Asian Tour 2013

Introduction

The Asian Tour in August 2013 was Linkin Park's only trip to Asia on the Living Things World Tour and was their first tour of Asia since September 2011, less then two years prior. This marks the shortest gap between visits to Asia for the band since the Meteora World Tour (October 2003 to June 2004).

At just 6 shows long, this is the shortest tour that has been played in Linkin Park's career. A canceled tour of China, Taiwan, and Macao in October 2008 was going to be 5 shows long.

Before the tour

After the tour of New Zealand and Australia earlier in the year, Linkin Park took almost five months off at home. In late June, Chester and Phoenix visited Salt Lake City, Utah to perform at a children's hospital to celebrate the opening of their new music therapy room. Together, they performed The Messenger.

In early August, Linkin Park headlined the Sunset Strip Music Festival in Los Angeles. This was the second show in the United States of the year after the band said Las Vegas was going to be their only one in 2013. Addressing the concern, Mike said, "We played our first shows as a band in 1998, on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. When we were approached about an opportunity to play a special show on the strip, we couldnt say no. We are excited to announce that well be headlining the Sunset Strip Music Festival in West Hollywood, CA on August 3. This time we mean it this will be the ONLY U.S. show for the rest of 2013."

The setlist for this show was the version of Set B used in Australia, complete with the addition of Papercut after A Place For My Head, which was added at the Melbourne stop of Soundwave. Mike rapped verse one of Reading My Eyes over the bridge of Bleed It Out at this show and he gave a short speech before rapping it, saying he wanted to do something special and take it back to the old days when they used to play on Sunset Strip.

In late May, Mike designed flyers to hand out to promote the show. He joined Brad, Phoenix, Adam, and Mark Fiore on May 21, 2013 to walk around Los Angeles (including the UCLA campus) and hand out custom flyers for the show as well as to meet fans and hang out with them. Fans were able to meet the band during this and an LPTV episode was made that documents it. The band did this promo as they used to do it when they played on the Sunset Strip as Xero, Hybrid Theory and Linkin Park.

Two days before the performance, the band held a private KROQ Rehearsal at Third Encore for a radio winner and his friends. Eight songs were played, with the band dropped Numb in favor of Breaking The Habit at the winner's request.

Summary

The short tour began at Summer Sonic Japan, where Linkin Park played both Tokyo and Osaka before Metallica. Both shows were incredibly hot. This was the third time the band had played Summer Sonic after 2006 and 2009. After the Linkin Park set finished, Mike and Chester joined Steve Aoki during his late night DJ set in Tokyo to debut a brand new song by Steve and Linkin Park: A Light That Never Comes. The song was released to fans online two months after the performance.

The third show of the tour was in Manila, Philippines. This was the band's first show in the Philippines in over nine years - their last appearance was when Linkin Park played Manila on June 15, 2004. The band played a new version of Set B, featuring a full Lying From You in the encore, a full Papercut at the top of the set, and no Victimized (w/ QWERTY) or The Catalyst. This is the first time that these two songs had not been performed in Set B since it debuted at the August Camden, NJ show on the Honda Civic Tour in 2012. This was also the first time Set B has been played in full since Johannesburg, South Africa in November 2012 due to Linkin Park mainly playing festivals in 2013 and only a few headlining shows (which had Set A). This was the first time Lying From You had ever appeared in the encore in full. In 2004, Dirt Off Your Shoulders/Lying From You appeared in the encore once, and in 2012, the Lying From You/Papercut mashup continuously appeared in the encore.

Show four was in Hong Kong, which is where the 9th LPU Summit was held. Fans were treated to a soundcheck of Victimized (w/ QWERTY) and The Catalyst, since those two songs were in the full Set A setlist (not played since February). The acoustic portion of the Summit was scrapped for this soundcheck.

The tour ended with shows in Taipei, Taiwan and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the band's first show in Kuala Lumpur in almost ten years. Their last and only other show there was on October 15, 2003. With the announcement of the Malaysia show, the promoter said, "Linkin Park is exclusively touring Malaysia in this part of the SEA region as Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore are not included in the tour due to limited time available from the band."

Memorable Moments

A bit of an interesting move, Mike rapped the verse from Reading My Eyes at every second show of the tour starting with the Sunset Strip Music Festival. Los Angeles, Osaka, Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur were the four lucky shows that got the verse.

Crew

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

Credentials

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  Tour Laminate

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  LPU Meet & Greet