"Procrastination" and Mike Shinoda Art

Hey all!

Here's the promised blog post that I said I'd do last Wednesday:

The reason for the double-barreled title is that I have two things to talk about today. Nothing unusual there - maybe I should blog more often, then I could give each post a separate theme. Wish I had more time to do that. Anyway, I want to talk a bit about what got me interested in music and street art, if that's okay with you. And that all comes down to one thing: Linkin Park.

Hahaha, you probably think I've gone crazy. "How could you like Linkin Park?" I hear some of you asking. Well, to you lot, I shall say this: I was young...that, and what's wrong with LP? Their music is amazing! Okay, so they may not have been the ones to start the whole Nu-Metal phenomena, but when it was in its' prime, the term "Nu-Wave" was pretty much synominous with Linkin Park. Okay? Okay.

Linkin Park was probably my favourite band from the ages of 11-18. I loved pretty much every song they put out ("Hybrid Theory" and "Meteora" are still tied for my favourite LP albums)- from "Papercut", the first LP song I ever heard, to "Breaking the Habit", the one before I started to go off and redefine my musical tastes. I owe my love of rock/nu-metal/hardcore music to them and for that I am very grateful. I know there's something to growing up and changing your tastes etc, but I have to admit, I went back and visited their site lately after about a year's hiatus and found that I still liked them, even after the gap. One of their latest videos, "Leave Out All The Rest" is nicely done - good lyrics, an interesting and well executed video.

Couple that with some very neat artwork, and you're flyin'. Mike Shinoda, the band's main MC (and assistant sample-guy/guitarist, whatever), is actually an accomplished artist, having his own shows put on in big galleries all over LA - he even runs a sponsorship course at (I think, but I forget the proper name) Art College, CA. And he designs shoes for DC. How much kooler can you get? Lol :P jk.

Here's one of his pieces that I really like:


I used to try to emulate this and a lot of other Linkin Park stuff when I was doing my GCSE's, trying to create my own style out of it. I've since learned you can't copy someone else's style to find your own, but it does help to give you a formative background and somewhere to start. Mike's an amazing artist (as are a lot of the Linkin Park guys - you can see it in the insert for "Meteora", all the guys collaborated on this huge group of boards, using stencils, spray cans, paint, stickers - you name it - and it turned out really, really well; Joe Hahn is also a director and used to be a digital special effects supervisor).

So yeah, I guess I can put down two of the most important creative outlets in my life to Linkin Park...I know, it sounds sad, but without their music and their artwork, I probably wouldn't have liked what I was into as a teenager, and therefore what I love now.

Let me leave you with a little video I found on my viral travels this week. It's made by/for Adobe (y'know, those software guys? They created a bunch of arty programmes?...:P) and the theme is something I've been doing a lot lately (okay, well not so much as usual, which I guess is good as I need to get a good grade on this); we all do it. The execution of the video is very clean and creative too: