A Thousand Suns

A Thousand Suns.
Six years ago, there was only one reason I wanted to go to the 2011 F1 and that was to see Linkin Park perform live for the first time in Singapore. This was my childhood band — that band you first hear and instantly fall in love with, and the wait in the front, jam packed against bodies sweating in the humid Singapore afternoon was well worth it.
Remember The Name.
But Linkin Park started with Fort Minor and Mike Shinoda for me. I didn’t listen to music much as a kid and so I had this album constantly on repeat, it never grew old and it still hasn’t. Kenji continues to make me tear up, Where’d You Go haunts me, and Red to Black will always be my bass line jam. What I didn’t know at that time was that Mike belonged to Linkin Park until a friend told me the story behind the album.
Meteora.
The only place that I bought CDs as a kid was at a store called “That CD Shop” in Great World City back in SG and I remember they only had Meteora left while I had wanted Hybrid Theory (as a kid, I thought you had to listen to albums in the order they came out, like chapters in a story). Somewhere I Belong, Numb and Faint instantly became my top three songs. And when I had learnt to burn cds from my dad, the six songs (that’s all it could fit) always had those three plus the three from Fort Minor. Everyone soon tired of their songs except for me.
Shadow Of The Day.
Minutes to Midnight came out during a time when I was acting all whiny and sick with the world. It was also the time when everyone seemed to pick up a musical instrument. I fancied myself a singer and inspired by Bleed it Out would kill my voice in failed attempts to reach Chester’s power. Vocals wasn’t for me. Electric Guitar came next but I never did grow to fancy the feeling of the thin gauge strings. Then I took up Electric Bass to fill the slot in my first school band, Back by Friday. We mostly played RHCP and Blink but at one point, we played Shadow of the Day live and that made the world feel all perfect. (The simple bass line when played live really adds a power to the song which can’t be heard in the track).
The Catalyst
This is where it all ends. Linkin Park played a few more songs after this in 2011 but The Catalyst was all that I wanted to hear. It rounded out the list of things I wanted to do before the world ended in 2012 (I wished so hard that it would because I didn’t want to go through IB finals). The Catalyst was a song that I didn’t think was possible live (it was so powerful and I believed its vocal arrangement to be too taxing to do during an hour long concert) but Linkin Park did the impossible and played it past the 60 minute mark and did it so well it blew me away. Singapore heat and humidity usually saps a band’s energy pretty fast and to see Chester and Mike continue to belt it out was inspiring.
Thank you Chester and Linkin Park for lighting up our lives and making our childhood epic!
10% Luck
20% Skill
15% Concentrated Power of Will
5% Pleasure
50% Pain
& a 100% Reason to Remember the Name.


The photos in this story were taken by me during “Breaking The Habit” in Linkin Park’s 2011 A Thousand Sun Tour at the Singapore F1 Gran Prix. You can see Chester strike the pose in the photo here — https://youtu.be/Akficw6bA-k?t=58m34s
