The Chronic Consumer

I’m not a huge music fan, so I very rarely buy music-related products. Once in a while, however, I’ll come across a band that I really like, in which case I do start purchasing a few extras.

For the past few years, one of my favorite groups has been Linkin Park. I love that whole “rap rock” sound (or whatever you want to call it) and think that Chester Bennington and Mike Shinoda are amazing musicians. So when I was out shopping the other day and saw the Linkin Park — Live in Texas CD/DVD Combo on sale, I couldn’t resist buying it.

This is an old product, dating way back to 2003. Nevertheless, I hadn’t seen it before, so I figured it would be worth the money.

The DVD shows Linkin Park playing at Texas Stadium and Reliant Stadium over two different days as part of the Summer Sanitarium Tour (with Metallica and Limp Bizkit). The guys play 17 different songs, and we get to see the full-length versions here. The songs are:

1. Don’t Stay
2. Somewhere I Belong
3. Lying From You
4. Papercut
5. Points Of Authority
6. Runaway
7. Faint
8. From The Inside
9. Figure.09
10. With You
11. By Myself
12. P5hng Me A*wy
13. Numb
14. Crawling
15. In The End
16. A Place For My Head
17. One Step Closer

The CD contains 12 of the songs:

1. Somewhere I Belong
2. Lying From You
3. Papercut
4. Points Of Authority
5. Runaway
6. Faint
7. From The Inside
8. P5hng Me A*wy
9. Numb
10. Crawling
11. In The End
12. One Step Closer

I already have all of these songs on my iPod, so I didn’t buy this product for the audio CD. I was far more interested in the DVD.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite what I expected. For one thing, there were only a few backstage shots, and no band member interviews at all. I don’t know if that’s normal for concert DVDs, but it just felt like something was missing.

In addition, the sound on the DVD seemed to be “canned”, as though the producers laid the studio audio tracks over some concert footage. I could barely hear the crowd, and every single song sounded exactly the same as the radio version. It was pretty weird because I thought for sure the songs would be at least a little bit different.

Overall, however, I guess I can’t complain too much. This CD/DVD combo is on sale at Amazon.com for $13.97, which is what you might expect to pay for the CD alone, so it’s still a good deal. I paid more than that at the store I got the set from, but I don’t feel ripped off or anything. This Linkin Park — Live in Texas DVD definitely could have been better, but I still think it’s something hardcore fans will enjoy.