July 25, 2008
The Cheap Pop

Flanking the stage and covered in tribal garb and make-up, the members of Street Drums Corps provided Projekt Revolution headliners Linkin Park some very rhythmic entrance music.

Most of the crowd at Jones Beach was clearly there just for the boys in LP, as their apathy, which had been quite palpable during many of the support acts, turned to school girl-like fanaticism as the California sextet hit the stage.

Kicking things off with ‘What I’ve Done,” the first single from last year’s Minutes to Midnight album, LP performed a set that highlighted each of their three studio albums, although with just Mike Shinoda on keyboards and Chester Bennington on vocals, “Pushing Me Away” more closely resembled the mellowed-out version of the track from LP’s remix album, Re-Animation, which the boys used to give a slow opening to their four-song encore.

Also, perhaps because Shinoda so misses spitting rhymes on LP tracks (Minutes to Midnight only featured his rapping styles on a couple of tracks), he let loose with the first verse of “Petrified” by Fort Minor (his hip-hop side project) before the band launched into “Points of Authority,” off of LP’s phenomenally successful debut album, Hybrid Theory.

Seeing as how Chester had lent him a hand on “Hunger Strike” earlier in the night, it was no big surprise (but it was quite a treat) when Chris Cornell came out to take over vocal duties on the second verse of “Crawling.”

Rob Bourdon brought back a concert staple from years gone by, the ever-wicked drum solo, which provided an excellent end to “Bleed it Out,” with which the boys closed their regular set.

Returning for the obligatory encore (remember when the encore wasn’t a foregone conclusion, but a gift from bands to a truly deserving crowd? Yeah neither do I.), LP unveiled perhaps the real reason why Busta Rhymes was added to the tour bill, as the MC came onstage to help perform his LP-collaborative track “We Made It.” With the Street Drum Corps back on stage, one member apparently doing some welding (sparks were flying everywhere) and the other two men pounding their percussion, Linkin Park closed their set with the song that started it all, “One Step Closer.”

Allowing the ends of some songs to turn into full-band jam sessions, the boys of LP showed that they have matured both as a band, although their evolution came at the expense of any of the rare gems that came before Hybrid Theory. Linkin Park put on a thoroughly solid show, but it could have used a little jolt of “High Voltage.”