Margate has seen a lot over the years, from Mods and Rockers to a Jolly Boys Outing, but I’m not sure it’s experienced anything quite like Limp Bizkit.
The Florida nu-metal band were the first artist to sell out Dreamland as part of this year’s Margate Summer Series and, after 25 years, it looks like fans are still rollin’ with Fred Durst and co.
After visiting the seaside venue to see Bryan Adams earlier this week and experiencing a complete washout, I was pleasantly surprised to see the sun show its face (intermittently) for Saturday’s sell-out show.
People trickled into the venue and were soon swept up in nostalgic tunes by Evanescence, Rage Against the Machine and Korn, blasted out by the Totally Wired DJ crew.
After the crowd were hyped up to sing-along songs from the ‘90s and ‘00s, support band Hot Milk had a tough act to follow.
The Manchester four-piece has secured support slots with Foo Fighters and Blink-182, so they’re no strangers to warming up an audience. However, despite their best efforts and solid riff-laden songs like Bad Influence and Glass Spiders, the crowd just weren’t feeling it.
Given that most people started listening to Limp Bizkit a quarter of a century ago, perhaps we all needed a sit down and a swift pint to recharge after singing Chop Suey at the top of our lungs and, unfortunately, Hot Milk bore the brunt of that.
The crowd were clearly conserving their energy for the main act because, within moments of Limp Bizkit rocking up on stage to the tune of Sweet Home Alabama and launching into their 2000 single Break Stuff, the place went off.
Fred Durst might look more like a bin man than a lead singer these days, donning a high-vis jacket and scruffy white beard rather than his trademark red cap and gold chains, but looks can be deceiving; he still has all the charisma and spirit of a frontman.
He and the rest of the band - including masked guitarist Wes Borland and DJ Lethal - exude energy, and what they put out the crowd gives right back.
Songs like Hot Dog, My Generation and Rollin’ have the 4,500-strong army of fans off their feet. There’s moshing, jumping, crowd surfing and beer-throwing; I don’t know if the team at Dreamland knew what to expect when they booked the band, but they probably weren’t expecting to have a riot on their hands.
I also don’t think that when Limp Bizkit pulled a fan from the audience up on stage to sing Full Nelson they expected him to pause, sway, and then vomit into his own hands in front of everyone.
“That’s the first time someone’s come up to sing with us and thrown up all over the stage - that was both awesome and revolting!” exclaims Fred as the fan, now immortalised with the nickname Johnny Vomit, staggered away, hopefully to get some water and a towel to wipe himself down.
The set-up was also unlike anything I’ve ever seen on the Scenic Stage, with huge illuminated decks towering over the band where DJ Lethal was mixing live for the entire performance.
The band rattled through My Way, Nookie and Take a Look Around before treating us to an unexpected second rendition of Break Stuff to end the night because, as the singer said, “Two is better than one!”
It was a night full of surprises, the biggest of which being that this band, who were sometimes considered a bit of a joke back in the day, have held onto their stage presence, musical ability and genre-bending anthems for all these years, turning what was once looked down upon by music snobs into an undeniable legendary status.
It was also brilliant to see the fairground stormed by thousands of rock and metal fans who, metaphorically speaking, blew the roof off the place, and I truly hope this will nudge the organisers to consider some more alternative icons for next summer.
You can find a full list of Dreamland’s upcoming summer concerts here and, if you are seeing any live music at the venue over the coming months, you can find our guide to parking, train timetables and more here.
You can also find ticket and venue information on the Dreamland website.
