Linkin Park: My guilty pleasure

I can't help it, I've always loved Linkin Park, and if that makes me a sulky teenage boy then so be it. It's my guilty little secret, and now it's out. My little brother - who actually IS a sulky teenage boy - has also always been something of a fan, so we've been promising one another we'll see them since he was knee high to a grasshopper. He's now knee high to a skyscraper.

Monday, therefore, was something of a highlight to 2008 - it's been a rather good year so far, actually, which is faintly suspicious - as Best Mate, Anton, Sulky Bro and I pottered off to see them at the 02 (previously the Millennium Dome, for non-Londoners). And fuck me is it a big bastard.

As far as we could tell, from some speedy basic maths that entertained us for about an hour, it holds about 17,551 people* (as Chester, bless him, put it so beautifully, "Leave it to London to build the biggest, baddest mother of a stadium in the world").

Which meant that those of us who were too slow and bought our tickets in the second millisecond after they went on sale were at least 3 miles up in the sky. Yes, that's right, 3 miles.

It was a bit of a surprise to all of us (as nobody had actually thought to check) to find out the support act was only Biffy bloody Clyro! Never have I seen Anton beam so widely - and those who were paying attention back in about August will be desperately uninterested to hear that that was one of the CDs I borrowed from him and failed to return.

And then it was Linkin Park themselves, who, it turns out, are a million times better as a live band than on the old iPod. Darker, heavier, louder, more excitable, polished and really enjoying themselves - not to mention Chester's voice, which is incredibly powerful. He didn't do the 17-second scream I was hoping for, but I did clock him at 13 seconds and, to be fair, it WAS the end of the tour.


Quote of the night (during the second encore)
Me: Awww look, Chester's up on his box again, he does so love his box
Best Mate: I shall put him IN his box in a minute, if he doesn't get a move on so I can have a wee.

p.s. In other news, I've just disovered that the designer helping me make Open Your Mind is a punk metal guitarist whose band just finished a countrywide tour, during which they played the Astoria. Marvellous, a magazine intended to enlighten, balance, de-stress and broaden the horizons of the women of Britain and it's being put together by a lunatic and a thrash metaller.

*Actually we guessed at 10,000 and I just looked it up now to find out how wrong we were, all of which tells you all you need to know about my number dyslexia.