Limp Bizkit came to Houston to celebrate losers. I’m happy to be one.
The former punching bag of rap-rock played The Woodlands last weekend.
For those who have no idea what that sentence means, back in the 1990s America Online (AOL) created a platform that allowed you to send messages through the computer to people. On Instant Messenger, or AIM for short, you created your own screen name, much like an Instagram handle.
Upon learning this, music nerd and 40-something podcast host Rob Harvilla (60 Songs That Explain the 90s) asked me if I was in prison. Everyone who learns this about me wants to know if I’m OK. Yes, I’m OK.
Entering 1999 I wore long-sleeved 311 shirts, baggy JNCO jeans, puka-shell necklaces and tightly shaved bleach-blonde hair. But as summer kicked off and I started hanging with my rap-rock buddy Mike for about 12 hours a day, I traded in the 311 clothes for black T-shirts and purchased a red New York Yankees baseball cap, which I of course wore backwards.
I was never a Yankees fan, and I don’t look good in red. But in summer 1999 I looked up to one man most of all: William Frederick “Fred” Durst. Exactly 25 years ago, I was the biggest Limp Bizkit fan on the planet.
Sunday night, Limp Bizkit played the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion in The Woodlands. I didn’t attend, on one hand because my kids started school Monday—come on Fred, a school night?—but also because I didn’t even know they were coming to town. I also attribute this to having small kids and not remembering what’s going on outside my bubble most of the time.
Much has been made about the Durst-aissance of recent years. The goatee-wearing frontman of Limp Bizkit whose entire philosophy on life was “everything is f–ked, everybody sucks” is now a silver-haired sage of dad-dom, mixing a winking, cringe “Beastie Boys in ‘Sabotage'” aesthetic with casual UFO conspiracy talk and actual hot-dog flavored water. He basically has morphed into quintessential Florida Man, and the world has accepted—nay—embraced Durst.
But man, 25 years ago, to genuinely like Durst and Limp Bizkit was a death knell. Loser stuff. To visit the mall Sam Goody an hour before opening just to secure your copy of Significant Other on release day? To do so while wearing the red Yankee cap and T-shirt, like the other teenage boys surrounding you? To crank up “Re-Arranged” on your Discman and sing along while walking in public, only to lower your voice when other people passed by?
Limp Bizkit was popular in that Durst secured plenty of time on MTV’s needle-moving afternoon countdown show Total Request Live (TRL). He and his band would live among Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys and Destiny’s Child as part of the pop culture in-crowd. But Durst existed more or less as an equalizer, someone to bring angst and aggression to a culture that made money on teeny bopping.
But outside of 3 p.m. weekdays on MTV, Limp Bizkit was more or less a national punching bag, dirt music for dirt people, including teenage boys like I who worshiped at the Altar of Fred. The summer of 1999 was our peak period, when membership and confidence was highest. Otherwise, I kept my love of the Bizkit closer to the vest. As years passed, I’d hear people mention the band and laugh, as if it was hilarious that anyone would’ve genuinely liked them.
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