Blind faith

Limp Bizkit make a short stop

by Carly Carioli

Every morning I get my coffee and cigarettes at the Short Stop, a bodega across the street from the Phoenix offices. The Short Stop isn't exactly a rock-and-roll hotbed. The owners are regular workaday folks in jeans and polo jerseys who know your brand and your lottery preferences and keep the radio tuned to AM. They are not "Rock Revolutionaries" prone to staging impromptu, unlicensed heavy-metal gigs on the premises. So before last week, the chances were exactly nil that I'd be standing on the roof of the place -- on a Sunday, no less -- watching Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst (leash and microphone in one hand, cellphone in the other) walk his pit bull, on the next roof over, for the MTV cameras.

The short-notice, semi-secret outdoor gig Durst and Limp Bizkit played last Sunday was a hoot, a seamlessly choreographed spectacle in a tradition that goes back to the Beatles' final gig on the rooftop of Apple Records. You had radio-station intrigue -- WBCN DJ Shred stealing WAAF's thunder by leaking the concert's secret location on-air. You had more than 1000 (but far fewer than 'AAF's reported 5000) kids slamming in a parking lot, with a garage door rolling up to reveal hidden banks of PA speakers, like something out of Michael Jackson's "Beat It" video. You had a couple of cops show up. You had the appearance, at least, of mass civic impropriety, a shared secret nestled into an urban nook -- which is exactly the romantic ideal that has endeared Limp Bizkit to their now legion fan base.

They opened with "Nookie," the new single from their second album, Significant Other (Flip/Interscope, just out last Tuesday). The song had been on the airwaves for less than a month, but the kids already knew all the shout-along call-and-response parts -- which are ingeniously built around the convention of radio censorship that bleeps out objectionable words. That Durst has written a song that not only incorporates this practice but turns it to his own advantage is a measure of the commercial savvy he's brought to Significant Other.

This is the Fred Durst, after all, who declared his desire to be the "Puff Daddy of rock and roll" and who borrows Master P's trademark drawling cadences on "Nookie." Like Korn and the Insane Clown Posse, Limp Bizkit have separated themselves from previous rock-rap crossovers by taking to heart not just hip-hop as music but hip-hop as business model: using guest appearances as a cross-marketing strategy, staging street-level guerrilla events, acknowledging market trends as artistic inspiration, making tacit media partners of MTV (whose support is rewarded on Significant Other by a guest appearance from VJ Matt Pinfield) and of radio stations like 'AAF, the first major station to champion Bizkit's now double-platinum debut, Three Dollar Bill, Y'All (Interscope).

The mainstream media are falling in line behind MTV in declaring Significant Other to be better than its predecessor -- Durst says the same thing, but of course he's got an album to sell. I find both discs a bit forced, with brief interludes that click almost in spite of themselves. What's inescapable about the new Limp Bizkit album is that it offers less Limp Bizkit. Durst turns over vocals to Stone Temple Pilots' Scott Weiland and Korn's Jonathan Davis on the Alice in Chains-ish dirge "Nobody like You." And the band disappear altogether for "N 2 Gether Now," a track produced Wu-Tang style by Gang Starr's DJ Premier and lyrically dominated by Method Man. The real point of the album, though, is a broadening of appeal. Limp Bizkit's something-for-everyone philosophy is evident in the addition of Deftones-style melody on "Don't Go Off Wandering," which also features gratuitous use of a string section, a little Perry Farrell-style Eastern warbling on "I'm Broke," and a trip to the Tool box on "No Sex."

The good news is that Durst is still the same goofy, conflicted cheeseball who covered George Michael's "Faith." Remember that Durst was by all reports genuinely disturbed by the desecrated Bible on the cover of Staind's first album, and that on "No Sex" he faults a girl for allowing him to get in her pants on the first date. I take him at his word: I believe Durst is both God-fearing and a pig. This is why "Faith" -- with its suggestion of a gospelly religious faith, of a good boy trying to do right, which turns out to be the most lascivious of come-ons -- is straight up his alley. Most of Significant Other is just as lyrically frothy -- sex with girls, getting angry, a shout-out or two to the fans.

With stardom assured even before the album's release, the only thing Limp Bizkit had to worry about was no longer being underdogs. What better way to reinforce their outsider status than a ritualistic defiance of zoning-board regulations and the baiting of Authority? And so, when a cruiser pulled up to the Short Stop in the middle of "Faith," the band feigned imminent arrest and fled, triumphant. It was brilliant rock-and-roll theater. They stopped traffic, which is not quite the same as stopping the world, but is easier to dance to.