CRAZY CLOWN TIME: THE HISTORY OF GATHERING OF THE JUGGALOS Part: 1

by Christopher R. Weingarten

Insane Clown Posse walk us through 13 years of blood, mud, and mayhem

In 13 muddy, manic years, the annual Gathering of the Juggalos has grown from a modest, Faygo-drenched fan fiesta soaking the Novi Michigan Expo Center to what might be the greatest rap festival in America hidden in the middle of the Illinois woods. Beyond its usual stable of horrorgore merchants and wicked shit, this year's festival, returning to its secluded homebase of Cave-in-Rock, boasts a Geto Boys reunion, the Game, Raekwon, DMX, Master P, the Pharcyde, the Fat Boys, Rahzel, Biz Markie, Danny Brown, Rittz, Lil Jon, and Kool Keith — not to mention puff-puff-pass pioneers Cheech & Chong and contemporary hip-hop muse Ric Flair.

In fact, the reason that this festival maintains its unique, whimsical, ATP-in-facepaint feel is that no fan of any band is more dedicated than Insane Clown Posse members and Gathering curators Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J, who always power-load the bill with their favorite '90s rap icons, old-school wrestlers, comedians, misunderstood media icons, and Michael Jackson impersonators. You can bet that Metallica and Jay-Z throwing their own festivals this year took more than a little inspiration from this particular carnival of carnage. To get here, they had to survive years of City Hall protests, tear gas, flash floods, infected legs, a pissed-off Bubba Sparxxx, and one punched police horse. For the first time anywhere, here's the story of all 13 Gatherings, straight from the clowns' mouths.While the performance fees of the headliners have changed, the Insane Clown Posse's dedication to their fans hasn't. "I want nobody to think we were making money," says the duo's Shaggy 2 Dope. "We were losing big every time. We lose however many, tens of thousands, but that's our gift back to the Juggalos. It's a thank you. A fucking big-ass party."

  

Gathering 2004; Photo courtesy of Psychopathic

They're a convention center, they're used to collectible baseball cards or something. Next thing you know, they're dealing with pure lunacy.—Violent J

Gathering of the Juggalos 2000
Novi Expo Center — Novi, Michigan
Key Acts: Insane Clown Posse, Kottonmouth Kings, Twiztid

Shaggy: The first one, we really didn't have no idea what we were doing.
Violent J: To be totally honest, my brother put it together. We were on tour. In the liner notes of The Amazing Jeckel Brothers, I believe we put something like, meet us here at this time on this day. We thought we'd do a concert. We changed it to the convention center. You could go and take pictures on all our stage sets that we had used up until that point.
Shaggy: We had a dunk tank where you could dunk a hillbilly.
Violent J: I remember we did Howard Stern that morning. And when we flew back to Detroit, we saw Juggalos everywhere. We were like, "This is crazy." In the airport and in the freeway. On the way to the Expo Center. And we started to say, what is this? Look at those license plates! Those kids came from Delaware! Those kids came from fucking all over the place, and we just realized what we had put together. We're hearing about parties at all the hotels and Juggalos overtaking them. The big thing was some kid at Wendy's had "FUCK ICP" on his nametag or something and a bunch of Juggalos jumped over the counter and beat his ass.
Shaggy: The stage got overran during our show Violent
Violent J: They shut it down. It was a good 40 minutes into the set. But that happened all the time back then. That's how Juggalos wanted it. They love the lunacy of that, you know what I'm sayin'? At that first gathering, we learned the importance of our music to some people.
Shaggy: We learned that people from all over America were willing to travel to one spot, to gather in one spot, to make the Gathering happen.
Violent J: And that's really where it began, like, the "thank you" stories and the "you saved my life" stories, and "your music touched me." We always thought we were just the bad guys, you know, the N.W.A.
Shaggy: That'll bring a tear to our eyes, you know?
Violent J: We got kicked the fuck out of Novi. "You motherfuckers destroyed our fucking place!"
Shaggy: All the businesses around were fucking pissed-off.
Violent J: Businesses around were scared to death — destroyed hotels, the Faygo everywhere, not enough police, titties, ooh nudity, know what I'm sayin'? I remember all the wrestling fans got in a ring and it collapsed. That's some scary shit. Two hundred fans standing in a ring jump and the whole fucking thing goes off. Even the seminars ended with overrunning of the stage. And people just had no control. They're a convention center, they're used to collectible baseball cards or something. Next thing you know, they're dealing with pure lunacy.

Gathering 2007; Photo by Brad Troemel

Gathering of the Juggalos 2001
SeaGate Center — Toledo, Ohio
Key Acts: Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Vanilla Ice, the Suicide Machines

Shaggy: Toledo was awesome. We had a whole floor of the hotel that was connected to the [convention center]
Violent J: We're in a giant hotel. We had however many stories, all Juggalos. There was madness. You could actually hear madness going on. The P.A. that went to all the rooms, I guess it's for a fire alarm or something. But Shaggy comes on. Here's exactly how it happened, I swear to God. First he said, "Yo, what's up, man, it's Shaggy 2 Dope." And you heard the pop, the crowd pop in the building! You felt the building!
Shaggy: [Nobody knew] there was intercoms in the rooms neither.
Violent J: And he's like, "Man they're gonna kick us the fuck out if y'all don't chill the fuck out, man." He's half-drunk, talking ghetto as fuck. There was one wedding going on there that weekend. That poor wedding! Just think if the honeymooners were in the suite and that shit came on.
Shaggy: I forgot about that
Violent J: On the last night, I had a charm on just like this. [Violent J holds up his Hatchet Man necklace]. I'm up on stage, they surround the stage, everywhere. I see this kid eyeballing my chain, you know? I swear to God, he's looking at my chain. I can see what he's thinking. So I took it off my neck and I put it in my pocket. I'm rapping, and I feel this kid's hand reach into my pocket and yank it out; and he dives off the front into the crowd. I fucking moved ninjas out of my way and I dove right out on top of him. And I got him on the floor, right on top of him, and I took my microphone, and I bashed his fucking head in with that microphone, man. Until his hand just opened, you know what I'm sayin'? And I'm bashing, I'm bashing, I'm bashing, and this other kid's going, "It ain't worth it, J, leave him alone, it ain't worth it." I look at my microphone, and the end of it was fucking flattened. The metal ball at the end of the mic was flat, bro. Like I smashed it on cement. So we're racing home, and I stop right at the Michigan/Toledo border at a gas station. And there's a pond right there. I was so scared I might have fucking did some serious damage that I took the top off the microphone and threw it in the pond.
Shaggy: The hotel got fucking trashed; the convention center got trashed.
Violent J: We got kicked out of Toledo. Banned from Toledo. We didn't even play Toledo for ten years after that.
Shaggy: I guess it got a little out of control, somebody punched a police horse in the face or something like that. Spray paint, stickers, vandalized…
Violent J: We were banned from Toledo, it was all in the papers there. It was all in the news there, like ICP is not coming back.
Shaggy: They like to report that, but not the millions of dollars they get in revenue from all those people coming into their city.

The police were stopping titties. And that's what started the riot. —Violent J

Gathering of the Juggalos 2002
Peoria Civic Center — Peoria, Illinois
Key Acts: Kittie, Bubba Sparxxx, Mack 10

Shaggy: [Toledo] was the beginning of the end of the convention centers. Basically, the convention centers all know each other, so word got around, and nobody wanted us at convention centers no more. We had to fucking bullshit our way into Peoria, saying that we'd banned all stickers and shit.
Violent J: They let us in on a whim. The way I remember my brother telling us, they were losing money and they were hurting, and that's the only reason they let us in. We were getting ready to put out the sixth Joker card at this point. And we went into hiding for eight months, which means we didn't do any photos, any pictures, no interviews or nothing while we went to record Shangri-La. I lost all this weight. The first time anybody saw us was at the Gathering. And the first night was the night [Psychopathic Records "supergroup," featuring ICP, members of Twiztid, and Blaze Ya Dead Homie] Dark Lotus played. I went to jump off the stage into the crowd, to stagedive, and the fucking monitor rolled under my feet and I went down in between the stage and the barricade and I fucking cracked my wrist. And I fucking cracked something in my back. And this was the first night. I still had to wrestle every day, I just started eating Vicodins like they were fucking candy. I was just eating them bitches like cereal. And that's the notorious year Bubba Sparxxx got booed off.
Shaggy: And accused us of setting him up.
Violent J: Like, what the fuck would we pay you to come in for, to set you the fuck up? That's the most ridiculous shit ever. Like, we're gonna fuck Bubba Sparxxx in the ass? The problem was he went up on stage an hour late, and his DJ's up there, he kept saying "Are y'all ready for Bubba? You ready for Bubba? Y'all ain't ready for Bubba!" For like a half hour. By the time he came out, everybody's like, "Fuck you, man." And then he came stomping back, "You set me up!"
Shaggy: Get the fuck out of here.
Violent J: Like we'd bring you all the way out here to set you up? Fuck you. That was also the year that titties were flying left and right. And the police — see, that's the problem, you know — the police were like, no titties. I'm serious, I'm dead serious.
Shaggy: How do you stop titties at a festival?
Violent J: It's a fucking rock'n'roll concert, man, titties come out. The police were stopping titties, man. And that's what started the riot. The girl, she had her titties out, they grabbed the girl, and pulled her off dude's shoulders backwards, in front of everybody. People started booing and throwing shit. Next thing you know — teargas. And that's where the riot came in, over some fucking titties, man.