Archive for September 2024
Linkin Park Hires a New Co-Lead Singer, and I Have Thoughts…
In case you haven’t heard yet, Linkin Park has a new lead singer, or probably better explained as co-lead singer along with singer/rapper Mike Shinoda. They needed someone because their iconic lead singer Chester Bennington died seven years ago by his own hand, and most of Linkin Park wanted to play together again. (The exception was their original drummer, Rob Bourdon.) So they’ve hired a woman, Emily Armstrong, who fronted a group known as Dead Sara, to sing the parts that Chester would’ve sung had he still been alive.
Note that I did not say “to replace Chester,” as there’s no way to replace Chester Bennington. But Linkin Park wanted/needed someone to sing those parts, and Emily Armstrong can sing melodies and then scream in a heartfelt way. My guess is that Emily A. sings in a similar range to Chester, or at least is close enough that with some minor arrangements (perhaps changing the key signature and/or mode — as lots of groups use modes like Mixolydian, Lydian, Dorian, etc., in addition in order to better reflect a mood or feeling), Linkin Park’s songs can be rendered well enough for fans to appreciate them.
This is a big controversy because of two things. One, you can’t replace Chester; he had a unique set of skills, including an emotional awareness that was almost uncanny, that could never be reproduced by anyone else. Two, one of Chester’s sons, Jamie, is very unhappy about this. Jamie pointed out that September is International Suicide Awareness month, which seems disrespectful to him as his father Chester died by suicide.
That raises a good point: as Linkin Park had been working with Emily A., quietly, for months, why didn’t Linkin Park wait another month to drop this news? Or why not move it up into August? Why court this sort of drama when you don’t have to?
See, there was someone else, a musician — I can’t remember the guy’s name right now — who had reported about four, maybe five months ago that he’d heard that Linkin Park had hired a new female singer. Mike Shinoda and other Linkin Park members pooh-poohed this and said if there was any news to report, they’d report it themselves, thank you.
But the guy who reported this was a fellow musician. I knew at the time, being a musician myself, that something was undoubtedly going on even though the guy who’d said he’d heard Linkin Park had a new lead female singer backtracked pretty quickly once Mike Shinoda, et. al., basically said the man should mind his own business. Still, from that report, I figured Linkin Park was probably rehearsing, trying to lay tracks in the music studio, and figure out if a combo with some woman — who we know now to be Emily A. — was commercially viable.
That’s exactly what was going on, as we now know.
My thoughts on this are a bit mixed. First, it is hard for me to conceive of anyone singing the parts Chester sang so well and so distinctively. Chester Bennington was an integral part of Linkin Park, and as I said before, I do not believe he can ever be replaced. But second, as a musician, I know that the members of Linkin Park wanted to play again. It’s been seven years since they last played a concert in public, and most of them (Rob Bourdon, original drummer, aside) were itching to get out there and to perform.
I can’t blame any musician for wanting to perform, OK? That’s kind of what we do, providing we’re healthy enough to do it. Every performance, even of a well-known song like Linkin Park’s “In the End,” is a little different, because the energy of the crowd may be different. Or maybe one or more of the group members is feeling especially emotive. Or there’s some extra tenderness in a quiet musical interlude. Or the bombastic, up-tempo stuff seems to have extra fire one day, while the next, while still fun to listen to and hopefully fun for the group members to play, doesn’t quite meet that level of intensity.
This is true of any human music group anywhere in the history of time. Live music has variables to it, and can be extremely good one night, good the next, a bit off the third (though probably the audience won’t recognize it, the members of the group assuredly will know and feel like they let themselves down), and back to good the fourth night. It is just the nature of the beast.
As I’ve said before at my blog, there are such things as post-concert highs and post-concert lows. For example, I believe famous singer Chris Cornell may well have been dealing with a post-concert low before he called his wife and sounded so odd just a few hours before he took his own life. Audience members, from what I can recall at the time as he passed a couple of months before Chester did, said that Chris seemed frustrated, maybe a little unhappy, and his performance was not necessarily up to par. Again, some of this is the nature of the beast, and every musician worth his/her/their salt knows it. But it can be hard to remember, in the moment, that as wonderful as music is, and as wonderful as it is that some people get to live their dreams and make a living from music, that being a musical performer is not the sum total of everything we are.
I’ve had both post-concert highs and post-concert lows. They can be disconcerting, but the lows are worse by far than the highs. On those nights, I wonder why I even bothered to take up an instrument. (I don’t sing in public and am glad I don’t.) My hands felt a little off, maybe, or it was very hot outside and playing an outdoor concert was uncomfortable and unpleasant. Either way, it affected my performance for the worse. Because of that, I felt like I’d let down the audience, let down the group I was playing in, let down myself too, and just wished the ground would swallow me up, whole.
At any rate, getting back to Linkin Park and their new singer Emily A. — I think we should give the new-look and new-sound Linkin Park a bit of time to see how things go. I also think that as open-hearted as Chester B. often was, he’d not want to keep his bandmates from making music with someone else (even if it doesn’t feel easy for fans).
Finally, Shinedown’s lead singer Brent Smith posted on social media that he believes Linkin Park is doing what’s right for them. It sounded to me like Smith also believes fans should give the new version of Linkin Park time, and at least be open to listening to Emily A.’s vocals. (He spoke in a quite complimentary manner of Emily A., too.)
I think that’s a good position to take, and it’s one I can live with.
So, while I still wish that Chester was alive, singing his heart out, and playing/singing music to his heart’s content, I’m at least willing to listen to the new version. I make no promises yet as to what I think…but I will at least listen, and hope all goes well for them.
The Perils of Customer Service
Folks, I know it’s Sunday. I usually come up with some sort of deep thought, or at least an attempt at deep thought, with regards to spirituality, religion, etc.
So, why am I talking about customer service today instead? Simple. I ran into some not-so-good service about a week ago, and I had excellent service on both Thursday and Saturday (two of the last three days), so I figured comparing and contrasting that might be interesting to talk about.
Besides, I haven’t blogged in a couple of weeks. That’s too long to go without saying anything. I get lots of questions like, “Barb, are you alive? Why aren’t you writing? What’s up with your blog? I’m used to seeing something there, and you’re falling down on the job!” (OK, only I said that last one. But the other three have been asked more often than not.)
Anyway, regarding customer service: If you don’t get good service, sometimes it’s frustrating in the moment to say something about it.
See, the bad service I got was at my local credit union. I needed something from them that they’re capable of, but it takes an extra-long time for them to do it; because of that, I had to wait while standing, with my cane, for at least twenty to twenty-five minutes. I started shaking my legs out from the hips so I would be able to walk out of there…and what bothered me most was that the young teller (he couldn’t have been much more than twenty-one, if even that) didn’t seem to realize I was having trouble. He’d seen me come in with my cane, then realized he’d need a supervisor’s help…the supervisor never saw my cane, so I can’t blame her for much of anything as she was on the phone with people trying to straighten stuff out.
(Yes, he saw me shaking my legs out, too. But he didn’t ask what I was doing, much less why I was doing it.)
Anyway, this problem eventually got sorted out, and I went on my merry way. But I wondered, the whole time, if I should’ve asked for a chair. I knew that the teller and his supervisor were trying to solve this other issue, and I felt as if I’d made it too difficult for them just by going in there.
An hour later, in great physical pain (my back acted up), I called and complained. I was able to talk with two different people who both helped me, and they reassured me that not only should I not have been treated that way, I should never feel I’m a burden to them. Customers exist because they need something; the bank or credit union knows this, and they don’t want to drive good customers away. So, reassured, I went off to nurse my bad back, etc., and resolved to speak up sooner the next time something weird happens.
Then, I had two instances of excellent customer service: you know, the type you’re lucky to run into once in a blue moon. Both of these positive experiences were at local grocery stores. I tend to have a number of high-value coupons as one of my family members is a huge coupon clipper. (We’re talking in the $5, $6, $8, and $10 off range.) These can be difficult for cashiers to handle, as most high-value coupons are over the preset limit that the store allows one person to have in an order. The more coupons, the more likely you’re either going to need a supervisor, or at bare minimum you’re going to need someone very experienced to be able to accept the coupons and get me rung up and out of there again.
Fortunately for me, at the first store, one of my favorite cashiers was acting as a type of supervisor for the younger cashier at the register. Things got done quickly, which is a plus; no one behind me in the line got upset (I can’t tell you how often it happens these days where someone does, and I always feel bad about it), and I was able to find nearly everything I needed.
At the second store, I went in for a few specific things. I had eight coupons that had to be used by 8/31 (and it was 8/31, so it was then or never). These were all for shampoos that cost around $10 to get. The coupon was for slightly less than that, and that can trip up a cashier quite easily if they’ve not seen it before. In addition to that, I grabbed some other coupon items (that weren’t expiring, but were still helpful), less difficult to process, along with a few things that weren’t coupon items to round out the order.
So, for this second positive experience, I was fortunate in getting a very experienced cashier who was about as quick with the coupons as anyone I’ve ever seen. She also was quite pleasant to speak with, which I appreciated. I smiled on the way out, and made sure to buy a couple of pieces of candy from the kids raising money for youth sports leagues (as I figured I wanted to pass that good karma around a little) on the way out.
So, what did all this tell me? Mostly, it reaffirms the value of human connection and the powers of observation. The teller did not seem to understand what limping in on a cane meant, so he didn’t make any effort to try to mitigate the problems I was having. But both cashiers understood; they saw my cane in the cart, and made sure I didn’t have to lift out the 24-pack of water (in one case) or anything else heavy. They also asked if I needed help to get to the car (I didn’t, but I thanked them for asking), and finally, they were pleasant and did everything in their power to set me at ease.
Compare that with the young teller for just one more moment. The teller, once things were reasonably straightened out, did not meet my eyes (and had earlier, so as far as I know was not neurodiverse) and didn’t apologize for the length of time I had to stand. He completed the transaction and acted as if I were Br’er Rabbit after being thrown in the tar pit, and obviously couldn’t wait to see the back of me.
I didn’t like this, and I didn’t appreciate it for several reasons. (As I’ve said.)
But both cashiers acted the way they should. They were polite, they made conversation, they didn’t act as if what I was doing in bringing coupons (that can really mess up a cashier if they don’t know what they’re doing) was an imposition, they met my eyes, they smiled…all in all, I felt much better about shopping than I’d expected.
So, that’s the perils of customer service. You can run into someone who doesn’t know what to do when the customer throws him an inadvertent curveball, and that person (the teller, in this instance) does not give even adequate customer service thereby. But you also can run into highly accomplished people who know their jobs, who are good at putting people at ease, who don’t blame the customer for bringing coupons even if they’re high-value (and thus can make it harder for the poor cashier to do their job), and who get you in and out of the store with a minimum of muss or fuss.
I wish all customer service people were as good as those cashiers or the two people I spoke with by phone at my credit union after the bad experience I’d had there. But it’s a mixed bag, and you never do know exactly what you’re going to get.
Anyway, what sorts of customer service have you dealt with lately? Good, bad, or indifferent, tell me about it in the comments! (That is, providing you’re still reading. I know I’ve been intermittent lately…ah, well.)
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