Photo by MARY LYNN DOMINGUEZ
Upon hearing my first genuine ‘woop woop’ last night at the Electric Factory, it dawned upon me that everything about the Insane Clown Posse following is completely genuine. Each juggalo and juggalette was clownified with black and white facepaint and it was clear there were certainly no restrictions on age, race, or gender. In fact, some of the youngest decked-out ICP fans stood front and center, barely able to peek over the barrier, but sure to have the most interesting story to share at show-and-tell in the morning. Disregarding the prevailing sewer smell, gobs of loogey on the ground, and the fallen juggalos and jugalettes who lay passed-out on in beer and junk food comas, an endless amount of carnival-style food was purchased and consumed. A number of times, individual juggalos/lettes single-handedly hyped up the crowd with a ‘woop woop,’ from which, as if almost on cue, a chant of “fam-i-ly” would erupt, signifying the undying bond between the ICP faithful. Yeah, Manson had a family, too, and we all know how that ended. The clown-faced rap duo of Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope rode onto their carnivalesque stage set on a sticky tsunami of Faygo. Supported by a team of masked clowns and backed by their trademark horror-core beats, ICP drenched the crowd non-stop with bottle after bottle of ghetto pop for an hour and a half without pause, like some white trash baptism. And what exactly were ICP rapping about? The usual: Proud ignorance, glue-sniffing stupidity, gratuitous violence, rampant misogyny, and general cancerous nonsense. Representative song title: “Fuck the World.” Representative lyric: “Fuck everyone who went down with the Titanic.” There’s a reason ICP and its dedicated followers — an overbearingly idiotic hillbilly chain of humanity that is slowly being wiped out by natural selection — aren’t tolerated anywhere but gatherings such as the one last night. Standing on the ledge of the crowd barrier for a moment, being just a foot or two higher than the rest of the crowd, and basking in the sugary-scented wave of Faygo will either go down as one of the most liberating experiences of my life or yet another supposedly fun thing I will never do again except at gunpoint. — MARY LYNN DOMINGUEZ