I would love to hear the 1998 version of this song.

Linkin Park Demos 1996 - 2017 (Chronological Order)

Awesome demo of "I'll Be Gone".. kind of. I personally think it drags on too long, and becomes boring, but the beginning up until the arpeggio part is awesome. I prefer Chester's vocals/lyrics on the chorus on this, as well with the chorus progression; less generic, but the way they doubled Mike and Chester's singing in the verses sounds crappy and stupid.. It's nice to have these to see how far the songs we hear on their studio albums get built.

8/10

Primo (2010)

Xero - Rhinestone

Xero - Reading My Eyes

Xero - Fuse

Xero - Stick N' Move

Xero is the self-titled 1997 demo tape by American band Xero (now known as Linkin Park). The tape is the first publicly released work by the band and contains their earliest known recordings.

- "Xero (Demo Cassette Tape)." Linkinpedia. 13 May 2024, 03:12 UTC. 8 Jul 2024, 23:28

Xero Demo Tape

Xero - Fuse (1997)

NOTE: This is Version 2 of an earlier recreation I did.
Listen on YouTube: https://youtu.be/v56BxOMIH-I
Download here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N0RpceRoJ7n0k9XfmJqaIejJIC3wvGbP/view?usp=drive_link

“Deftest” was an early Xero demo written by Mike Shinoda and Mark Wakefield around the same time as “Dialate”, before the band was formed. It was first mentioned by Mike on Twitch on October 15, 2020. He was questioned about it on October 20, to which he said, "LPLive is now trying to get locked on to Deftest as the new Pictureboard. Pictureboard is a pay off. Other demos, not so much. If you were to hear that, you would not be... I strongly suggest you don't start putting your attention on Deftest. That is not a thing to do. Pictureboard, you hear it, "Wow that's cool, I'm so glad we were so focused on that song." No I never said Pictureboard was a bad song. It has Chester on it. Deftest, Mark and I did like a four track cassette version of it and it sounds like s***. You guys don't want that, trust me. It's D-E-F-T-E-S-T by the way, not D-E-A-F, because Mark was a big fan of the Deftones. And we were just testing out ideas. So you can tell just right away, from the name itself, that it is not a grail. This is not an incredible f***ing thing. Trust me on this."

The full song remains unreleased to this day, but a snippet of the song was played by Dave Garrett (former bassist of Karma and Relative Degree, in which Relative Degree is the band that Mark Wakefield, Brad Delson, and Rob Bourdon were in before Xero was formed by Mark and Mike Shinoda, in which both Brad and Rob joined them thereafter) during his interview with LPLive.

This is what Dave said about “Deftest”: “I remember Mark bringing it back to me being like “Dude, I gotta gotta show you something” and I got to hear Dialate and Deftest for the first time and just like, you know, mind blown. It was freaking everything we ever would want. And back then it was definitely more separated when you think of the verse versus the chorus and what was rap versus rock. I think Linkin Park did a really good job of merging the two more. But man, it sounded… you know? Even though it was really raw. It was just like a little 4-track or whatever. I still listen to some of that stuff today and it just gives me the chills. That is the Deftest that I guess everybody’s been… I didn’t realize that had been a big deal.”

Text taken from Linkinpedia and Genius

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Xero - Stick N' Move

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