Let’s get this out of the way up front: I enjoyed the 1998 and 1999 Family Values tour albums at the time, and still have an okay time with them today. What can I say, I got big fast in high school. I wore a wallet chain. I got tripped up in gym class, then suspended when I threw a punch at the culprit. When you’ve had bricks bounced off your head and a plank of wood cracked off your back like an amateur wrestler, Korn can seem appealing. Please send your condolences by post.

Beyond the opportunity to vent an ill-formed rage, these compilations provided an overview of what was popular in rock at the turn of the century.

In theory, they also showed how it was talking to other genres. Hip-hop, sure, but also what the yanks would call “electronica.” With hindsight, the case for this is less convincing than you’d expect. There is little in the second and third collections that expands on the genre crossover of the first; instead, we see these interruptions reduced to texture on a few Linkin Park tracks.

I hadn’t listened to the third Family Values album until now. By the time it was released, I’d reinvented myself as a fan of Fugazi, PJ Harvey, Queens of the Stone Age, and Sleater-Kinney. I wanted to look like a rock kid you could sleep with. Somehow, it worked.

The three songs below aren’t my favourites from these live sets. What I’m interested in is how the choice of cover versions charts the movement of this festival, and maybe even the genre, from a novel circus trick to business as usual. It’s not possible to give a fair account of the story of nu-metal in three songs, but this isn’t the BBC so I don’t have to fake impartiality.

Pick Three – the Family Values tour albums!

1. Orgy – ‘Blue Monday’ (from Family Values Tour ’98)
2. Limp Bizket – ‘I Would For You’ (from Family Values Tour 1999)
3. Aaron Lewis – ‘Black’ (from Family Values Tour 2001)

Packed with rap-rock bravado as they are, you can still clock the Family Values albums hiding behind irony at points. It’s there in the covers for the 1998 and 2001 collections, with their faux-50s imagery. Translation: Your parents thought they were too hip to be square, but they were wrong!

More importantly, you could hear it in the way Fred Durst scream-sang the chorus of George Michael’s ‘Faith’ to shreds after dedicating the song to “women across America!” Translation: We’re going to rock with our intrusive thoughts out, but we’re not fags, okay?

But ‘Faith’ isn’t on my list, and the three covers that are sound almost entirely earnest. Taken together they chart a retreat away from a crude but vital pop moment, anti-pop marketing and all, and back into a dullard’s version of the real.