Someday, we\u2019re going to have to explain Limp Bizkit to our kids.<\/p>\n
It won\u2019t be because they hear them on the radio, or because a scholarly discussion of great rock bands would ever reveal their name, but because they will be leafing through our mp3 files or CD cases and come across, say, \u201cRearranged\u201d or \u201cNookie\u201d or \u201cFaith,\u201d and they will have questions. <\/p>\n
And so we will have to explain that rap-rock was actually a thing, that the latter part of the \u201890s \u2013 a wonderful decade up until this point, musically \u2013 was full of bands like KoRn, Limp, Linkin Park and Kid Rock that dominated radio and CD Walkman players of high school boys. We will explain that detuned over-amped riffs, no guitar solos and angry white boys offering woe-is-me or fuck-all-y\u2019all lyrics was somehow appealing. Rage Against the Machine, which pretty much started it all, gets a pass because they stood for change and hoped to use their music to bring it about, just like the punks of old.<\/p>\n
And we will have to explain Fred Durst. Good luck with that.<\/p>\n
What set Limp Bizkit apart from those other bands was their party vibe. You couldn\u2019t play Deftones or \u201cFreak On A Leash\u201d at a frat party, but you could play Significant Other<\/i>. And despite Durst\u2019s lyrics and approach, a handful of the songs still aren\u2019t half bad, if indicative of their time and place. Put it this way: Greatest Hitz <\/i>is all the Limp you will ever need. Trust me on this.<\/p>\n
Two songs from the debut start things off, the funny George Michael cover of \u201cFaith\u201d and the somewhat awkward \u201cCounterfeit,\u201d the sound of a band finding its sound. Significant Other <\/i>was an artistic leap forward and the band\u2019s finest hour, but that\u2019s not saying much. \u201cBreak Stuff\u201d is anger that any 12 year old can relate to, \u201cNookie\u201d is a fine piece of music with a regrettable chorus and the same goes for \u201cN 2 Gether Now,\u201d which is great as a rap\/rock hybrid but is undone by its repeated request in the chorus to \u201cshut the fuck up.\u201d I wish you would. However, \u201cRearranged\u201d remains a subtle highlight, a breakup song with Durst singing in his more appealing lower register.<\/p>\n
Oh, but then things devolve quickly. Things went off the rails with Chocolate Starfish And The Hot Dog Flavored Water<\/i>, with extremely liberal uses of profanity and even worse lyrics. Titling a song \u201cMy Generation\u201d immediately puts you in the role of spokesperson, and while Pete Townshend could do it, Fred Durst cannot, nor do any of us in said generation want him to. \u201cMy Way\u201d is yet another kiss-off to an ex with signature bad lyrics (\u201cJust one more fight about your leadership \/ And I will straight up leave your shit\u201d), \u201cBoiler\u201d goes nowhere and \u201cTake A Look Around,\u201d while musically sound in its rewrite of the Mission: Impossible theme, is undone by (surprise!) the lyrics. Sample lines: \u201cBetter stay on top or life will kick you in the ass \/ Remember that, kid, so whatchu wanna do \/ And Where you gonna run with the barrel of a mic pointed at your grill like a gun?\u201d Oh, and \u201cRollin\u2019 (Air Raid Vehicle)\u201d is here, too, so there\u2019s that.<\/p>\n
Guitarist Wes Borland, the best thing about the band, left after this debacle, and things got even worse with Results May Vary. <\/i>Hint: telling the audience the final product isn\u2019t very good, especially when your band is named Limp, does not instill confidence in said audience. True to the title, that album was pretty bad, not least because of the ham-fisted, self-serving cover of \u201cBehind Blue Eyes,\u201d which Durst seemed to cover primarily because it talks about being misunderstood and angry. The megaphone-added \u201cL-I-M-P\u201d spelling section in the center turns the whole thing into a joke. \u201cWhy\u201d and \u201cLean On Me,\u201d B-sides from that album, are added here as well to entice collectors who felt like legally purchasing two Limp songs that they didn\u2019t need. Those people can vote, by the way.<\/p>\n
To finish the disc, a medley cover of \u201cHome Sweet Home\/Bittersweet Symphony\u201d is present, and it\u2019s exactly what it sounds like. Some versions of this add on \u201cThe Truth,\u201d one of the seven songs from the band\u2019s short 2005 album The Unquestionable Truth, Vol. 1<\/i>, in which Borland rejoined the fold. It\u2019s actually a pretty good song until you realize it could easily fit onto Rage Against the Machine\u2019s first album. Evidently, that\u2019s the route Limp decided they had to take, and after that one disc, they called it quits until 2011. <\/p>\n
It was cool to like Limp for about two years and then it was cool to hate them for the rest of time. Or maybe we just grew up. I don\u2019t know if we can explain it to our kids, but then again, our parents couldn\u2019t really explain Iron Butterfly, bell bottoms or smoking banana skins to us. It was just part of the era, and anyone looking to relive it, or rediscover it, will find Greatest Hitz <\/i>to be a great time capsule, if not necessarily great music. For the casual Limp fan, it\u2019s more than enough. For everyone else, outside of one or two songs, they will wonder why this band was ever popular.<\/p>\n
Explain that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":32025,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6461],"rating":[11204],"class_list":["post-43763","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-limp-bizkit","rating-rating-c-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43763"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=43763"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=43763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}