Australian Tour 2010

Introduction

Linkin Park's tour of Australia in December 2010 was the largest tour by the band on the continent in their history. Originally announced as seven shows, tying their October 2007 record on the Minutes To Midnight World Tour, they added two more shows to bring the total to nine shows in Australia.

Summary

Kicking off in Brisbane where they last left off in 2007, Linkin Park began with the A-1 headlining setlist used most often in Europe on the previous leg of the tour. The band took time at this show to sing Happy Birthday to Brad during the intro of The Messenger. Starting with Brisbane, fans reported the band soundchecking Blackout and Burning In The Skies, two songs they had not debuted yet off of the album.

At the second show in Newscastle during the LPU M&G, LPLive member "Pez" (Jay) asked Mike if he could play guitar on Faint. Mike obliged and Pez came up after New Divide to play Faint. At the next show in Burswood, a fan named Monty came up to play guitar on the song as well.

In Adelaide for the third show, Linkin Park debuted a brand new setlist. Papercut was dropped and Lying From You appeared in its spot, with additions of From The Inside and Leave Out All The Rest, and an encore of When They Come For Me, Crawling, New Divide, Faint, and One Step Closer. Once again, another fan came up to play Faint on guitar.

At show number seven of the tour, Melbourne night two, yet another setlist change occurred. Blackout and Burning In The Skies were debuted during the same show. Interestingly, this show, Homebush on the 15th and Canberra on the 16th were the only three shows on the A Thousand Suns World Tour to not feature Iridescent in the setlist since it was dropped for Blackout and Leave Out All The Rest was dropped for Burning In The Skies - a new take on the "B" setlist that was played earlier in the tour for the first time.

Linkin Park held their second LPU Summit on December 15th in Sydney. This was the second show in Sydney of the tour and the first time Linkin Park had played the same venue twice on the same tour but not on back-to-back nights as usual. For the acoustic part of the Summit, The Little Things Give You Away was performed for the first time acoustically. This was the only time on the entire A Thousand Suns touring cycle that is was performed in any form. This was also the first time that Chester performed The Messenger solo, playing both the guitar and doing vocals.

Live Debuts

• Blackout [2010.12.10 Melbourne, Australia]
• Burning In The Skies [2010.12.10 Melbourne, Australia]

Memorable Moments

At the first show in Melbourne on December 12th, Mike rapped the first verse of Reading My Eyes over the intro of Bleed It Out after it was requested during the LP Underground Meet & Greet.

History was made during the second show in Sydney for the LPU Summit. First time ever, a fan (our LPL member "Pez" (Jay)) got to play guitar on Faint for a second time on one tour. It also marked the first time ever that a fan played bass on a song, Jay's brother Brad, also on Faint. After this performance, the band voted to retire fans guesting on songs for the rest of the world tour.

Rehearsals

Starting with the first show of the tour, fans outside of the venues reported longer Linkin Park soundchecks than normal, meaning they were likely more than just the normal crew PA soundcheck. Blackout and Burning In The Skies were both reported to have been soundchecked several shows in a row.

Crew

Name	Job
Jim Digby	Production Manager
Ken "Pooch" Van Druten	FOH Engineer
Kevin "Tater" McCarthy	Monitor Engineer
Sean Paden	Guitar Technician (Brad)
Mark Fiore	Videographer