Switched on Pop - The Beauty and Horror of Insane Clown Posse's Summer Festival

Episode Date: August 17, 2021

The Gathering of the Juggalos is the music festival centered around the rap duo Insane Clown Posse. Their songs are hyper-violent and profane; their stage show features grotesque clown makeup and blasting the audience with their favorite drink, Faygo soda; and their fandom has even been designated by the FBI as a loosely organized gang. Musically, they’ve historically been rejected by critics: The Guardian has called them “a magnet for ignorance;” Allmusic has called them a “third rate Beastie Boys,” and Blender called them “the worst band in music.” Nate became fascinated with them after watching the 2011 documentary American Juggalo — that’s when he realized that there’s more to Insane Clown Posse and its fans than he previously thought.  For the second episode of our summer festival series, we dig into the sound of Insane Clown Posse to ask: Is their music really as bad and offensive as all the critics say? What is the general public missing that ICP’s fans are hearing? To answer these questions, we talk to Nathan Rabin, the author of 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, and 7 Days In Ohio: Trump, the Gathering of the Juggalos and The Summer Everything Went Insane. Songs Discussed Insane Clown Posse - House of Horrors, Hokus Pokus, My Axes, F*** the World, Miracles, Down with the Clown Esham - The Wicketshit Will Never Die Eminem - Stay Wide Awake More Check out more of Nathan Rabin's writing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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just a head's up that this episode is filled with profane language

so if you have little ones around you might want to cover their ears or shoe them away. Welcome to Switch Tom Pop. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And I'm songwriter Charlie Harding.

Charles, it's the second episode of our summer festival series. In our first episode, we focused on some pretty mainstream music festivals. You know, we're talking Woodstock. We're talking Coachella. And in that latter category, it's like, these are corporate festivals that really cater to as wide an audience. as possible. Right, right, right. But there's another side of the music festival phenomenon.

And that we might call like the subcultural music festival, not trying to bring in the widest possible audience, but really focused on a particular identity, a particular group, particular culture. We find these across the country, right, from the L.A. Skins, Native American music festival. to the Boston Celtic Music Festival. Every identity and every sound seems to have its own gathering.

I feel like if we're being honest with our listeners, it should be known that you have been during the pandemic getting into Irish whistle music and that I can tell that there is that festival made just for you in Boston. I'm wondering if you're going to go. All right. I've been called out, but it's fair. I mean, it's true. I connect to this Celtic music sound, even though I have a Jewish kid from New York.

And that's what I think is beautiful about these festivals. They bring people together through a shared sound. So I want to think more about the meaning of these more local and regional festivals. You know, music that might not be on the radio or on the charts, but that matters to a lot of people. And there's one festival that you might have heard of. And if you have, I think you might have the completely wrong idea about it. it. Okay, what's that? Charlie, it's happening in a few days in Thorneville, Ohio, and it's called The Gathering of the Juggalo's. Okay. The music festival centered around the rap duo comprised

of Violent J and Shaggy Too Dope. Yes, we're talking about insane clown posse or ICP. That's House of Horrors, a track that captures the macawb carnival atmosphere of ICP who will listen to more of in a second. But first, I want to ask you, Charlie, what do you know about insane clown posse? My silence says that I don't know very much. Here's what plugs into memory. As you said, it's a rap duo. Violent J and Shaggy Too Dope. They wear mostly all-white clown makeup. Uh-huh. They have a thing about magnets and a lot of people used to, and I guess they'll go to this big festival where they also dress up in clown makeup. And it seemed at the time like a little agro and not really my thing.

And yeah. Wow. I mean, for a tour through the sort of scattered recesses of your brain, that was shockingly coherent and accurate. And yes, we will get to the magnets, Charles, fear not. But insane clown posse are probably one of the most reviled names. in music. Yeah.

Their songs are hyperviolent and profane. Their stage show features grotesque clown makeup, blasting the audience with their favorite soft drink, fago soda. And on occasion, their fandom has become physically violent at their annual juggalo festival. Musically, I would describe the historical reaction from critics as complete and utter derision. The Guardian has called them, quote, a magnet for ignorance. There's the magnet. All music has called them, quote, a third-rate Beastie Boys.

Ooh. Blender simply dubbed them the worst band in music. Oh, boy. Now, I became kind of fascinated with ICP after watching the 2011 documentary American Juggalo, which was the first time I realized that there's more to this band and its fans. than I thought. As the author Nathan Rabin writes,

they've spent much of the past three decades being one of the most hated and misunderstood fan bases and acts in music history. Now, I'm going to speak more with Nathan in the second half of the episode to try and better understand what we might be missing about the insane clown posse festival experience

and what it means to their fans. Right now, I want to try and understand the music of ICP. Is the sound of this band really as terrible and offensive as all the critics say? Or is the general public missing something that ICP's fans are hearing? And maybe we can start with a track that captures some of the most carnivalesque aspects of the ICP sound. It's called Hocus Pocus. And Charlie, is that spelled with a K instead of a C?

Absolutely. Of course. Okay, there's a lot going on here, Chuck. So it's kind of like Barnum and Bailey's has come into the Bronx and these funky guys with clown makeup have decided to take that sound and merge it with the circus. Okay. Yeah. And there's like a whole mythology associated with this sound called the Dark Carnival that I'm not

going to go into but if anyone listening is interested just do some judicious googling and I think you can find all you want to know about it I want to dig a little bit deeper into the sound and to do so let's go to the far end of the ICP spectrum

a track that might represent some of the most kind of intense lyrics that you would encounter it's called my axe my axe my ex is my body I never leave with leave your neck a bloody fountain chip chip

Everybody everybody everybody roar So it's kind of like a really cheap B list horror film And I don't say that disparagingly It has the sort of camp The self-awareness The like clearly violent themes But against a backdrop of humor

Because you can't quite afford The special effects to make it look real And through that you see the fiction And I'm kind of interested. Okay, I hear you saying it's like kind of so exaggerated and campy that even though it's incredibly gory and disturbing, you also understand that it's not real because it's so heightened. Yeah, it's like a comic book about a serial killer. You know that it's a comic book. Right.

And maybe part of that is their voices, which in this song are exaggerated in the way that a villain in a horror movie would be. Sure, like the Joker. Totally. And I feel like every time it's about to get really serious and dark, they say something kind of incredibly dumb. Like, me and my axe will give your forehead a butt crack. Oh. My axe is my buddy.

And when I wind him back. Me and my axe will give your forehead a butt. And you're like, that's not scary because it's so silly. You know, like, I'm not totally scared by that idea. because it makes me laugh a little bit. I'm so terrified. I feel like something else important that comes up when I listen to this is, you know,

part of what might be the pleasure of listening to this, especially in a live context. It's like there's such a repetition to this song, and there's this built-in sort of call and response aspect to it, to the point where I can just like really picture playing this song live for a huge crowd of people. And every time you say a line, they shout it back at you. You know, it's like, it feels very participatory in a way.

Yeah, I hear what you're saying. And I think another song that both captures the anger, the rage, but also a sense of humor and a sense of this participatory fun is a track called Fuck the World. I mean, tell me you don't want to sing along with that, Charlie. How cathartic is that? just to chant, fuck the world. Like, it is so empowering to me.

It's a heavy message, but the way that is delivered is kind of lighthearted? Yeah, it doesn't match the level of anger that the word suggests. Well, I feel like that tension you're identifying is continued in the verse, because it alternates between, like, unbridled rage, and complete goofy comedy. Check it out. Fuck you.

I mean, right? Hey, fuck you, fuck me, fuck us. It's like, this is equal opportunity, universal fucking going on here. This is also not praiseworthy flow. Like, there's nothing particularly talented about that line, about its delivery, about the rhyme scheme,

if they're just rhyming the same word with the same word. but it does seem like yet another invitation to be like, hey, you can just jump in on this because it has a sort of middle school angstiness of just like, ah, fuck the world. All right, everybody join in. I totally agree. I would not call these guys the most dexterous MCs of all time, but I will say this next quatrain is just chef's kiss to me.

Fuck preschoolers. Fuck rulers. Kings and Queens and gold jewelers. Fuck wine coolers. Fuck chickens. Fuck ducks. Everybody in your crew sucks. I mean, that is just so pithy.

I'm telling you there is something very elementary about it. He's literally talking about preschool. It's just like a chickas. It's very, I mean, I guess they're dressed up as clowns. So in hearing this music with literally no exposure to it, except for like one minute, 20 years ago. Sure. And having seen some images online,

it seems like there's a real disconnect between the sort of like weirdo goofiness of both how they present themselves, how the music presents itself. And you literally have like boom bat beats with clown music going, like, yet there is this public perception around like violent music.

I guess I'm not. not gathering that from listening to these couple of tracks, even though they're clearly exceptionally profane and meditating on grotesque but clearly fictionalized violence. Yeah, no, I mean, I think you're onto something here in as much as we need to contextualize ICP a little bit and probably place them within a larger genre that is sometimes called horror core, sometimes called acid rap. And it's a genre that's been especially popular in the Detroit area where ICP emerged from. And they were particularly influenced by a early acid rap horror core rapper from the 90s named

Isham. And you can hear on a track like, The Wicked Shit Will Never Die, that ICP is. coming up with this idea of macabre imagery and profanity. Like, this is part of a larger musical scene. Yeah, and clearly also just, like, pulling from the larger trend of gangster rap, which is happening just before that. Right, and it's definitely worth noting, as is always pretty much true in the history of hip-hop. Like, this style was largely generated by black rappers, Isham, amongst them.

and then goes on to gain purchase among the white working class communities of the Detroit metropolitan area, including ICP, and including rappers like Eminem, who has had this horror core strain running through his music throughout his entire career. You listen to a track like Stay Wide Awake, and it's basically like you're listening to a B horror movie. I use power tools. How about now? Are you in the shower? Scour you for six hours to outage of power outlets.

How did you figure out I was down in your basement now? You must have just heard the sound of my stomach growling from down there. This is wild. I never expected to see this continuity of lineage between ICP and M&M. They actually had some pretty serious beef at one point, Charlie. Really? We'll have to say for another episode. but, you know, listening to this, like, let me be frank and just speak for myself here.

Like, this, I don't enjoy this. I don't enjoy listening to this at all. It's not for me. I don't watch horror movies either. That should be clear. I'm emotionally fragile. I cannot handle this kind of material. The worst date I've ever been on was when the person I was with asked me to see a Rob Zombie movie with them,

and I spent the entire time, like, curled up in my chair in the movie theater covering my eyes. and it was not attractive, I guess. It was so humiliating to behold that we never went out again. So I don't have the best associations with horror movies, Chuck. But this raises a question for me, which is like, why do people enjoy this music? For people who do like this, for people who do like horror movies, who can stare through the whole thing and not cover their eyes, like, what do you get out of it? I guess there's something about staring directly into violence and death that probably causes one to confront the most terrifying parts of life in a way which is hyperbolic and can potentially create space for contemplation about the things that aren't going well and even maybe perspective about what is going well. But I don't know.

That's just me going on on a limb. No, I think you're right. I think it provides a release. Yeah, with enough exposure, probably a different way of growing up, a different early repertoire, and maybe being in a different community, I could see why this might be appealing. Even though these are incredibly violent, divisive sounds and lyrics, I think they actually bring people together. And let's also acknowledge that ICP have departed from this style, most memorably on the iconic track miracles. And Charlie, you're going to get your magnets now. Yes. I see miracles all around me. Stop and look around. It's all astounding. Water, fire, air and dirt. Fucking

magnets. How do they work? And I don't want to talk to a scientist. Y'all motherfuckers flying. And getting You know, life is a miracle. It is wondrous. It's confusing. Although I do think that physicists are pretty sure they know how magnets work. It's still a miracle. And I agree. Songs like miracles might make ICP easy to make fun of.

But let's acknowledge that they're a band that has sustained a career for over three decades at the margins of the music industry. So something about their music and their message is really speaking. speaking to fans, and let's talk a little more about those fans. They're the juggalo's, a term that comes from the ICP song, The Juggla, and they're another part of the mythology of this group, and they break it down on the track, What is a Juggalo? What is a juggalo? He drinks like a fish, and then he starts hugging people like a drunk bitch. Next thing, he's picking fights with his best friends, then he starts with the hug. Sounds like someone with some emotional inconsistency, probably some issues of controlling that emotion, but someone who's trying to hug their friends and do good in the world while sometimes also picking a fight. Someone who looks down on the upper classes and isn't afraid to be kind of crass and inappropriate. What is a juggalo?

Someone probably from a lower class background. Oh, and he'll dip his nuts in your soup. Oh, and he'll dip his nuts in your soup. Remind me not to invite a juggalo over for dinner. Now, I think we're seeing a certain identity emerging. Yeah, definitely. Probably a male identity. Not to say that this fandom is exclusively male.

There are many female juggaloes, but I feel like there's so many things that we've kind of left untouched that have been right on the surface of this music. You know, misogyny, some toxic, masculinity, language that can be incredibly offensive to certain groups. It's there in the music and it's there in the lyrics and it has to be acknowledged that it's also present at the annual gathering of the Juggalo's festival, which in some years has turned violent against performers and concert goers. So there's a lot going on in this music and in this festival and to better

understand the phenomenon of ICP and the gathering of the Juggalo's and what both can tell us about the larger music festival experience, I'm going to speak with Nathan Rabin, who has written extensively about juggalo's and their culture. My conversation with Nathan right after the break. Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it. What's the first step as a podcaster? Well, you have to ask lots of questions. I'm Maria Sharpova and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough. Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic, and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness. I have a few pretty tough questions for you.

Okay. Ready? Ready. Do not sugarcoat something for me. No. No. We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs, and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey.

Pretty tough is your front row seat to the women who have demonstrated the power in being unapologetic in their pursuits. I hope you'll join us. episodes drop Wednesdays on YouTube or in your favorite podcast app. All right, y'all, I'm very pleased to welcome one of my favorite writers, someone who I've been reading for forever. He's written for the AV Club and The Onion. He's written multiple books about Weird Al Yankovic, and he's also the author of two books,

soon to be three, focused on insane clown posse and juggaloes. Welcome to the show, Nathan Rabin. Thank you so much. And a hearty whoop-whoop to you, my good sir. And a whoop-whoop to you as well. So you became interested in ICP and Jugglo culture as a disinterested reporter, or maybe even a slightly biased reporter. A sociological. I was going to view it from a snarky sociological distance.

There we go. And now you've come to embrace this band, as you said, kind of from ironically to unironically, what broke you down and turned you from a dismissive observer? to an enthusiastic participant? That is a very good question. When I started writing about Insane Clown Posse, the scope of the book and the title of it was going to be confessions of a pop culture masochist.

The idea was that I would be, you know, this hip-witted guy from the onion who is going to, you know, cast a snarky judgment on all of these weirdos. I kind of went in being like, well, maybe this will be scary. Maybe these people will be mean. And this was a threatening, angry aura about it. And instead, it was the exact opposite. It was like, these people were having the best time of their lives. And they'd rather be at the gathering than anywhere else in the world, you know?

And people are very accepting. And yeah, there's also, there's a sentimentality to ICP that people don't necessarily expect. I think also the theme of this year's gathering is love rises from the ashes like the butterfly. The butterfly has sort of a place of prominence in IACP ideology. Not what you would expect from, you know, the most hated band in the world. And so I feel like a lot of people judge juggaloes without really knowing anything about them. And I feel like I was one of those people. And then I had to experience it myself in order to have a greater, deeper, richer understanding of kind of what the whole scene is about.

Nathan, let's talk a little bit about the music of ICP. I wonder, is there one song that has pride of place at the gathering of the jugglers that captures maybe the spirit of the event and has looked forward to every year? And if so, what is that song, why does it resonate with people? What is it about the music of ICP that brings people into this kind of cosmic worldview? Oh, sure. I think a lot of it is sort of the music in St. Clan Posse was designed to be performed lives. You know, it's not necessarily headphone music.

The idea is that you sing these songs out loud with your friends and you celebrate being there. You celebrate being together. You celebrate being outsiders. And if I had to say one song, probably down with the clown. Violin's J. It's a great line that sort of the colder is outside. the circle, the warmer it is inside the circle. You know, and the circle is never warmer than it is at the Gathering.

The Jugglers when they're performing, you know, down with the clown. The musical lineup at the Gathering is more diverse than I would have imagined. When you went to the 2019 gathering, you saw Acts ranging from Minneapolis, funk legends, Morris Day, and the Time, to legendary Brooklyn rapper KRS 1. What connects these diverse musical acts? I think the thing about Insane Clown Posse is their performers. And now they're kind of carnies and showmen and circus folk as much as they are rappers and entertainers. So they really, really gravitate towards other people who have big personas,

who have crazy acts, who have wild schick that they're doing. That's fun to see when you're on drugs at three in the morning. for example there was a band that played there called Mac Sabbath and they dress up like McDonald's characters and they play heavy metal music

smell the onions they're holly off a big fat queen one of the people here is going to be clown who is a clone who has like an elvish stick Jesus Christ

I'd like a chicken wing He's got hot sauce and ranch to dip in Baby he's his little baby heaven Jesus Christ I'd love to talk a little bit more about Fago How and why did Fago become a staple

of Juggalo culture And why does this soft drink mean so much to juggaloos? Yeah, that is a good, good, good question there. You know, part of the whole aesthetic of ICP and the gathering is to romanticize being broke and romanticize being poor and to romanticize, you know, just barely getting by. So part of the whole embrace of Fago is fetishizing things that are cheap. It's much cheaper than Coca-Cola. much cheaper than Pepsi. It's got crazy colors and flavors like red pop and moon mist and all of these different

things. I mean, again, I think that's part of the glory of the gathering. It's such a going to get to experience your childhood again, but only the good parts. And a place where being an outsider is cool and accepted and, you know, not something to be ashamed of. On one of your most recent trips to the gathering, you wrote, quote, the gathering of the is still a cesspool of depravity, of nakedness and open drug use and gleeful profanity, but it has since become a very nice cesspool of depravity.

It's defined as much by its sincerity as its hedonism. It's a rare open space for men, scragly, bearded, manly men to express love and appreciation for other men or the scene as a whole without fear of being judged, soft or weak. You know, I love that description, but it also makes me wonder, Who can be part of this juggalo community? Is it just men? Is it just white people? I definitely want to hear more about the side of juggalo culture that most people don't know,

the softer side, perhaps, of ICP. But, you know, I do want to acknowledge that there are these incidences of violence that have become, I think, in the public imagination, associated with this group and their fans. The harassment of Tila Tequila when she performed in 2010, the first time you attended the festival. Yeah. And juggaloes have even been classified as a loosely organized gang by the FBI. Can you speak to us about this aspect of jugglo culture, the violence and maybe where that stems from?

Oh, totally. And again, I sort of talked about how I feel like, you know, there has been an evolution in juggalo culture. over the last 11 years or so. And I'm proud to say that I can't imagine sort of a tequila incident happening today. I would think this is definitely kind of a dear, a dear, a low mark within the culture. And yeah, it's a very, very,

and I think part of it also just, you know, it's less of a crazy wild west than it once was. You know, you still have people selling drugs, but it doesn't have the same, you know, a clockwork orange level of a time. of gravity that it once did. And yeah, the gang thing, again, I think is bogus.

And unfortunately, jugglers are still classified as a loosely organized hybrid gang. But, yeah, I think jugglers have grown up. I think I see P have grown up. I think, you know, they kind of look at some of their lyrics and some of the things they said earlier with shame. Right. We as a culture have evolved tremendously over the last decade or so. And I think insane clone posse is part of that.

And they're less about shock and transgression and more about being responsible fathers of the subculture and these people who look to them for a lot. I might push back on one aspect of juggalo culture based on the research I've done. I don't know how welcoming a space it is for women. You've written about people holding signs asking women to show their breasts and women being cat-called and. yelled at, is this sort of misogyny baked into the festival, or is this actually a place where everyone can feel welcome? It definitely has become less meering, less pervy. And again, I think just more kind of family oriented, sort of in multiple senses. I mean, I'm going to be there with my brother. My niece, he's about 20, is going to be there. And yeah, it will be an interesting space

to be in. Right. Part of me is just sort of bracing myself. and hoping for the best. But I also have been very happy to see that the vibe has changed considerably. It's less sexual. It's less aggressive. And again, it's more just like people hanging out and having a good time. Right. What do you think other music festivals could learn from the gathering of the jugglers?

Yeah, I think one of the things that makes the gathering special is it's not corporate. You know, you have your vendors or whatnot. but it's not the scene where all of these corporations are buying it to the hipness and buying into the vibe and, you know, making their presence felt. Like, it's still organic and it's still homegrown. For a band that are very good businessmen, there's kind of a nicely anti-capitalist vibe and street going through pretty much everything that Insang Clown Posse does, including the gathering of the jugglers. Nathan, thank you so much for being here and exploding. some of our most common misconceptions about ICP and the juggalo's. We'll put a link to your work in our show notes so people can check out more of your writing.

Thank you so much for joining us. Oh, it's my pleasure. I was happy to talk about Insane Clown Fossey in The Gathering. This episode of Switched on Pop was produced by Nate Sloan, Megan Lubin, Alex Kaplan, and me, Charlie Harding. We're edited by Joey Myers, engineered by Brandon Farlin, social media by Abby Barr, and illustrations by Iris Gottlieb. Our executive producers are Nashakarwa and Hanna Rosen. We're a member for the Vox Media Podcast Network and a production of Vulture.

Thanks to the good people at JBL for hooking us up with the gear we need to make our show while we're on the road visiting friends and family this summer. We're going to be back next week with the third and final installment of our summer festival series. We're going to talk about the ecstatic joy of going to music festivals that so many people experience. You're going to hear some of your voices on the show. It's going to be a lot of fun. excited to see you next Tuesday. And until then, thanks for listening.