If you’re of a certain vintage you may recall the website Buddyhead and its associated label ventures. Offering no-holds barred commentary, the site’s writers weren’t content to just snipe artists online, instead taking their grievances out into the real world.
Among some of their more notorious feats were tagging The Strokes‘ tour bus with vulgar phrases, prank calling various musicians and industry players, and racking up numerous lawsuits. However, one of their most infamous adventures at the time was their successful raid of Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst‘s then office at Interscope Records.
Back in 1999, with Limp Bizkit approaching the zenith of their popularity, Durst was appointed Senior Vice President of A&R at Interscope. Outside of fronting his then increasingly notorious nü-metal band, Durst had been remaining active behind the scenes, ultimately bringing in hitmaking bands like Staind, Puddle Of Mudd and more. As recent years have shown, those ventures would go on to turn sour, with Durst engaged in a $200 million dollar lawsuit against UMG.
In the late 90s and early aughts, Durst and Limp Bizkit were frequent targets of Buddyhead‘s ire, with the website eventually escalating the feud to new heights after successfully pulling off a raid of Durst‘s Interscope office. In the process, Buddyhead‘s Travis Keller and co. made off with several of his trademark red hats after mockingly taking pictures in his office wearing them.
Ultimately, Buddyhead went on to auction off those hats for $1,000 a piece, donating the profits to a charity for rape survivors. The choice for that donation was a further protest of sorts towards Limp Bizkit, who found themselves blamed for some of the riots and sexual assaults committed at the infamously ill-fated ‘Woodstock ’99‘ festival.
Bizkit played a particularly rowdy set at the event, which saw numerous attendees destroy pieces of the venue, with Durst himself surfing overtop the audience on a piece of plywood that concertgoers had ripped up. A number of sexual assaults had been reported during the festival too, with initial blame being placed on Bizkit riling the audience up.
Subsequent documentaries looking into that doomed festival have since cast the blame far wider however, blaming a staggering lack of amenities, price gouging, lack shelter and unfavorable conditions as having bred a melting pot of aggression that spilled over into riots and assaults.
Speaking recently with Vice in the interview, Buddyhead co-founder Travis Keller spoke at length about pulling off the raid on Durst‘s office and the fallout that ensued afterwards [transcribed by theprp.com]:
“One of my main hustles used to be going to the labels and either, like, stealing CDs — not stealing — but they’d give you free promotional CDs, and then I would take them to Amoeba and sell them. And, you know, sometimes [we] hit three or four A&R guys a day and end up selling them, getting like a couple grand. That was one of my main hustles.
So we were always, like, hitting major labels to just get free shit. It was the era of free shit. There was still physical, you know? They would let you into the record closet, and you could fill a bag as fast as you could, basically. It was almost like a game show. And we were talking to this guy, and at the end of the meeting, he was like, ‘Hey, do you want to go to Fred Durst‘s office down the hall?’ He was like, ‘He’s out of town.’ And we’re like, ‘Yeah, sure. That’d be fucking amazing. Let’s go.’
And, you know, we went, Durst‘s Secretary was there, and the dude from Interscope‘s like, ‘hey, I’m just gonna let these guys in the office.’ And she unlocked it and locked the door behind us. And we were like, in Fred Durst‘ office with gold records on the wall and shit. And we’re just like, ‘What now?’
And so we just started opening up all these closets, and one of them was just red hats, like top to bottom, like, no joke. It was like a cartoon, you know, like, ‘No way!’ So we grabbed like three of those and I just shoved them down my pants. And then we took some photos in front of the gold records with them on. And then we bounced and I put them up on eBay, because it was right after Woodstock 99 where people got raped — girls got raped — and we put it up on eBay.
Sold it for like a grand — well, we sold all three [hats] for a grand each — but [we] donated the money to a rape crisis charity. And then [Durst] started responding n Kerrang! and the British rock press, saying he was gonna, like hire people to like beat us up and stuff. So there was like a there was like a month or two of not really going out a lot in LA because we were like, ‘fuck dude, maybe these dudes are gonna hire someone to beat our asses.'”
Keller‘s saga with Durst didn’t end there in the early 2000s however, as he went on to relay the following tale:
I remember meeting this girl at this party… like ten years later. And she was like, ‘Hey, I just have to tell you that you ruined my life for like, three years.’ And I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’ And she said she was Fred Durst‘s receptionist, and we would post his office number, which was, the main Interscope number, and to get him, you would just dial Durst so they couldn’t change the number.
And she said she would get like 200 calls a day, like fielding just, ‘Hey, tell Fred Durst he’s fat.’ ‘Hey, tell him Limp Bizkit sucks.’ You know just all these like 14-year-old kids.”
Keller is presently crowdfunding a documentary on the rise and fall of Buddyhead via Indiegogo.
