Ten Things You Need to Know About Linkin Park

Vitamin String Quartet’s latest release is an inventive interpretation of A Thousand Suns, the most recent album from nu-metal act, Linkin Park. Here are ten things you should know about the band:

1. Linkin Park was formed by high school friends Mike Shinoda, Brad Delson and Rob Bourdon in 1996 in the Los Angeles suburb of Agoura Hills. 2. The band was originally called Hybrid Theory. The name changed when singer Chester Bennington joined the group. The band called their first album Hybrid Theory in honor of their former moniker. 3. Music industry legend and Def Jam co-founder Rick Rubin produced A Thousand Suns and the band’s 2007 album Minutes to Midnight. 4. Linkin Park released a mashup EP called Collision Course with Jay-Z in 2004. The album included six tracks including “Izzo/In the End” and “Big Pimpin/Papercut.” 5. Linkin Park has won two Grammy awards. The first was scored in 2002 in the Best Rock Performance category for their single “Crawling.” The second was won in 2006 in the “Best Rap/Sung Collaboration” category for their “Numb/Encore” track with Jay-Z. They’ve been nominated for four other Grammy awards. 6. Linkin Park went through two other bassists before David Farrell, who had been in and out of the group since they started, became the band’s permanent bassist in 2001. 7. The phrase “a thousand suns” comes from the ancient Hindu Sanskrit scripture the Bhagavad Gita. The text reads, "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one." 8. This phrase ties into the album’s themes of nuclear war, as the text was made famous after its use by atomic bomb creator Robert Oppenheimer. 9. Linkin Park’s current Thousand Suns Tour includes a total of 55 shows, including two in Asia and three in South America. 10. A Thousand Suns debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 241,000 copies in its first week. Check out VSQ Performing Linkin Park's A Thousand Suns at iTunes and Amazon!