Everything feels vaguely off. It’s not the mind altering drugs. It’s not the fact that I’d competed in two hot sauce eating conversations during the afternoon. It was because everyone around me looked like they had been arrested at some point for stealing Catalytic Converters.
No, I wasn’t at a penal colony. Or a job fair for Port-A-John workers, or a Kid Rock cruise. I was at a Limp Bizkit concert. Desperately trying to figure out how I got there, and spastically trying to figure out how to leave if all the cans of Zyn go empty in this joint.
For strict viewing of the whole human experiment, this is like staring into a petri dish filled to the brim with Mountain Dew laced single cell organisms. On more of a normal level, it’s pretty impressive how many thousands of people had a red hat ready to wear backwards for just such a fete.
For those that didn’t come of age during the time of Total Request Live, Limp Bizkit was one of the most pop palatable of the Nu Metal bands that frisbeed their way into our collective conscious in the late 90’s. Korn was for the kids who we knew were arsonists. Kid Rock was for the kids we knew were going to get divorced multiple times and probably become cops. But Limp Bizkit fell into that sweet spot. Their songs went hard but were easily digestible.
What wasn’t easily digestible was whatever in the unholy hell was going on for opening acts.
When we got to our spots, there was a band just starting up. I knew Corey Feldman was an opening act, because, why not. Riff Raff was there as well. Now, we might have been far away in the lawn, but we became fairly certain of two things. Whoever this white guy with long hair is, he probably isn’t Corey Feldman, and Riff Raff looks terrible.
It took what felt like eight eternities to find out that the opening act we were watching was a white guy named B O N E S, flanked by two black dudes who were very obviously there to handle most of the heavy lifting. Here are the range of emotions you feel when watching B O N E S.
Is he sad? He looks sad.
He is only screaming every 11th word to his own music. He is his own hype man.
Why did he disappear to crouch in the hallway near the stage? And why are cameras watching this horrifyingly bad rapper have a nervous breakdown?
Oh, now he is crouching on stage. Like, a lot.
Okay, the black dudes also aren’t rapping, and just occasionally screaming random words from their own prerecorded music they enjoy. This must be what it feels like to watch the MTV Music Awards.
Oh, B O N E S is on the ground crying or something again. Doesn’t he realize here are literally dozens of people in this crowd of 20,000 that are full on into whatever this dogshit is?
You would think that for a gimmicky novelty act like this, it would end quickly. You would be wrong. This went on for at least an hour. Just three people in various stages of Emo, saying words at uneven intervals over the top of their own prerecorded lyrics. I’m now starting to realize that i’m in hell, and there is no way out. I died while eating the worlds spiciest pulled pork sandwich, and now I’m here. This is the afterlife, watching a guy I’m quickly realizing that I hate lay on a stage while very dumb looking white people know several of the lyrics.
I read a Rolling Stone article years ago about these country and country rap(shudders) acts that hire down-on-their-luck fellas to go to gas stations and Wal Mart parking lots to sell random people their albums. Without bothering to remember, I’m just gonna assume this is how Jelly Roll got big. Just getting his music out with recovering meth addicts in a Bucees parking lot as his proxy.
I can only assume this is how B O N E S (yes, i’m getting very sick of typing his name out like that) made his mark. Oh my god, though. This guy suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks.
I’m not sure what bothers me more: him sitting on the stage in the position we were taught to get into while in grade school in case a tornado came, or the pure unadulterated garbage of the music. I can assure you, his fans are definitely bothering me. There are six guys standing to my left. They, horrifyingly enough, know a bunch of this guy’s lyrics. It’s a shame Bones (i’m fucking done writing it the correct way) doesn’t realize he is really hitting a nerve with these copper wire thiefs.
That said, did I mention that the people watching was fantastic? Because it was! It’s hard to fully understand, but roughly 72 percent of the people at the concert were shaped like lava lamps.
The default look for every middle aged man in the crowd was “Guy Fieri, but more so.”
After what felt like seven hours on stage, bones finally left to go lip synch to some disenchanted teens in his tour bus, or whatever it is a guy that depressing does.
Then, a guy who looks like he is in absolutely rough shape comes out and is acting like the emcee. But isn’t Riff Raff the emcee? Or Corey Feldman? This definitely is not Feldman, but it might be Riff Raff. He is wearing an incredibly gaudy suit. He is trying to hype the crowd even though he has all of the energy of a coke addict coming off a 50 hour bender. If it’s Raff Raff, he looks terrible. So it might be Riff Raff.
The only way I can describe this guy is if Neil Hamburger hosted an EDM night.
At one point, the guy…emcee…Riff Raff…whoever, was out in the crowd. As the crowd is panning up, a woman very obviously tried to flash the screen, but the camera kept panning up and we missed the whole thing. This is a bad look for Credit One Amphitheater. I think I speak for all of us in the cheap seats when I say we were very much ready for some late 30’s boobs on the screen.
Oh wait, here comes Riff Raff! He looks like Riff Raff, which is to say that he looks like a weed dealer who dresses like he is really into Motocross. He is also not singing, like, at all. He is lip synching songs that are only known by people who were conceived at a Dave and Busters. The upside? He faked his way through two songs, then ambled off stage.
Then Limp Bizkit came on and created a nostalgia orgasm for literally everyone involved. Everything I said about everything that happened in the nearly 3 hours before they came on were washed away. You know how I said that Limp Bizkit fell into that palatable version of Nu Metal? Well, it aged spectacularly. They had hits. They played their hits. Fred Durst sounded fantastic.
I assume this is how our parents felt when they saw Steve Miller Band in the 90’s.
Fred Durst and the rest of the band get it. They understand their place. They are a high end nostalgia act for people like me, who wore a chain wallet for multiple years of high school. There are people older than me. There are people younger than me. And we all know the words to “Rollin’.”
They played as perfectly choreographed a set as you could possibly imagine. There is something to be said about bands of that era not aging gracefully. Korn got into EDM. Kid Rock is pretty much just a MAGA rally. Saliva is….well, I hope Saliva is doing well.
Limp Bizkit played the hits, and they played them how we remembered. The band exists in a time machine, as so many acts do. But they do it better. I put up with a monstrous lead up and the payoff was a band who understood the assignment. Play Nookie. Play My Generation. Close on Faith. It’s all people like me, chasing memories of an easier time, wanted. It’s easy to make fun of Limp Bizkit, and I’m sure there were people there enjoying the show ironically. That wasn’t me, though.
At one point, my buddy Brett looked at me and said “could you imagine us telling ourselves 25 years ago what we are doing??” I can say, 25 years on, we both have our own houses. We both have beautiful wives. We both have great lives. We are both at a Limp Bizkit concert. I’d say we did pretty damn well.
Fancy Boys Club 