave Farrell
• Joe Hahn

Management

• For touring and mailing info, write to: Xero, 311 Stocker Ave., Glendale, CA 91207
• For more info, call 818-549-9083

Artwork

• Mike Shinoda

Live Performance

Songs Played Live

• "Rhinestone"
• "Reading My Eyes"
• "Fuse"

Gallery

• 

  Shopping cart cover

• 

  Baby cover

Cassette Tape Rips

Over the years, the owners and collectors of the Xero tapes have attempted different transfers of the four songs. The first existing rip was done by IDX on April 29, 2002 and was commonplace in the community for many years, but lacked bass and was very treble-driven. It also noticeably had a skip in "Stick N Move" at 1:05 in the first chorus. Since then, several Xero tapes have made their way into hands of collectors and other rips have been released as both time has gone on and technology has improved.

As of now, there are three known, circulating rips of the Xero tape, with the third rip getting two remasters in 2011.

It is important to note that all of the known rips have come from the tape featuring the blue cover with the baby, and no rips have ever been made of the shopping cart cover tape.

List of known rips of the Xero tape:
01. 2002 IDX rip (scene release, incorrectly titled "Xero-Demo Tape-1998-iDX (Pre Linkin Park)")
02. 2006 LP:Fuse rip
03. 2007 nkramar rip (also found in the "Demo Compilation" released to fans around this time)
+ Skittle021's first remaster of nkramar's rip ("Garage Days Revisited" - 2010)
+ Skittle021's second remaster of nkramar's rip ("Garage Days Unleashed" - 2011)

For four years, fans were only able to hear the first rip by IDX. The LPFuse rerip in 2006 is bassy and muffled-sounding, but it was the first time fans were able to hear the full version of "Stick N Move" without the cut in the first chorus.

LPA's news post from 2007 for nkramar's release read, "Tonight we are proud to present to you, a series of brand new high quality rips of Linkin Park's very first demo tape (provided courtesy of nkramar), from back when they were originally known as Xero. These rips are some of the best to surface on the internet to date as they came from a mint condition Xero tape, played only a limited number of times, before landing into the hands of its current and rightful owner, who was courteous enough to provide new rips for all of you to hear."

In 2011, a remaster of nkramar's rip was released by community member Skittle021, saying, "I would like to share something that I have been working on for the past three years. Since late 2007, I have been working on remastering the Xero Demo Tape to get it as close to studio quality as possible. Well, I've finally done it. I wasn't planning on releasing this to the public, but after showing it to a few friends and family members, they suggested that I do just that. So, here you go. Let me know what you think!"

Later unsatisfied with his work, Skittle021 worked on a second remaster, released in late 2011 and called "Garage Days Unleashed", which comes with the description, "The newly remaster version of the Xero Tape. This version contains many major improvements over the last version. Garage Days: Unleashed contains absolutely no filtering, of any kind. Previous versions of the tape contained very, very heavy noise and essing filters, but this time the sound is completely natural. The tape has now been remastered in full stereo using a completely different new method. This version still eliminates all signs of hissing or buzzing that is caused by ripping a cassette, but completely preserves all of the original backing vocals and instruments"

As time goes on, the tapes will age and slowly deteriorate, so it is likely that the best possible rips of it have already occurred and been released to fans. Only a few known copies exist with current Linkin Park collectors, as most have been lost over time.

External Links

• Download nkramar's rip of the demo tape (FLAC)