Limp Bizkit Can Kiss My Chocolate Starfish*


An Open Letter to the Band.

I’m 38, so I guess I’m a bit older than the average Limp Bizkit fan.
I belong to a generation of east coast Canadian pool and half-pipe riders who idolized Alva, rolled on soft Kryptonics, extra-wide Trackers, on Wee Willie Winkle boards that were half the size of what the kids are using today. Maybe it’s those roots LB taps into, I dunno, but I like the band. Been listening to the music for a few years now. Not much into the politics of your business, all the behind the scenes BS, the tantrums, the fashion, the personality cults. Just the music.
My work as a foreign correspondent has taken me to some weird, wonderful and occasionally dangerous places. LB – and a host of others who make up my life’s soundtrack – cranked on the headphones, off my laptop (I rip from royality-paid, legal CDs) or blasting out of taxis has brought me through it all safe, if a bit mad. My Kabul driver loved Chocolate Starfish..., the tape I brought him back in the Spring on 2002 so we could chase the rocket attacks and drive-bys Rollin’ Rollin’ Rollin’. He was happy to reach into my bag and swap between Janice for Beck, LB and Tom Waits. Anything after four years of the Taliban.
I’m writing today because I’m pissed.
I live in Jakarta, Indonesia. The country where Bali is located. That’s the resort island the gutless bitches hit last year with a car bomb that killed more than 200 people, most of them under 25s from Indonesia, Australia and Europe. Surfers. Skaters. Backpackers. Rugby players. Mums, dads and kids.
I got to know quite a few of the survivors. And the families of the dead. Knowing the mix of people at the Sari Club that night, I bet there were more than a few Bizkit fans there that night, or at least people who got sweaty listening, moving to it.
Unlike New York after 9/11 very, very few prominent Westerners (the same people who soak it up on the beaches, surf, get pissed for cheap, etc etc) have stepped up to help the people of Bali who were clobbered when their totally tourism-dependant economy tanked. It is one of the reasons why news a major act like LB would play Bali was such a huge boost. People who had never heard of the band were stepping up to say what wonderful people they must be to support the Balinese and by extension, all Indonesians.
This is a country of 220 million. While Bali is majority Hindu, 85 per cent of Indonesians are Moslem. Very laid back. Very friendly folks. Lots of young people here, struggling to forge an identity for themselves. Poor, disenfranchised, cynical about politics and business, struggling with sex and school and drugs and the street. Ignorant about the past, worried about the future and poorly served by their leaders. Just the kind of people we should be reaching out to in these crazy times.
And how appropriate that the plan called for the concert to be held in the very same amphitheatre where in October thousands gathered to mourn and celebrate the lives of the people killed in the Sari nightclub bombing a year earlier. It’s an amazing place, challenging acoustics, awesome views. A sell out was a certainty. For sure I would have been there with a bunch of other old men, teaching the scrawny chain-smoking Indo wannabe headbangers what a mosh pit is all about.
And then, literally days before the event, LB cancels. The reason we hear is because you’re concerned about security, but if the band had bothered to do even a bit of research they would have learned they were in more immediate danger on a Saturday night in Philly or Seattle than they’d ever be in Bali.
I should have known it was all show. Hard men, eh? Nothin’ but a bunch of gutless punk millionaire who folded when they could have stood up and done the right thing.
Way to go.
PD
Jakarta, Indonesia
pjdillon@attglobal.net
*This Blog was originally posted to the main bulletin board at www.limpbizkit.com. That's the place to go if you wanna add your voice.