"Live in New York" (Webster Hall 2007)

"Live In New York" is a concert performed by Linkin Park in May 2007 that served effectively as the album release show for Minutes To Midnight. Taking place at New York's intimate Webster Hall venue, the concert was streamed live by AOL on AOL.com and then presented also by AOL in movie theaters on May 14, 2007, three days later, on the eve of the U.S. album release date. The airing, after editing, was given the title "Live in New York" although it was promoted in theaters as "Linkin Park in Concert."

Background

When Linkin Park's touring cycle for Meteora came to an end in September 2004 in Brazil, the band planned to take an extended period of time off to relax following an extreme run of touring from before their debut album Hybrid Theory was released through two massive worldwide album tours in a row.

After side projects Fort Minor and Snow White Tan, later retitled to Dead By Sunrise, recorded music and performed shows, Linkin Park slowly began work on their third album that turned into Minutes To Midnight. A short "escape from the studio"-type mini-tour took place in August 2006 as they went to Japan to headline Summer Sonic Festival with a few shows around it, and a new song "QWERTY" was debuted. Following these shows, Linkin Park returned home to finish the album and to prep their world tour for it.

Extensive rehearsals took place in early 2007 by the band, having effectively taken two and a half years off of proper touring with only 2 shows being performed in 2005 and 4 shows (plus the Grammy's) being performed in 2006. A series of promotional rehearsals were recorded at the band's rehearsal spot Third Encore in April 2007 for companies like AOL, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Circuit City, etc to have as promotional material for the album and exclusive audio & video to go along with their versions of the albums they sold.

The band finally performed their first full-band show since August 2007 when they played in Berlin, Germany on April 28th and debuted three new songs for fans - lead single "What I've Done" and new heavy-hitters "No More Sorrow" and "Given Up". Around other promotional TV performances, another intimate show in London took place the first week of May.

Linkin Park's big return to the U.S. market was marked with the Bamboozle Festival in New Jersey on May 6th, just a week before the album's American release date of May 15th. To mark the occasion, they performed at Webster Hall in New York City on May 11th in their third small, intimate performance for fans since beginning their promotional campaign. It would turn out to be one of their last proper club shows for the time being, with a Los Angeles House of Blues show that followed it, as they quickly geared up for European arenas and festivals for the first big album tour. Projekt Revolution 2007 and more took place after that as Linkin Park went around the world for the album.

Composition

At the summer 2006 shows in Japan, Linkin Park surprised fans with a handful of treats, but one of which was the fact that the show closer changed from "One Step Closer" to "Breaking The Habit" for the first time.

It was following this same "outside the box" thinking compared to the touring for the first two Linkin Park albums that continued while they were preparing setlists for the Minutes To Midnight era. Fans were shocked to see both a huge change in the show opener and show closer at the first show in Berlin - Linkin Park for the first time ever opened with the iconic "One Step Closer", complete with a new, long intro, and closed the show with the crowd anthem "Faint", featuring a heavy extended outro with Chester going quite wild.

The Webster Hall setlist was composed of sixteen songs across the three albums, and included all three new songs performed from Minutes To Midnight to that point. It was in the encore that Mike talked to the fans and said that because they were performing at Saturday Night Live the following night, they had a special surprise for fans - the debut of a new song titled "Bleed It Out". Yep, the first performance of the massive song took place at this show, between "In The End" and "Faint" in the encore.

While Linkin Park band members had mentioned the long and band-favorite song "The Little Things Give You Away" in interviews in spring 2007 and fans thought it could be debuted at the Bamboozle Festival or Webster Hall, the song was rehearsed but saved for the European Tour kickoff several weeks later in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Another notable moment in the Webster Hall set is that Linkin Park kept their performance of the piano version of "Pushing Me Away" in the world tour following its debut in Japan the prior year. It solidified its place between "Numb", where an extended keyboard outro out of the track served as an introduction to "Pushing Me Away", before going right into the legendary "Breaking The Habit" long piano intro that fans know so well.

Release

The concert was webcasted live on AOL.com for fans for free in an uncensored format. After the webcast, Linkin Park's team, partnered with AOL, began editing the show's audio and video for a full production version. Of note, Mike helped mix the audio for the theater airing, and Bill Berg-Hillinger, Mike's father in law, helped assist on video filming and production just as he did with the Projekt Revolution 2002 release. This version in theaters was censored.

When the concert was put into theaters, it was advertised as "Linkin Park in Concert", and when the show began it was titled "Live in New York."

To date, Linkin Park has never formally released the show in a physical or digital format and has only aired the edited (and censored) version in theaters on May 14, 2007. It later was shown on television by WOWOW and Premiere Direkt, at times with a few songs omitted like "Don't Stay" and "Given Up".

Track Listing

Personnel

Linkin Park

Chester Bennington: Vocals
Rob Bourdon: Drums
Brad Delson: Guitars
Joseph Hahn: Records, Sampling
"Phoenix": Bass
Mike Shinoda: Emcee, Vocals, Guitar, Piano

Production

Executive Producers: Rob McDermott, Randy Phillips, Tom Whalley, Jack Isquith, John Rubey, Devin Sarno, Peter Standish
Producers: Domenic Cotter, Jim Digby, Nick Light, David Parks
Director: Doug Armstrong
Consulting Producers: Bill Berg-Hillinger, Creative Director and Mark Fiore, Visual Content Producer
Special Feature Producers: George Bellias, Mike Drumm, Michael Perlmutter, Devin Sarno
Worldwide Representation: Robert McDermott for Mac Mad Entertainment
Management Team: Ryan DeMarti and Trish Evangelista
Assistant Director: Jeff Budah
Tech Director: Mark K
Tech Producers: Bob Muller, Bob Real
Line Producer: Dan Halperin
Stage Manager: Steve Bautista
Production Design: Steve Cohen and Perry "Butch" Allen
Lighting Design: Steve Cohen
Lighting Directors: Jeff Ravitz, Ryan Barancik
Head Gaffer: Bobby Braccia
Gaffer/Electricians: George Gountas, Trevor Gooch, Matt Hudson
Production Assistants: Rick McDonald, Trish Conroy, Robert Howie
Cameramen/Techs: Bobby Del Russo, Phil Salanto, Dante Pagano, Evans Kotsis, Mark Renaudin, Carlos Rios, John Harrison, Joe Dabonis, Tom Byrne, Ernie Jew, Mark Fiore
Utilities: Jesse James, John Escudero, Daniel Platt, Seth Orenstein, Freddie Libitori
F&F Video Truck: John Figley, John Pretnar, TD Manse, Mark Katz, Ken Whitaker, Jimmie Caldwell, Connie Vizaro
Video Control Operators: John Pretnar, Tom Guadarama
Tape Operator: Mark K
Recorded and Mixed By: Guy Charbonneau
Additional Engineering & ProTools: Brian Montgomery
Mixed By: Guy Charbonneau, Brian Montgomery, Mike Shinoda
Remote Recording Facility: Effanel Music
Audio Mixing Facility: XM Productions - Randy Ezratty, Jane Marvin, Rob Macomber
Remote Recording Engineers: Joel Singer, Hardi Kamsani, Peter Gary, Steven Sich
Mix Engineer: Michael Cruz
Craft Services: Stacy Adler
Post Production Editing Facilities: AOL Music - David Parks, Executive in Charge of Post Production Services
Post Production Supervisor: Marcelo Adrisani
Editors: Peggy Davis, Anthony Moore, Bill Berg-Hillinger
Assistant Editor: Sebastian Martinez
HD Program Assembly and Layback: JADE Productions - George Bellias, Robert Howie
Program Marketing: Neal Bird
Satellite Transmission Coordination: Bob Adler
Engineering: Bill Robison, Jeff Sullivan
Dolby Engineers: Gary Epstein, Louis Eales
Venue: Webster Hall - Paul Monahan
Permits: NYC Mayor's Office of Film, Theater, and Broadcasting
Payroll: Olympic Partners, Inc. - Deborah Press
Legal: Jennifer Baltimore, Larry Blake, Charles Hamilton, Danny Hayes, Mae Ho, Madeline Schilder
For AOL: Jennifer Baltimore, Kip Brown, Anahit Karamanukyan, Gabriel Lewis, David Parks, Mike Rich, Pete Schiecke, David Tockman, Jared Willig, Bill Willson
For Warner Brothers Records: Tom Biery, Jennifer Bird, Ron Cerrito, Danielle Davenport, Lori Feldman, Susan Genco, Rob Goldklang, Wendy Griffiths, Liza Joseph, Susan Leon, Kevin Mangini, Dave May, Michael Nance, Diarmuid Quinn, Dan Rose, Keith Rothschild, Shawna Sambocetti, Rosaalie Shah,Esther Somlo
For NCM: Kurt Hall, Tom Galley, Cliff Marks, Ken Venturi, Earl Weihe, Shelly Maxwell, Dan Diamond, Lauren Leff, Tim Anderson, Chris Barnes, Jonathan Barrickman, Doug Bebout, Elyse Boule, Amy Donovan, Amy Jane Finnerty, Chris Fisher, John Guise, Chris Hogan, Toby Hollingsworth, KC Leppke, Jesse Preuss, Savannah Mills, Kelly Morrison, Mikey Ovecka, Joe Prangley, Sandra Price, Lynee Schmidt, Eric Splitt, Mark Weaver, Jamie Woglom
Special Thanks: AEG Live NYC, AEG Live Marketing, Almost Midnight Productions, Danny Hayes, Michael Arfin, CAT Entertainment Services, AMC Theatres & Staff, Cinemark Theatres & Staff, Georgia Theatre Company Theatres & Staff, Regal Entertainment Group Theatres & Staff, PRG Lighting, Webster Hall, Z100 New York (WHTZ 100.3)

Gallery

References