LIMP BIZKIT, CYPRESS HILL, F!TH At Ottawa Bluesfest

That’s The Way The Cookie Rumbles: Limp Bizkit Kick It Y2K Style On July 10th

Nu-metal!
Unwashed dreads!
JNCO’s!
Tracksuit apparel that Melanie Chisholm stopped wearing in public 20 years ago!
Cranial insanity!
History – and headliners – repeating themselves like day-old deviled eggs!
And guest appearances!

With the 80’s officially having been fully wrung out by the pop culture time machine harder than a wet dishrag, it was inevitable that its successors in the form of the 90’s and 2000’s would finally get their time in the proverbial Ottawa Bluesfest sun. As one will recall, last year’s rock headliners included GREEN DAY, PAPA ROACH and, to a lesser extent as half of Gen X even forgot that they were even still actively playing, the PIXIES among other famed acts from the yester era. And such was the case once more as the Once Upon A Time In The Summer tour took the Bluesfest grounds on day two of the esteemed music festival.

And yours truly in his usual Alternates role was right in the middle of it all, mostly directing traffic in and out at one of the beer tents. Were the patrons there in full force to imbibe the aura of the 2000’s or to heavily drink to forget about how quite a fair bit of that decade actually kinda sucked in parts? 

That, again, is also another of my volunteer duties at the esteemed festival unrelated to Alternates: Telling the story from inside the Coors beer tent and helping to promote the occasional bit of local talent earning their slot on that coveted RBC main stage.

Speaking of which, it would take at least about two quasi-sounding thrashy pop-punk/nu metal hybrid songs from a quintet of mostly hoodie-wearing tattooed miscreants in their mid-20’s fronted by a wild-eyed peroxide-haired frontman before they finally introduced themselves:

“If you don’t know us, we’re F!TH, right from your fucking city!”

Frontman Vinny Belle’s intro checks out. F!TH(pronounced “fifth” but in fact stands for “fucked in the head”) are indeed a local band whose musical influences are firmly rooted in the sounds of the nu-millennial mall rock era of its time, brandishing its wallet chains and awkwardly yet shamelessly tripping over its oversized JNCO’s with pride. Thankfully, F!TH themselves actually weren’t performing in JNCO’s during their set, much as the comedic sight of anyone wearing these aforementioned goofy-looking oversized outfits attempting to come off all street taking a fall after tripping over the scruffs is appealing, but if they took away some sort of proper cultural aspect of the once-new millennium, it was definitely through the music. Songs like “Rock And A Hard Place”, “Blue Collar Choke” and “Throwing Stones” definitely evoke some decent post-punk vibes as much as their earnest cover of “Fallen Leaves” by BILLY TALENT certainly did. And they’re a band that proudly boasts about its hometown roots as their celebratory song “Winterlude” implies – either for its overall celebration of the famed winter solstice festival or for the fact that songs about winter overall tend to really click with an audience when the temperature is a stifling hot 40 degrees Celsius. Closing out their set with their standout and breakout single “DEAD” in which guitarist Max Gibson finally gets to try out more of his axe-wielding skills, F!TH, with just under four years of playing/touring experience and a debut EP of about 6-7 songs to their credit thus far, manage to win over a modest yet faithful local gathering pleading for more. 

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Straight outta South Gate, California and without the London Philharmonic Orchestra in tow, hip-hop legends CYPRESS HILL(who took their name from a street in their neighborhood) literally blaze through their catalogue of dope hits and bong bangers, their street cred amongst rock and rap fans riding on a natural high since their inception in 1988. The band’s core lineup of B-Real, Sen Dogg and DJ Muggs are in fine form, with the two frontmen dropping rhymes with sharp-sounding candor on the opening numbers “How I Could Just Kill A Man” and “Hand On The Pump” while Muggs’ turntable skills, along with the assistance of recently-added touring soundman DJ Lord, electrified the crowd with its variety of samples ranging from the BEASTIE BOYS(on “A To The K”) and DR. DRE(on “Hits From The Bong”)to the intro riff from SLAYER’s “Angel Of Death”. B-Real even stops the show midway to ask the crowd how they’re doing before dedicating the next set of songs “to all of the stoners out there” while asking them “Are you ready to get high?”. The crowd reception is already riled up as the frontman takes out a giant doobie and proceeds to light up before launching into the band’s fiery odes to the devil’s salad in the form of “I Wanna Get High” and “Hits From The Bong”. Muggs and DJ Lord both got the opportunity to excel further with their DJ skills along with the band’s touring drummer Eric Bobo to make that otherwise tedious part of the live show aesthetic known as the drum solo more mesmerizing and entertaining. And while expectations were heightened that CYPRESS HILL would climax their performance with a rendition of their best-known number “Insane In The Membrane” especially after their rousing performances of “(Rock) Superstar” and a cover of RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE’s “Bombtrack”, the band teased with its intro before launching into their cover of “Jump Around” by HOUSE OF PAIN which may have sounded almost too faithful to the original in parts but otherwise retained much of CYPRESS HILL’s own mark on the track. In any case, nearly 40 years onward into their career and with a new studio album titled Dios Bendiga already out, CYPRESS HILL have long since established that they’ve been as street ready as anyone else in their genre.

Setlist:

“How I Could Just Kill A Man”
“Hand On The Pump”
“When The Shit Goes Down”
“Real Estate”
“Tequila Sunrise”
“A To The K” (sampling the BEASTIE BOYS’ “So What’cha Want”)
“Illusions”
“I Wanna Get High”
“Dr. Greenthumb”
“Hits From The Bong” (sampling DR. DRE’s “The Next Episode”)
DJ/percussion solo
“Wacha Trucha”
“I Ain’t Goin’ Out Like That”
“Bombtrack” (RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE cover)
“Can’t Get The Best Of Me”
“(Rock) Superstar” (sampling SLAYER’s “Angel Of Death”)
“Insane In The Brain” (snippet teaser)
“Jump Around” (HOUSE OF PAIN cover)

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Back in the salad days of the late 90’s, they were loud, stupid, obnoxious yet insanely marketable from a record label’s point of view and manufacturers of red baseball caps despite few people admitting that they paid actual money to own physical copies of albums titled Chocolate Starfish And The Hot Dog Flavored Water. Their recent comeback attempt (which, let’s be honest, wasn’t one of those comebacks we were collectively hoping to succeed) featured a comeback album titled Still Sucks and a new single bizarrely titled “Making Love To Morgan Wallen” – both of which should have been an immediate turnoff to any self-respecting music fan were it not for the fact that most mainstream overall had somehow managed to get worse by comparison over the past decade. Or, even as far back since 2011 when Gold Cobra was released and was seen as their send-off album. But, yet, like the giant turd jammed inside one’s toilet despite all efforts in working that plunger, LIMP BIZKIT stubbornly refuse to flow into obscurity. The changing facets of the music industry can definitely be credited/blamed for why Fred Durst, Wes Borland and company are suddenly less reviled than they were a quarter century ago. As is the current nostalgia for all things Y2K which has yielded interest in the critically-acclaimed quintet from Jacksonville, Florida over time. 

Yet, there has also been the possibility that, to their fanbase at least, they can still deliver an entertaining performance many years later. 

This was one of those LIMP BIZKIT performances that entertained even if for a few of the wrong reasons.

Opening with “Hot Dog” with an added sampled snippet of “Master Of Puppets” just because they obviously can (presumably to hide the ridiculous amounts of saying “fuck” throughout the entire song), LB take the stage which featured a backdrop screen displaying the lyrics. Frontman Fred Durst has thankfully outgrown the red baseball cap and trainers, swapping out his most identifiable wardrobe into….uh, Robert De Niro’s Louis Gara character in Jackie Brown. Guitarist Wes Borland’s new stage persona was a bit more difficult to pin down as he donned a completely black outfit with a tall-sized mask and helmet and was armed with a black Jackson Dark Fin axe. Imagine the new Spaceballs sequel with Nergal from BEHEMOTH assuming Rick Moranis’ role as Dark Helmet (minus the heavy Polish accent) and that would be the most astute description of Wes’ outfit. Of course, his participation in his heavier industrial-sounding side project BLACK LIGHT BURNS has played a major role in his musical progression since its launch over a decade ago during LB’s own downtime; indeed, up until now, his playing I’d only observed on studio renditions of the standard BIZKIT hits such as “Break Stuff”, “My Way” and “Rollin’” sounded okay at best to me, but when performed live, Borland appears to improvise more on his rhythm playing and even attempts some tricky soloing that’s normally outside of his playing style. Thus far, this was noticeably the second biggest difference in LB’s comeback, with the most noticeable change being the absence of original bassist Sam Rivers, whose passing last year had taken everyone by surprise, given how his firm-sounding bass lines were a fixture of the band’s music, though the band’s current substitute touring bassist Richie Buxton did a decent job in honoring his predecessor’s legacy in mastering the heavy-end four-string riffs throughout the show, which featured a proper homage to Rivers on their cover of “Behind Blue Eyes”. As odd as this may seem to admit this though this may be a reflection of changing musical paradigms, LIMP BIZKIT, when performing live, actually have just the right amount of musical talent amongst the four, though with one obvious omission. The man may be a great toaster and entertainer, but Fred Durst is still about average at best as a vocalist. He can project a bit of range during tracks like “My Generation”, “My Way”, “Take A Look Around’ and even the band’s half-joking/half-serious rendition of “Faith”….well, pretty much anything off from the first 2LB albums that were actual singles anyway. Otherwise, damn near anything from Chocolate Starfish just sounds grating to the ears whenever Durst is trying to recapture the adolescent rage a quarter century later. “Hot Dog” is lyrically straight-up infantile, try hard and dumb despite the NINE INCH NAILS lyrical references, though you’d still have to listen to the whole song itself to find them. “Full Nelson” and “Boiler” are both more of a full-blown lyrical tantrum whose sole saving grace appears to not be overcome with the f-word. And while “Livin’ It Up” namedrops both Ben Stiller and Christina Aguilera for some obscure or indifferent reason (apparently the pair both namedropped Fred Durst in past interviews on MTV eons ago but I can’t be bothered to reference them for clarification), but otherwise, the ”I’ma keep my pants saggin’/Keep a skateboard, a spray can for the taggin’/And I’ma keep a lot of girls in my band wagon” line was honestly always bad and has aged worse over time. And this was what mainstream rock radio was pushing 26 years ago while ignoring ARMORED SAINT’s then-comeback again?

That said, as previously mentioned, Fred Durst’s at his most genuinely skilled when he’s actually emceeing. Case in point would be when he brings out a lanky-looking and heavily-bearded Tom Green to guest with him on “Rollin’”. The Ottawa-bred madcap comedian, who got his start in comedy through his homegrown cable TV show on Rogers, not only delivered a fairly decent performance of “Rollin’” alongside Durst, but he even dropped some of his own original rhymes to the delight of the crowd. “Check the OR/You like it so far?” he bantered, referencing his brief early 90’s hip-hop career as a member of ORGANIZED RHYME. With his return from Hollywood to continue producing a new show out in the Ottawa Valley, Tom Green also paid homage to LB for helping his ascent into MTV stardom through promoting his self-titled show on the music channel. Now, if Tom Green had been allowed to really repay his debt to LB in full, perhaps guesting on another song would’ve been more helpful instead of leaving the band to perform “Break Stuff” again as the closing number. “Re-Arranged”, “I’m Broke”….Christ, even fucking closing with “Check The OR” would make more sense than playing a song that was already played early in its entirety in the set. For contrast, local openers F!TH have a 7-song EP as their entire catalogue compared to LB’s six studio albums and yet they still played a full set of no repeated tracks. Otherwise, LB made enough good use of their ingredients to make their Ottawa debut a memorable one for many reasons – including even the right ones.

Setlist:

“Hot Dog” (with METALLICA’s “Master Of Puppets” sample/snippet)
“Break Stuff”
“Faith” (GEORGE MICHAEL cover)
“My Generation”
“Livin’ It Up”
“My Way”
“Eat You Alive”
“Rollin’ (Air Raid Vehicle)” (with Tom Green)
“Nookie”
“Full Nelson”
“Boiler”
“Behind Blue Eyes” (THE WHO cover)
“Take A Look Around”
“Break Stuff” (again? Why?)

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