LOS ANGELES — Limp Bizkit have yet to find a venue for their upcoming free shows here, despite the relatively smooth progress of their Napster-sponsored tour thus far.

Critics had warned that the Back to Basics tour, with openers Cypress Hill, was a recipe for disaster: a huge band playing a free show in a small venue, with tickets distributed on a first-come, first-served basis. Concert-industry experts predicted that huge crowds would show up and that problems would arise when tickets ran out and thousands of unhappy fans were stuck outside the venues.

The tour kicked off July 11 in Detroit and has been trouble-free, but organizers haven't secured a place to play in Los Angeles, where the tour is scheduled to stop in early August, Limp Bizkit spokesperson Stephen Dress said.

Hollywood's Palladium turned down the band, and the club's president, Alan Shuman, said the facility never considered hosting the rap-rock group, who are known for such songs as "Break Stuff" and "Nookie" (RealAudio excerpt).

Although it is club policy not to host free concerts, Shuman said that in the past, bands have had no trouble finding a home for such shows in Los Angeles. "You hear all kinds of rumors, but I don't know why it isn't booked," he said. "They came to us five months ago, and we flatly turned them down. It's strange to me that in five months no one else has booked them."

For cost reasons, the tour is playing 3,000- to 5,000-seat arenas. The nearby Shrine Auditorium and the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium fit the size requirements for the tour, but officials from the sites did not return calls for comment.

Shuman said he has heard that other local venues are concerned about safety. In addition to the problems that were anticipated with the ticket giveaway plan, the band has a reputation for inciting crowds to get rowdy.

At last summer's Woodstock '99, Limp Bizkit's performance coincided with one of the biggest, most violent mosh pits of the troubled three-day festival.

"They asked us to ask you to mellow out — too many people are getting hurt out there," frontman Fred Durst told the Woodstock crowd of about 200,000 people. "Don't hurt anybody, but I don't think you should mellow out. ... This is 1999, motherf---ers — stick those Birkenstocks up your ass."

And last month, at a radio festival held at Enron Field in Anaheim, Calif., Durst invited a crowd of 50,000 fans to "show the whole world how much we can f--- up a baseball field."

Limp Bizkit management would not comment on their search for a venue, although the Los Angeles Times reported the band expects to find a place by the end of the week. The delay will likely push the show (or shows; three were originally scheduled for Los Angeles) back until mid- or late August.

The band will play in nearby Orange County on Aug. 14, the last date on their U.S. trek. Concert sites will not be announced until 24 to 48 hours before shows in an attempt to discourage fans from camping out.

Limp Bizkit's third LP, Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water, follows last year's multiplatinum Significant Other and is scheduled for release in the fall. The tour continues Thursday in Washington, D.C., with a stop Sunday in Durst's hometown of Jacksonville, Fla.