C’est What?
An “Interview” with Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst
by Daniel Davis
illustration by Ans
World-renowned Music/Theatre/Film/ Fashion/Media Critic Jean-Paul Bavard met recently with Fred Durst, front man of the multi-platinum superstar rap/metal group Limp Bizkit for an exclusive interview at Vacuity, a posh Hollywood bistro. They touched on such diverse topics as Limp Bizkit’s new album and world tour, fashion, the current state of Alternative rock, the Napster controversy, and cognitive semantics.
Translated from the French by Daniel Davis. Reprinted from The Journal of French Semiotic Theory.
Jean-Paul Bavard: I am pleased to be here in Hollywood at the renowned and tres fashionable café known as Le Bistro Vacuity, to conduct an exclusive interview with the amazing and incredible Fred d’Urst, the genius behind the multi-billion-selling superstars known as l’Imp Bizkit. There are, of course, so many fascinating topics to discuss with you: your group’s misadventures and shenanigans on the famous Family Dollars tour, your upcoming album, your close comradeship with the genius Caucasian rapping superstar Ellemenopee, your troubled childhood in Jacksonbrownsville, Florida, the controversy over your outspoken support for Napster, your acquittal of assault charges, and the way Antonio Berardi was completely hosed at the VH-1 Fashion Awards.
Fred Durst: What?
Jean-Paul Bavard: Speaking of fashion, I spent the season at Mykanos this year with Gisele Bundchen, Rupert Everett, Erik Satie and Randy Bachman from Bachman-Turner Overdrive. After several too many snifters of the most divine cognac, Calista Flockhart and I got into an angry shouting match over the basic tenets of cognitive semantics. She drunkenly screamed her support for Gardenfors’ theory that meaning is conceptualization in a cognitive model, yet cognitive models are perceptually determined. Mon Dieu! As if perhaps she was some sort of expert on les cognitive models! She obviously had no comprehension of such basic concepts as idiolect or image schema. I had no desire to humiliate her in such a public milieu, surrounded by the most brilliant and sophisticated intelligentsia in the entire Mediterranean. Rather, I subtly countered with a cutting reference from Deleuze: “We should anticipate the possibility of a new postmodern mode of existence where individuals overcome repressive modern forms of identity and stasis to become desiring nomads in a constant process of becoming and transformation.” She was speechless! What could she say to that? Nothing, I tell you, nothing! It was reminiscent of the time in Milan when Beck, Donatella Versace, John Elway and I were at the world premiere performance of Post-Neo-Industrial Deep House Emocore geniuses The Nosebleeds, right before they released their incredible debut album, Sacks and Sacks of Cash. I was completely astounded by their semi-amorphous situationist neo-dada indie Goth sonic collage. They have obviously influenced your music heavily, yet they remain criminally underrated, almost completely unknown outside the basement of the two-room house they share in Seacaucus. Your genius rap/metal supergroup l’Imp Bizkit suffers no such problems, as it is not possible for you to be underrated by absolutely anyone. Your band’s groundbreaking music has also been influenced by other cutting-edge artists, such as the post-rock trancecore turntablist DJ Pantload, and the Mancunian avant garde indie rock obscurantists, The Saucy Gnomes, whose neo-metonymic post-surf sound has been described as “Henri Bergson mud-wrestling with Michel Foucalt in a disco in the Mississippi Delta.”
Fred Durst: Huh?
Jean-Paul Bavard: Yet your brilliant music is so much more than the influence of its sums. Take, for example, your magnificently complex and nuanced hit single, “Le n’Ookie.” Beyond its obvious lyrical homage to the groundbreaking French New Wave films of Jean-Luc Godard, the song is literally a complex latticework of subtlety, combining junglist Detroity techstep beats with Deep Trance dopetronica tweaking. Yet so many critics and listeners are so easily distracted by the facile surface elements of the music, like “Where did you get that hat?” It is simply magnificent! Fashion is an often overlooked aspect of music, but a critical one nonetheless. I once had a fabulous discussion on that very topic with Dave Grohl and Andy Williams at a Denny’s in Macon, Georgia. I can inform you sincerely that Andy Williams est un true genius, an underrated superstar who has forgotten more about music than any contemporary hip-hopping white boy will ever know. You can learn much about music, and about life, from Mr. Andy Williams, mon ami. Have you ever listened, truly listened, to “Moon River”? Everyone must listen to it immediately! Listening to it reminds me how I oftentimes get so fatigued by all of this new and so-called modern music, with tout le “blah, blah, blah,” shouting and screaming in every song — it is all so tiresome. I oftentimes find myself wondering what the point of it all is, when everything sounds like everything else, and it seems like all of the tres brilliant, genius ideas have already been done la mort. It can be a very trying existence, to be a world famous essayist and critic, suffering through so much utterly horrible music to find the rare song or two that is not completely terrible. It is all very daunting to me. I question as to whether perhaps I might be better served by dedicating myself to finishing the novel that I have been laboring with for so very long now, rather than occupying my time with my world-renowned criticism. Is it fair to the world, to Art itself, that I not devote my talents and faculties to this important but unfinished work? I truly feel that this story is one that must be told, that despite its autobiographical origin, this coming-of-age story of an idealistic, rebellious young French music/film/fashion critic who plays by his own rules, touches on many universal themes, and that while it will surely be tremendously complex and terrifying in its intellectual depth, it will still be accessible, and will surely find commercial success, at least on a rabid cult level; i.e., similar to that of a Salinger, or a Dickens. Then again, perhaps this sweeping, epic tale would be better expressed and realized as a screenplay, or even perhaps as a puppet show, or an epic poem. Truly, these are the critical artistic decisions that must be considered carefully in creating all great art…
Waitress: Excuse me sir, but we closed 20 minutes ago. You’re the last one in here. I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you to please pay your check and leave.
Jean-Paul Bavard: What! How dare you interrupt my exclusive interview with these mundane details! You are a philistine, madame, and I refuse to pay! I shall take my leave of you and never return! This whole episode is symbolic of the struggle of the intellectual elite in this shallow and materialistic society in which we live, and I, Jean-Paul Bavard, refuse to be a part of it! I bid you adieu!