You Don't Know Me but You Don't Like Me: Phish, Insane Clown Posse, and My Misadventures with Two of Music's Most Maligned Tribes

by Rabin, Nathan

  “She wants to know if you’re worried your dick will stop working when you’re older,” clarified James.

  “It still does what it’s got to do now,” said Dick Tricks softly and a little sadly.

  “How old are you?” asked Cadence.

  “Thirty-one,” replied Dick Tricks.

  “Boy,” Cadence drawled. “Y’all got a long way to go.”

  “If I can’t have kids I guess I’ll have to find some other way.”

  “How do you develop a skill set like that?” I asked.

  “A lot of time sitting around bored.”

  “Do you ever shove a spike through your urethra?” Cadence asked.

  “Nah, I may be nuts, but I’m not that nuts,” he replied.

  “I love the Gathering,” added the Juggalo reverend’s friend in a singsong voice. In any other context, the conversation we were having might qualify as a little unusual. At the Gathering, it was pretty much par for the course.

  “Are you a circus performer?” asked Cadence.

  “I’m working on it. I’m working up to it. I’ve already got people saying, ‘Dick Tricks! Dick Tricks!’ It’s crazy that this is my first year here and I already have name recognition. I made a five-dollar bill off the wrestling thing. A guy said, ‘Hey, you’re Dick Tricks. I hear you do a trick with a dollar. I don’t have a dollar but I have a five. Will that work?’ I’ve only had one guy want the money back, and after he got it back he ripped it up and threw it away. I was like, ‘You don’t even want to let me have a dollar?’ ”

  I then gave Dick Tricks a dollar and he rolled it up and stuck it in his penis.

  “Oh, honey. That is not healthy. What are you doing to yourself?” Cadence inquired maternally.

  Dick Tricks was extreme, but he was not anywhere near as extreme as he’d have liked to be. His ambitions included being suspended from hooks sunk inside his flesh and possibly having horns implanted in his forehead. He’d first unleashed his new persona at a bikers’ convention in Hog Rock three years back.

  “Let me ask you a question. Do you feel you are perceived as more of a freak there or at this event?” James asked.

  “People were catching on pretty quickly here. Y’all are more accepting. Bikers are more shocked. They’re saying, ‘Why on earth would you do that?’ whereas here they embrace it. They want to see more of it. Bikers sometimes are afraid to show their true feelings. I would be walking around and they’d be saying, ‘Put some fucking clothes on. No one wants to see that.’ Here, I’m walking around and people want to see more. At Hog Rock people know me as Freak Boy. There was a band that asked me if I wanted to run around onstage and I said sure. I would do that shit for free. So at the end of the show this woman comes up to me with an envelope and I’m like, ‘What’s this?’ and she’s all, ‘You did a performance so you got paid.’ I open it up and there are three hundred dollars in there. Three hundred dollars, doing what I would have done for free! And I’m not even in it for the money. I’m in it to meet people. I’m thirty-one years old, and with ears like this there aren’t that many more jobs I can have in this lifetime.”

  The conversation then came to a halt and the cozy little tent became a makeshift concert venue.

  A duo named F.Y.F. (for Fuck Your Face, which is coincidentally also the title of a Phish song) brought out an elaborate sign bearing its name before it began a performance heavily indebted to ICP.

  A screamy guy with the Juggalocks kept wandering over to Cadence and making ridiculous burlesques of scary faces and poses while rap-yelling of dead bodies and serial killers and mass bloodshed. It was adorable. The closer he got and the more menacing he attempted to be, the harder it became for Cadence to resist the urge to burst out giggling at the sheer preposterousness of it all.

  I felt a strange sense of déjà vu. As with the magical gazebo in Buffalo, I was in a completely foreign context and surrounded by people I’d known for hours at most, yet I felt strangely comfortable. I even felt at home, which is not something I ever imagined I would say about the Gathering.

  There was something incredibly endearing about the showmanship and conviction of the schlubby middle-aged men who took to the stage to perform under the protective gaze of the reverend. They were chasing the dream against impossible odds. ICP had kicked down doors for rappers who deviated so far from the mold that they may as well have been part of a different species than the rest of hip-hop, and acolytes could be forgiven for imagining that they might enjoy similarly unlikely success stories. For many of the Juggalo-affiliated small-time hip-hop acts at the festivals hawking homemade mix tapes out of beat-up cars, the implicit message of ICP’s success seemed to be, If we can make it then you can too. That’s both empowering and misleading. ICP has done a terrific job expanding its brand with artists like Twiztid, Boondox, Anybody Killa, and Blaze Ya Dead Homey, but for many of the independent acts at the Gathering, performing here was probably going to serve as the pinnacle of their careers.

  People don’t become Juggalos because they come from intact nuclear families. They become Juggalos because they come from broken homes. They become Juggalos because they dropped out of school and have nothing else to do. They become Juggalos because it’s a hell of a lot more fun to think about a fantastical Dark Carnival than it is to think about your job in the service industry. They become Juggalos because something is missing in their lives. To outsiders, Insane Clown Posse is a group that offers the world nothing.

  To latchkey kids from broken homes, they offer the promise of family. To the lonely, shy, awkward, self-conscious, and/or morbidly obese, they offer the promise of instant friendship with a confederacy of like-minded souls. For those seeking spiritual guidance, they even have their own scripture and moral code in the form of the Dark Carnival mythology. They give hope to scrubs the world over. If you go to the Gathering, loving ICP will probably even get you laid. It will definitely get you fucked up. As I write this, I’m beginning to realize that Insane Clown Posse is no mere band: It’s Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree. It’s all things to a very small subsection of people within the subculture, and a great big nothing to the rest of society.

  On the Sunday afternoon of the fourth and final day of the Gathering of the Juggalos, we wandered past a tent where hawkers issued a siren song custom-designed to appeal to the Juggalo mind-set.

  “Do y’all like titties? Do y’all like Juggalettes? Do y’all like Faygo?” they cried out to a receptive audience. As Reverend Loki had conceded, it was in a Juggalo’s nature to hustle. These particular Juggalos were peddling an off-brand homemade soft-core DVD series called Juggalettes Gone Wicked Vol. 1: “F@y&o Showers.” On the cover a pair of face-painted, naked Juggalettes sprayed Faygo at each other against the grim industrial backdrop of a filthy purple-and-black wall.

  One of the gentlemen in the lawn chairs asked a question I don’t think anyone expects to be asked at the Gathering of the Juggalos. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

  “Do you like Henry Longfellow?” a handsome young man of about twenty asked when it came out that I was a writer and Cadence a recovering English teacher.

  When we replied in the affirmative, he answered, “Cool. ’Cause I’m his great-great-grandnephew. I’m a Juggalo and I’m smart as fuck. I got a thirty on my ACT. I’m a sophomore in college.”

  Cadence and I wanted to support these young men and women in their creative endeavors, so we plunked down ten dollars and procured our very own copy of Juggalettes Gone Wicked Vol. 1: “F@y&o Showers.” The hawkers/descendants of literary titans promised titties, Juggalettes, and Faygo. With a pitch like that, they didn’t have to offer much more.

  Sure enough, Juggalettes Gone Wicked Vol. 1: “F@y&o Showers” offers titties, Juggalettes, and Faygo showers, albeit in the most dispiriting combination this side of some misbegotten Juggalo-themed Holocaust drama. Watching the video later with Cadence I was overwhelmed by how cheap and tawdry everything looked: the tape looked as if it was shot in either a vast p
ostindustrial wasteland or one of the nicer sections of Detroit. Any sense of titillation was offset by the free-flowing sadness that permeated every scene. I expected a whole lot more from Henry Longfellow’s descendant, but I can’t knock the man’s hustle. After all, it is in a Juggalo’s nature to hustle.

  Throughout the Gathering, words and phrases kept reappearing. There were, of course, the ubiquitous cries of “Family, family!,” “Whoop! Whoop!,” “Magic, magic ninja what!,” “Juggalo!,” and “Gathering!” But you’d also hear people chanting “You fucked up!” a lot. Whenever anybody did anything wrong, like attempting to set off fireworks unsuccessfully, his or her fellow Juggalos would instantly start in with a chant of “You fucked up! You fucked up!”

  The “You fucked up!” chant wasn’t mocking so much as it was celebratory. The idea wasn’t to shame you for fucking up but to give you props for trying. After all, what is the Gathering and Juggalo culture in general if not an epic celebration of failure? As someone who had fucked up consistently and unforgivably over the course of the last year and a half, I derived some solace from that.

  It is in a Juggalo’s nature to hustle. And fuck up. And not feel too guilty about it. That extended to whoever had the bright idea to bring ancient, half-mad wrestling legend and unlikely Twitter favorite the Iron Sheik to the Gathering to perform stand-up comedy. Rowdy Roddy Piper was supposed to headline, but he had gone mysteriously AWOL earlier in the day. Cadence reported that when Piper walked past her on the Drug Bridge earlier, he shot her a look of horror mixed with mortification. She said Piper seemed genuinely shocked by this open display of illegal commerce, and I imagine a professional wrestler-actor like Piper has got to be pretty difficult to shock.

  The Iron Sheik lurched unsteadily onto the comedy stage, a bloated shell of his robust former self. This was not the man I had grown up booing on the World Wrestling Federation.

  “Tell them how you sucked Hulk Hogan’s dick!” screamed a heckler from the crowd.

  “Tell them how you sucked Vince McMahon’s dick!” yelled another.

  The Iron Sheik walked with a cane. His once formidable body was now doughy and hunched over. He obviously was in enormous physical pain all the time. He was essentially Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler minus the bruised dignity and Christlike sacrifice.

  Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the Iron Sheik’s stand-up comedy performance was that it was completely devoid of stand-up, standing, comedy, and performance. No part of the equation fit. It wasn’t stand-up because there were no jokes. There wasn’t any standing because Upchuck and the Iron Sheik both slipped into chairs the moment they got onstage out of deference to the Sheik’s advanced age and diminished physical state, and it was a “performance” only in the loosest, most generous sense of the term.

  The Iron Sheik and Upchuck sat down, and Upchuck lobbed softballs at the Iron Sheik that the ancient grappler nevertheless failed to understand. Upchuck asked him about his most famous matches. He asked him how he felt about Randy “Macho Man” Savage’s recent passing (he was sad) and Hulk Hogan. The Iron Sheik mumbled semicoherently in a manner that suggested he didn’t understand either what he was being asked or what he was doing in the middle of the woods surrounded by strange people in makeup yelling obscene insults in the middle of the night.

  About five minutes into his “performance,” the Iron Sheik bolted out of his chair and attempted to leave the stage, mumbling something about having someplace to go and something to do.

  “No, you’ve got plenty of time, Sheik! Come back and tell stories and answer questions,” Upchuck implored as gingerly as possible, trying and failing to hide the desperation in his voice. I did not envy Upchuck at the Gathering. He was given responsibilities and obligations beneath the dignity of even a Juggalo clown named after vomit.

  Like Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon, the Iron Sheik was getting too old for this shit. He obviously needed the cash an appearance like this would bring, but his wounded pride told him to get off that stage as quickly as possible.

  In keeping with the Gathering’s stubborn commitment to pandering to the basest instincts of its crowd, Upchuck asked the Iron Sheik if he still drank and smoked pot.

  “Not so much anymore. It’s not so good for you,” the Iron Sheik demurred, misreading the temperature and vibe of the room just a little bit.

  The Iron Sheik was a professional but he was also an old man, and at the Gathering the old man soundly defeated the old pro who once ruled as one of the preeminent wrestling villains in the world. Perhaps “Rowdy” Roddy Piper was on to something when he opted out.

  Nowhere is the secretly innocent heart of the Dark Carnival and the Gathering more apparent than in Violent J’s Big Barbecue Bash/Michael Jackson vs. Prince impersonator-off. It fucking killed me to miss Violent J’s Big Barbecue Bash the year before, so there was no way I was going to make that mistake again.

  Under a life-giving sun, Juggalos danced merrily to a selection of Insane Clown Posse selections at the WFUCKOFF radio tent as Violent J and his helpers dispensed hot dogs and hamburgers encased in shiny aluminum foil at the Big Barbecue Bash. Violent J was once again inhabiting the role of indulgent stepdad treating his brood of face-painted orphans to life-giving sustenance.

  There was something incredibly wholesome about watching Violent J feed his spiritual progeny as they frolicked under the sun. If this wasn’t Jesus and his loaves, then it was at least equivalent to L. Ron Hubbard handing out turkeys at a Scientology Thanksgiving food drive.

  “This is bullshit,” said Chris Weingarten of Spin as he watched the crowd go delirious for the Michael Jackson impersonator while giving the equally accomplished Prince impersonator a colder though still respectful reception. “The Michael Jackson impersonator has such a clear advantage. Everyone knows his moves. It’s unfair.” I couldn’t argue. Death had transformed Michael Jackson into a saint. He was unimpeachable, while the Prince impersonator was unlucky enough to be channeling someone with the misfortune to be both still alive and still creating music the culture at large considers increasingly irrelevant. The contest proceeded along predictable lines. The crowd was respectful toward the Prince impersonator but squealed with glee when the Michael Jackson impersonator performed.

  The cavalcade of childhood delights at the Gathering included a Ferris wheel. Super Ball also prominently featured a midway and a Ferris wheel, but the differences between the Ferris wheel at Super Ball and the Ferris wheel at the Gathering are instructive. The Ferris wheel at Super Ball filled me with an overwhelming sense of calm. I experienced the Zen tranquility that comes with feeling utterly at peace with the world and your place in it, if only for a brief, shining, glorious moment.

  Riding the Ferris wheel at the Gathering of the Juggalos filled me with the unmistakable, not altogether unwarranted sensation that the rickety, rusty, shaking, apparently duct-taped-together monstrosity Cadence and I were perched precariously upon was about to hurtle us to our impending deaths. To die at the Gathering: I don’t know whether that would be the ultimate indignity or the ultimate triumph at this point.

  I never got to see Insane Clown Posse’s climactic performance at the previous year’s Gathering. It was one of my biggest regrets. I would not make the same mistake this year, especially since I’d developed such a strong appreciation for the duo’s oeuvre.

  During Insane Clown Posse’s festival-closing performance, everything I’d found so bewilderingly amateurish about their performance at Hallowicked came to seem charmingly homemade: the seemingly store-bought zombie clown costumes, the choreographed eruptions of carbonated sodas, the intermittent stage-clearing “Faygo Breaks” when an ancient Faygo jingle played while homemade clowns sauntered about the stage. I later learned that some of my press colleagues got to don costumes and participate in an epic “Faygo Armageddon.” I oozed jealousy.

  At the rapturous conclusion of their set, Insane Clown Posse performed the title track of Bang! Pow! Boom! while an army of dancing clowns and J
uggalos emitted great geysers of Faygo from the stage and fireworks exploded in the background. There was a tawdry majesty to the moment, a strange aesthetic beauty in watching great bursts of carbonated beverages descend upon an ecstatic crowd.

  While ICP performed, my head swiveled from the stage to the audience and back. As with Phish, the audience was at least half the spectacle if not more so, and the enjoyment of the crowd was infectious.

  In the Evansville, Indiana, airport the day after the festival, I was stupid enough to leave my Gathering pass in the little bowl they leave for wallets and keys and got to experience a little of what life is like for a Juggalo.

  “I’m sorry, sir. Everybody that has been to the Gathering has to be patted down and we have to go through your luggage piece by piece,” said a polite black airport employee as Cadence and I went through security.

  I fancy myself a responsible drug user, so I was quick to toss the one-hitter I’d bought for eight dollars at the Gathering in the trash and hoped to God I didn’t accidentally leave any drugs on my person.

  Like a lot of civilians, the grim-faced men working security at the airport were intrigued by the Juggalos.

  After I was shuffled off to a special room, a security guard meekly inquired, “How was the Gathering this year? Was it less wild or more wild than last year?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. It seemed fairly sedate this year, all things considered,” I said, hoping that I hadn’t accidentally held on to a spare little packet of Molly. They went over my belongings diligently before informing me that my hands had tested positive for traces of explosive. I have no idea why that might have been, but it seemed like a fittingly surreal end to my Gathering of the Juggalos experience.

  THE BIG FINISH

  Throughout that summer, Phish meant something very specific and very broad to me. It meant sunlight. It meant sunsets. It meant manic highs when I felt as if I was going to explode into the atmosphere with joy, and attacks of anxiety and dread and soul-wrenching terror when I felt as if I’d be dragged through the earth and into the bowels of hell. It meant Greyhound buses and overhearing bizarre conversations.