Linkin Park performed a private show for LPU (fan club) members on Friday, May 18th at the House of Blues Sunset. The custom Honda Civic Tour car and bike were also revealed, with Stryker on site to helping with the event as well.

Photos by Amanda Graziano.

Shinoda told a funny story, about two years into their career, when Bennington was hungover and had to get through an airport security line with all his rock and roll metal.

“There was a day when he was wearing a dog collar, he had the metal in his ears, he had the metal in his lip, he had spike bracelets from his wrist to his elbows, he had a belt that had metal all over it with like a chain, and metal in his boots and he goes to the airport with us,” says Shinoda. “And we see him, we get to the airport, we’re in the security line with this guy going, ‘Ummm, there’s like two people in front of you and we don’t say anything to him because clearly he was hungover.”

“It was like Mr. T came to the security line and forgot the lock to his dog collar,” continued the songwriter and rapper. “My favorite part was that he was kind of bitter. He was kind of hungover and angry, so he gets to the front of the line and we were like, “Oh, no. This is gonna be bad.’”

In the end, all the band could do was laugh at Bennington in his state, just like they laugh at the old incarnations of themselves. “That’s who we were at the time,” finishes Shinoda.

Linkin Park are getting into tour shape to co-headline the 2012 Honda Civic Tour with Incubus. The two bands, whom have often been put into the same musical category, also grew up in the same area. Linkin Park said they saw Incubus play some backyards when they were in high school; Incubus lived down the 101 freeway in Calabasas.

The band will promote their latest album, Living Things, in stores June 26th.

“I think our newest record is always our favorite record because it’s the newest and most exciting. It’s like a new car,” says Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda when asked what their favorite record is. “Living Things has that new car smell.” “Hybrid Theory has that classic old car vibe right now. It’s like ‘ Dude that car was f**king dope,” agrees frontman Chester Bennington. “I remember that car. It was awesome. But I have the new version in my garage.’”

Linkin Park are getting into tour shape to co-headline the 2012 Honda Civic Tour with Incubus. The two bands, whom have often been put into the same musical category, also grew up in the same area and Linkin Park said they saw Incubus play some backyards when they were in high school; Incubus lived down the 101 freeway in Calabasas.

In an interview with Ted Stryker, the band recollected the early Hybird Theory days of their career–the days of dog collars and jelly bracelets–and how it compares to twelve years later in the Living Things stage of their musical journey.

“There’s an energy there, a spirit there that, in order to get there, I think that part of the process for us was to get OK with the fact that we wore dog collars and silly jelly bracelets up to our elbows and I had bright red hair,” says Shinoda. “I look at the pictures now and I was like, ‘God. What was I thinking?’ But at the same time I wouldn’t change it for anything.”

(Photo: Cody Black)

Shinoda then told a story about a time, about two years into their career, when Bennington was hungover and had to get through an airport security line with all his rock and roll metal.

“There was a day when he was wearing a dog collar, he had the metal in his ears, he had the metal in his lip, he had spike bracelets from his wrist to his elbows, he had a belt that had metal all over it with like a chain, and metal in his boots and he goes to the airport with us,” says Shinoda. “And we see him, we get to the airport, we’re in the security line with this guy going, ‘Ummm, there’s like two people in front of you and we don’t say anything to him because clearly he was hungover.”

“It was like Mr. T came to the security line and forgot the lock to his dog collar,” continued the songwriter and rapper. “My favorite part was that he was kind of bitter. He was kind of hungover and angry, so he gets to the front of the line and we were like, “Oh, no. This is gonna be bad.’”

In the end, all the band could do was laugh at Bennington in his state, just like they laugh at the old incarnations of themselves. “That’s who we were at the time,” finishes Shinoda.

The band calls the new record a “developing journey” and one where they had a discussion about “getting real with who they are.” For Shinoda, that meant co-producing the album with Rubin, although he deems the word co-production a “technicality.”

“Rick comes in about once a week and he does a few hours with us where he hears it with fresh ears and gives us the Rick Rubin take,” Shinoda explains.

(Photo: Cody Black)

“There are a couple misconceptions with a band writing a song,” Shinoda continues. “One is that you think of a song, you like dream it up, and then you make it. And that’s not how it works for us. Another thing is people think maybe a band jams and then they write a song and then they go into a studio and then they record it and then when they’re done recorded they go mix and master and then the put it out.”

“Our process is weird because it doesn’t work linearly like that at all,” says Shinoda. “Like from the very first demo, which could be on a laptop, home studio, big recording studio…everyone of those places we’re just writing. And the demos, from the very first idea, we’re already trying to get a handle on it, the engineering of it, the mix, the sound. We’re doing all steps of it at once at all times.”

This also gets alluded to later as their “automatic writing” technique which Bennington admits can sometimes sound like “gibberish.” “There’s no words, just things that sound like words,” he says.

They did say they like to put a positive spin on their music, even some of the “doom and gloom” songs of Hybrid Theory, and when asked how age has played into their writing process, Bennington says that “age comes with a different perspective on life.”

“You know, when you’re young, everything’s about you. It’s not like your fault when you’re young and everything’s about you and you’re trying to find your place,” he explains. “And you view the world, in a way, at least I did, as things happening to me, and so, I think now my perspective is much different. I’m kind of excited about even the sh*t that’s bad because there’s always some good that comes out of it and I kind of wonder what that will be.”

(Photo: Cody Black)

“When Bennninton was young, one of his first rock and roll experiences, one which Shinoda dubbed as “fate,” was when he found a split record on the bus. One side was the Misfits’ Walk Among Us and the other side was the Descendents’ Milo Goes To College.

“And it changed my life,” says Bennington who admitted to spinning Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Mothers Milk continuously before that find. Shinoda says that the first album he ever bought with his own money was the Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill.

Now Shinoda is working on what critics have dubbed one of the best action movies of the year, The Raid: Redemption. Shinoda says that he’s wanted to score a film for a long time

“Getting a call from Sony on that movie; those kind of things don’t come around that often,” says Shinoda.”People are saying it’s one of the best action movies of the last decade. And I’m not that versed in what’s been going on in action films, so for me I just think this film is cool. It’s an indie film; I can probably make mistakes and the whole world won’t be watching me screw it up. But it turned out good. If I have time, I’d love to keep doing it [scoring films].”

Linkin Park’s DJ Joe Hahn is also having “fun” directing a “low budget indie movie” called Mall. One which he said Linkin Park is doing the music for.

“It’s a great script adapted from an Eric Bogosian novel and it’s kind of dark and twisted,” explains Hahn. “Rated R. And we’re doing the music for it. It’s going to be cool. Probably going to take it to the festivals at the end of the year and you’ll see it sometime next year. Or maybe sooner.

Linkin Park’s Living Things will be available on June 26th through Warner Bros Records. You can pre-order it on iTunes here.

Photo Gallery: Linkin Park Perform…

This is a one-time only viewing of the performance and interview with Stryker.

The webcast will begin Thursday at 12:00pm PT / 3:00PM ET.

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WATCH THE WEBCAST HERE
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Photo Gallery: Silversun Pickups At The…Named after a liquor store on the corner of Sunset and Silverlake Blvd, the band had a dual celebration on the release of their album. Nursing hangovers from an exciting taco-slash-dance party at a Silverlake restaurant down the street from that same liquor store, the band still had enough energy to come in this morning and play a sexy five-song set for lucky winner in the Red Bull Sound Space at KROQ.

When the effortlessly witty Aubert was asked how he felt this paramount morning of his album release, Aubert replied, “Hungover.”

“We had a little party last night,” Aubert said with a laugh. “So, we’re going to play the songs really slow.  You guys got a couple hours? We’re going to do three songs in seven hours.”

His fellow band (and party) mates Christopher Guanlao, Joe Lester, and Nikki Monninger joined him onstage for a show of Silversun Pickups’ sultry anthemic guitars, spooky lyrics, and stylishly sinister melodies on songs “Bloody Mary (Nerve Endings),” “The Pit,” and “Dots and Dashes (Enough Already)” from Neck of The Woods. The band also played their two earlier hits, “Panic Switch” and “Lazy Eye.”

After petting Stryker’s hair and joking that touching his head is like “going back in time,” Aubert said that he is “really excited to get this thing out,” telling an audience member that Neck of the Woods came out “a lot better than we thought.”

“We heard it yesterday and usually, when you’re making an album, when you’re listening to it, you’re constantly trying to change it and it starts to sound like ones and zeroes,” elaborated Aubert. “Like the matrix. You know, you don’t hear it anymore. And yesterday, we heard it and thought, ‘That’s not the worst. That’s ok.’”

“I think you’re so fed up with it at that point. I think you could work on it forever and you need someone to take it out of your hands,” said Aubert. “If you keep cradling it like your mom did you, you would never be finished and somebody just breaks down the door and says, ‘Enough.’ Smacks you on the face with a newspaper, probably because you peed. And grabs it and puts it out.”

Neck of the Woods has already jumped to the top of the iTunes charts at number tw0 and Paste declared the album “the best mainstream rock album of the year.” This is a far cry from the band’s first show, which was twelve years ago in Williamsburg, New York at the CMJ Music Festival.

“Our first show ever was in New York, in Williamsburg,” recalled Aubert. “We didn’t really know what we were doing. It was 2000. Let me paint a picture. Lord of the Rings hasn’t come out yet. What’s this Harry Potter stuff I’m hearing about? And Nikki sent a tape to CMJ that was just a boom box and it was like a 40-minute version of ‘Lazy Eye’ that was like [plays example] and every once in a while you’d hear [does bad vocals] and we got into CMJ.”

Silversun Pickups (Photo: Steve Bitanga)

“And we were like, ‘Oh, crap. What are we going to do?’ And we just wanted to see bands so we flew to New York and we played this awful show,” continued Aubert. “I don’t even remember it. We were like, ‘Well, at least no one will be there’ and all of our friends came. I think we played four songs.”

“Our friend said we needed to work on our levels,” interjected Monninger. “And I said, ‘What’s that?’”

Now Silversun Pickups has an entire team of people to check their “levels.” Likewise Aubert is past his teenage experiences having “Valley” wars between the San Fernando Valley and Simi Valley. After an audience member name-checked her neighborhood as Simi Valley, the frontman began to joke around with her, saying how he went there as a teenager and was told by someone in a store that he wasn’t from “around there.”

Quipping a bit on a Simi Valley Super Target that sells beer, Aubert said that if the Target didn’t tell Neck of the Woods in the store, he’d stand outside and sell it.

After years working their way up in the music business, although probably not selling their album outside of Super Targets, the band didn’t hesitate to tell an audience member some of the bands they are currently listening to including the new Shins, Azaelia Banks, Band of Skulls, Joy Formidable, and Gary Clark Jr. Aubert said he loves to listen to The Knife and, of course, the Beastie Boys.

Silversun Pickups (Photo: Steve Bitanga)

Stryker asked how the Silversun Pickups felt about the Beastie Boys and the tragic passing of Adam Yauch a/k/a MCA. Aubert said that if someone says they don’t like the Beastie Boys they are “lying.”

“Well, it’s horrible really and it affects everybody because the Beastie Boys are mighty and it’s sad to think that something can take them down,” elaborated Aubert.”You know, I think it just makes you realize, ”Wow.’”

“Because they’re current; they’re not like a past thing and I think people get a little callous about when people pass away and they start listening to their albums again,” continued Aubert. “No one’s not listening to the Beastie Boys, right? And that’s that. It’s horrible. I think it makes you realize who the enemy really is.”

(Photo: Steve Bitanga)

Neck of the Woods is available at iTunes and Amazon. For more information about Silversun Pickups, follow them on Twitter, on Facebook, or check out their website: silversunpickups.com

–Nadia Noir, CBS Radio Los Angeles

Photos by Steve Bitanga.

To celebrate, the band came to Red Bull Sounds Space at KROQ in Los Angeles and played a five-song set in the Red Bull Sound Space. Before they played popular songs like “Lazy Eye,” “Panic Switch,” and “Bloody Mary (Nerve Endings),” the band was interviewed by Ted Stryker.

The radio host asked how the Silversun Pickups felt about the Beastie Boys and the tragic passing of Adam Yauch a/k/a MCA. Frontman Brian Aubert declared he was currently listening to, saying that if someone says they don’t like the Beastie Boys they are “lying.”

“Well, it’s horrible really. And it affects everybody because the Beastie Boys are mighty and it’s sad to think that something can take them down.” said Aubert. “You know, I think it just makes you realize, ”Wow.’”

“Because they’re current; they’re not like a past thing and I think people get a little callous about when people pass away and they start listening to their albums again,” elaborated Aubert. “No one’s not listening to the Beastie Boys, right? And that’s that. It’s horrible. I think it makes you realize who the enemy really is.”

Neck of the Woods is available at iTunes and Amazon. For more information about Silversun Pickups, follow them on Twitter, on Facebook, or check out their website: silversunpickups.com

–Nadia Noir, CBS Radio Los Angeles

On Tuesday, May 8th, (TOMORROW) Silversun Pickups will be celebrating the release of their new album Neck of The Woods with a private show here at the KROQ studios. We’ll be webcasting the entire show live and uncut – hosted by KROQ’s Stryker – beginning at 11:30am PT. Got a question for the band? Leave a message in the comments section below or send a tweet to @TedStryker.

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Take this week’s KROQ music survey and you could win a pair of tickets to the private show with Silversun Pickups on May 8th at the Red Bull Sound Space at KROQ! Stryker will be hosting the event, which will also be webcast live on Tuesday, May 8th at 11:30am. The band will be celebrating the release of their newest album, Neck Of The Woods, which comes out that day.

Aside from possibly scoring some of these awesome tickets, you’ll also be influencing what we play on-air. Make your voice heard!

START MUSIC SURVEY NOW

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This week’s survey ends at 11:00pm on 5/06/12. Contest is open to anyone who resides in the SoCal zip codes and has completed the KROQ music survey.

[Gallery] Imagine Dragons At The Red…

“I’m 4th generation Las Vegan,” said frontman, Dan Reynolds. He’s tall and all-American handsome, wearing a tight white t-shirt. His honey-blonde hair is worked into a stylish faux hawk and his smile is practiced, but unpretentious.

“Which I pride myself on,” Reynolds continued on in an interview with Stryker at the Red Bull Sound Space at KROQ.  “But the band is from all over: California, Utah, and we moved to Vegas so that’s how we started. We kind of call that our home ground.”

Photo by Faith-Ann Young

During the set, Reynolds plays a giant Taiko-style drum with verve. He’s joined by band mates Wayne Sermon on guitar, Ben McKee on bass (who has apparently scaled a strip club and is “familiar” with the Spearmint Rhino), and Daniel Patzman on drums.

“Round and Round,” “Tokyo,” “Radioactive,” and their hit song, “It’s Time,” which Reynolds told the audience was his favorite song off their EP Continued Silence because ” it’s a song that we wrote about a year ago and it’s exactly what’s kind of happening with the band now and it was written during a hard period of my life…It has a lot of meaning.”

Imagine Dragons has come up from just another indie band playing in casinos and small clubs in Las Vegas to winning a Battle of the Bands to signing with major label Interscope in November of last year to recording their upcoming album with Alex Da Kid who recorded with artists like Eminem, Rhianna, and Paramore.

Photo by Faith-Ann Young

As far as the Battle of the Bands has bolstered the careers of Imagine Dragons, they expressed their disinterest in doing it again. But with their current success, Imagine Dragons will probably never have to.

“That was cool and I don’t think we’ll ever do a battle of the bands again,” said Reynolds, laughing. “It’s been a wild three years. We’ve lived on the road. The reason this band has moved is really because of these people. People who share the music with their friends and it’s been incredible to see our fans have really supported us in that way.”

Photo by Faith-Ann Young

Between songs, Reynolds thanks his fans again for sharing the band so “quickly” on the internet because Facebook and Twitter support is what “makes this band move” and then he thanked KROQ and “other stations” after admitting that he was “nervous” because he grew up listening to KROQ and the experience was very “surreal.”

A fan asked the band what it was like to play at SXSW, and Reynolds quipped that he didn’t remember it because Imagine Dragons “played fifteen shows in three days” and that he has “BBQ oozing out of all my pores.”

Presumably, fifteen shows in three day is a lot for a band that comes from Las Vegas which host Stryker noted as a blossoming music town that didn’t used to have a huge rock and roll scene as early as three years ago.

Photo by Faith-Ann Young

“It’s actually been great for us because we started playing Casino gigs,” said Reynolds. “You can’t really do that anywhere else in the U.S. And it was a way to kind of distribute our music to tourists who were coming in…And over time, Vegas scene has really been growing. There’s an incredible First Friday Event every month. It’s cool that there’s a lot of culture coming into Las Vegas.”

But for the 4th-generation Las Vegan, his favorite places in Nevada are the less known ones.

“I don’t know about normal tourists,” said Reynolds when asked where his favorite places in Vegas to go are,”but Red Rock is something that gets looked over a lot because people come and they normally go to the Strip.

“Red Rock is the most beautiful plot of land that I know of,” concluded the singer. “We  go out three a lot with my family. We have picnics there with my friends.”

“Anyone who’s going to Vegas, go to Red Rock.”

Imagine Dragons’ EP Continued Silence is available now via iTunes from Interscope Records.