Projekt Revolution 08
By: Static Multimedia |
Sunday April 20, 2008 |
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Mike Shinoda, Chris Cornell, and Sam Endicott dish on the tour. |
| Project Revolution is a perennial concert tour that is headlined by Linkin Park. It began in 2002 and is focused on bringing different artists together for the benefit of fans of different genres. Unlike Lollapalooza or Bonaroo, which are stationary concerts, Projekt Revolution is a traveling tour.
The thing that sets Project Revolution apart from many other festivals is that it relies heavily upon the bands participating. Linkin Park originally started it in 2002, and in a mere 6 years, it has grown into a considerably more appealing summer attraction. Throughout the years, many notorious acts and agencies have contributed and or sponsored in one way or another. Chris Cornell, Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park), and Sam Endicott (The Bravery) were able to answer some questions about this year's Projekt Revolution, past years, and thoughts on what the future may bring. This year's tour is the first tour which will travel outside of the U.S. Specifically, it features acts such as Chris Cornell, The Bravery, Ashes Divide, HIM, Atreyu, 10 Years, Hawthorne Heights, Armor for Sleep, and Street Drum Corps on the U.S./ Germany tour while boasting Jay-Z, Pendulum, N*E*R*D, Enter Shikari, and The Bravery for UK dates. As always, Linkin Park will headline all ventures. Like 2007, some of the tours proceeds will be put back into charity and non for profit organizations like music for relief, which brings aid to victims around the world. The tour begins in Europe in the Czec Repbulic on June 17th before it leaves to head west on June 29th. The first U.S. date is in Mansfield, Massachusetts on July 16th and ends August 24th in Houston Texas. Destination festivals like Bonnaroo, Coachella and Lollapalooza are obviously all the rage these days and I'm wondering why does it make sense to continue to mount Projekt Revolution as a traveling road show? M. Shinoda: I guess this is the sixth year that we've done Project Rev and each year we try to do something exciting for the summer. I think originally we were inspired by the great festivals that happened in Europe and the ones that we've played overseas. They're a lot of fun and there are a number of different touring festivals that go on in the States that are cool, like I'd love to go see them, but I think that there is definitely a certain niche that we feel that this tour fills, and a lot of our fans seem to agree. C. Cornell: I've actually, between Soundgarden and Audioslave, played Lollapalooza three different times on the main stage. One of the things that I think happens, in order to keep these kind of tours happening year-after-year and to have sort of a traveling festival, is somebody has to have their eye on the ball. Somebody has to focus on getting an interesting combination of bands together, getting that worked out and actually do a lot of work. That is not easy to do. That is why some of them come and go. I think Projekt Revolution is a great show because Linkin Park is on top of it. They're excited about it and passionate. That's what it takes to make it great. Each of you and your bands are at kind of a different point in your cycles with currents or your latest albums. Is anybody going to have anything that's going to be new to perform during the summer? I know, Chris I think you're working on something now. How is all that going to play out in your individual live sets? C. Cornell: I'm going to try to work in a couple, I'm not sure exactly how many songs, but probably two or three new songs. And I'll probably have a new single out by the time we go out there. But I'm not having mixed yet or having any idea what singles are or a song choice yet, I'm not sure what that will be. But there is definitely going to be something new. Okay. Then Sam and Mike, you guys are obviously in different points in your cycles, so anything new or how are you going to approach just repertoire for your sets? S. Endicott: We just put out the second half of our last album, like the Moon half of the Sun and the Moon, and so we're going to start putting in these new versions, kind of like remixed versions of the songs. So we'll start busting out a bunch of those on this tour. M. Shinoda: As far as the Linkin Park set goes we've been trying to build in as much wiggle room for improvisation and kind of screwing around with existing songs, as much of that as possible, and we'll continue to do so. We haven't actually, at this point, figured out what the set for the summer is going to be. But I feel pretty confident saying that we'll be working more towards that end. Mike, you said earlier in the interview that with Projekt Revolution you guys wanted to fill a niche with this tour. And I wonder if you can kind of go back to that point and kind of elaborate, Mike, if you will, on what niche you feel the tour is fulfilling? M. Shinoda: Well obviously, just to mention a couple other tours, this is obviously not an Ozfest; it's not a Warped Tour. Some of the bands on this bill have played those tours, but I think that really what Projekt Revolution what it started out — when we started this tour, our idea is to showcase groups that were doing something revolutionary, something original, something different, either now or they're known for that over time. And obviously, that's something that we've always tried to do. We definitely hope that our fans see in our music something that is new and original, and obviously the other bands on the bill, we try to pick them based on that kind of criteria. There is no arguing that obviously, Chris Cornell has been doing this for longer than we have, he's got one of the most original voices in rock, original style and has done many different things that I think a lot of young kids look up to and say “That's really cool, that's really different and I want to do something like that some day.” And that's really the spirit of the tour, even if you're the first band on the bill, we hope that some day fans can look back and say, “Oh, I remember the first time I saw so and so, this is a band that I knew was going to be doing something really great and different in the future.” And Mike, when you say it's obviously not a Warped Tour and obviously not an Oz-fest, can you just tell me what you mean when you say that it's obvious that it's not either of those things? M. Shinoda: Well I see Warp Tour as being a more kind of a screamo-emo-punk thing. And I see Oz Fest as being a more metal tour. And those words I wouldn't use to describe this tour. I think although there are elements of those things in some of the bands on the bill, consistently over time Projekt Rev has showcased a lot of variety. And to be totally blunt, I think this is the kind of music that our band listens to, that's why we reach out to these bands in the first place to put these bills together. You know at one time we had Snoop Dog and Korn on the bill, and that was what we and it kind of goes without saying that a lot of our fans were listening to. Also, actually I want to mention it's not all about Linkin Park fans. On this tour, there are a lot of bands on the tour, and we like the fact that people may be coming who aren't familiar with Linkin Park, who aren't familiar with The Bravery or Chris Cornell and they come for other bands and then they get to see everybody. To come from the beginning to the end of the show you get a lot of different sounds and you get a lot of different experiences, and that's what makes it fun. This kind of reminds me a lot of kind of European style festivals with the diversity that you guys have already been talking about, and you've been on the three Lollapaloozas and you've experienced this kind of deal before. Tell me a little bit about how you were approached to do this project and how excited you are to be able to play to such a diverse audience? C. Cornell: For me it's ideal. Being a solo artist after all this time and having two or three bands, it brings a lot of diversity. I noticed in the last year playing festivals worked really well for me because I can mix it up and do some of the heavier rock, as well as turn around and do songs where I'm just singing and playing acoustic guitar. I did, I think, six or seven shows with Linkin Park in Australia, when they did their Australian tour this last year. It just was great. It was a different audience. It wasn't my audience and I had to go out and earn the respect of people every night. It was really refreshing feeling, it wasn't preaching to the choir. The idea of putting the two together, where it's a festival and I'm also getting to tour with Linkin Park, I think was just something that really appealed to me. Once we did those shows in Australia, I was already asking my management to hook up for a full length tour. To me, for what I do personally, it's important to be able to mix it up and have an audience put up with that. I think for a guy to be able to mix it up as much as I do, this type of tour is ideal. M. Shinoda: I have to say, just from a fan perspective, that watching Chris' set is really enjoyable for me. Whether it's a Soundgarden song, or an Audioslave song or a solo song, it's almost like a greatest hits set. It's great. It's a lot of fun to watch. C. Cornell: It can be different every night. A different version of greatest hits every night. I really think it's cool that you guys continue to give back the way you are with all of your concert tours, and especially this one where you're going to give money back to Music for Relief in support of the victims around the world. So I would like you to talk about that a little bit and what this tour will be supplying? M. Shinoda: Well just to be clear, in case anybody is unaware of the organization, Music for Relief began after the Tsunami in Southeast Asia and then we continued to do work in Katrina, a few other events like the wild fires in California, I mean the organization does what its name implies. Essentially with these tours, ever since, over a year ago now we've been trying to make our tours a little more green. We've also been trying to donate money from the tours to different organizations that we think are helping out. So with American Forests, for example, we've had this longstanding relationship where basically for every ticket sold to a Linkin Park concert, which includes this one, basically every ticket, a dollar is donated to American Forest and trees are planted for those dollars. Hundreds of thousands of trees have been planted, it's been a great program and we hope to keep doing that. In addition to that we're running a majority of the bus and truck fleet on bio-diesel and doing things like donating the leftover catering to homeless shelters and other organizations that can use it. There are a lot of things the bands can do. Basically, if you want any more information about Music for Relief, when you come to the show you can go to the Music for Relief booth or you can just go to musicforrelief.org and check out all the things that MFR is doing. Mike, what extras will you do maybe this time that you didn't do last time in the digital package? M. Shinoda: The digital souvenir package is — I mean basically when you buy tickets online, you can opt in for it. And then after you go see the show in your e-mail inbox there will be a link and you download the MP3's of the Linkin Park set that you saw. Fans love it. I mean if you go to our Web site and you check out the message board we have a whole section dedicated to the fans who want to talk to each other about swapping those files and sharing their experiences of the show. We're keeping our minds open to what happens every night, we try to make the set — more and more often we make it flow and feel, we feel out what the crowd wants us to do, we kind of jam a little bit. And with all that said, you know each show is a little bit different, sometimes a lot different. And that just makes for a better experience for the fans and it's one that now, with that digital souvenir package that they can actually take home. I know you've talked about planning the show and you guys are all on the main stage, but you have a great Revolution stage lineup as well. Can each of you talk about an artist on the revolution stage that you're really excited to see and check out? M. Shinoda: Yes, it's Atreyu, Hawthorne Heights, 10 Years, Armor for Sleep and Street Drum Corps. S. Endicott: We actually played with Hawthorne Heights a couple of nights ago at the Bamboozle Festival. They are really cool. Their guitarist has the best guitar rock moves I've seen in a long time. M. Shinoda: And Street Drum Corps is just like improvisational rhythm. You know, originally when we saw them — when I was doing Fort Minor shows, we played with Street Drum Corps and Chester came to that show, he saw them play and that's kind of where he first got interested in them and that's why they ended up on this tour. When we described them to the rest of the band I think we called them a Punk Rock Blue Man Group. It's almost like Stomp. C. Cornell: Yes, like they take cigarette cellophane and do like a rhythmic piece out of it and like anything that you can make a rhythm out of kind of thing. M. Shinoda: Right, but it's obviously a lot less Broadway. It's way more street than any of those Blue Man Group or Stomp or anything like that. These guys are little punks, which is great. I love their attitude and their look is just so cool. I do also, just to mention, think all the groups on the Revolution stage are really great. Last year we had Medina Lake open the show, and I've never seen so many people show up so early for a show. The Revolution stage area was packed as soon as the doors opened, it was like a flood of people came in from the very beginning. So the good news is that the fans love the lineup and they want to come out early and I think that that's going to happen again this year with Armor for Sleep opening up. At the same time it makes it a little trickier for the people who play later, because now all the fans have been there since 11 o'clock, they're tired and we have to work extra hard to get them into the set and keep them excited, which we are happy to do. |
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