Concerning Juggalos w. Nathan Rabin (Patreon)

Welcome to the Dark Carnival. 

Transcript:

YWA - Juggalos

Sarah: Welcome to You’re Wrong About, the bonus episode. You can tell it's a bonus because I'm in a car on a street with traffic and you might hear it. And I'm not trying that hard to get rid of it because you guys, you don't care. You love hearing traffic sounds. You are the elite.

I am in beautiful downtown Santa Cruz, California. I just went into Bookshop Santa Cruz. It doesn't appear to have a the, it's like Yeah Yeah Yeahs. And I am, I guess, passing through town on my way back home to Portland. And after I record this, I am probably going to The Jury Room, which is the bar where Ed Kemper, the Santa Cruz serial killer, used to hang out with cops. Because, of course he did.

And I thought I would tell you about what I got since I'm here and I just bought them and I'm excited about my purchases and wanted to tell somebody. And I know that unboxing is a big genre on YouTube, but I don't know if it's a podcasting genre. I feel like it has to be because there's 7 million podcasts. But I'm gonna do that for you here.

So I bought The Employees by Olga Ravn, which I was really sold on by this blurb from the publication Tank, which says, “What might result if Ursula K. Le Guin and Nell Zink had a baby.”  I’ll just read you the descriptions. “Funny and doom drenched, The Employees chronicles the fate of the 6,000 ship. The human and humanoid crew members complain about their daily tasks in a series of staff reports and memos. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet, New Discovery, the crew becomes strangely and deeply attached to them, and the tensions boil toward mutiny, especially among the humanoids.”  And I was really, I actually didn't even read this whole summary before I bought it. I just actually read the human and humanoid crew members complain about their daily tasks. And I was like, I'm sold. I love people being bored and having boring jobs in space. This is for me. And also, it's very small and I love small books like it's short and it's literally small.

I also got My Body by Emily Ratajkowski. I've heard someone who seemed to know what they were talking about Emily Ratajkowski, just gonna call her ‘lady Emily’.

And this is a memoir about essentially buying back rights to images of your body and about sort of modern body jobs. Which I'm obviously very interested in because the show comes back to that a lot.

I got a cute little notebook with a banana slug on it. I didn't realize he was wearing glasses. That's really cute.

Okay. Okay. I bought a book called The Magic of Mushrooms: Fungi, Folklore, Superstition, and Traditional Medicine. And between you and I, I think this book might have something in it about how to grow magic mushrooms in your very own home. Or maybe it doesn't. All mushrooms are good.

And last, I got Bad Gays: A Homosexual History. And the description says, “We all remember Oscar Wilde, but who speaks for Bosie? What about those “bad gays” whose unexemplary lives reveal more than we might expect?” And I'm excited about this too, because I love people who didn't make it into the historical cannon because they were neither like purely villainous or purely badass and cool. And so there's a lot in the middle there, like me!

And so if any of you have read any of these books, I'd love to know what you think of them. And I'd love to know what you're reading, too. I love the concept of summer reading and fall is a reading-y time. I feel like Christmas is a reading-y time. That's when bookstores do the most business. And then I guess the only season we're missing is spring. So see you back here for spring reading.

And today for most of this episode, we are gonna be joined by Nathan Raven, who is telling the tale of the Juggalos. This is a story that we wanted to bring you this month because we're kind of in the last gasp of summer here. We are in August, because when the gathering of the Juggalos also takes place, it's kind of their time. It's a sweaty time. It's a time when it makes sense to get sprayed with sugary soda. And in case you have managed to avoid this knowledge, a Juggalo is the name for the fan culture around a musical group - because I love to sound as much like Ed Sullivan as possible - called the Insane Clown Posse or ICP. And my knowledge of their works before we recorded this episode was fairly slim and specific. I had kind of two pieces of it. One, that they had been at one point classified as a gang by the FBI. And two, that they had a song called, If I Was a Serial Killer, which I've always really liked.

We had originally recorded this episode for the main feed and kind of listened to it and thought about it. And the decision that we made over here, me and producer Carolyn, was that this was not quite what the show is. That we are a show that serves apple pie, metaphorically. That's what our diner does. And that this was like a coconut cream pie. I didn't mean to say, ‘cream pie’. I wasn't thinking of that. It's just a good pie, you guys.

And something that I really love to do on the show, because the show has always been this in my life, is to provide an outlet for people who are obsessively fascinated with something. Which I think when we have a guest, the first question is often, or the first question that I want to ask anyway is often like, what are you obsessed with? What do you want an outlet to talk about that doesn't necessarily fit into the other kind of work that you're doing, or the kind of work that you typically do? In my opinion, that's what makes for exciting episodes. And so this was an episode where we kind of went in thinking, this is great. We're gonna talk about obsession.

And then the reason I decided it didn't do what we normally do, and what we implicitly promise with the premise of the show was that it wasn't kind of looking at it from outside in a scholarly or a journalistic way, it was a portrait from deep inside of something by somebody who loves it. And so there is so much to talk about with Juggalos that we didn't get into, that this was not the right show or the right guest for. And what it ended up becoming was what Carolyn has described as “Bring your Podcaster to Work Day”, where we are being taken along inside Juggalo Industries to see if we're interested in it. And there's a ton here that I'm feel unqualified to speak on and kind of rely on the guests to bring the knowledge and the criticism about. And then, so in terms of this area of culture, I think I have 0.5% knowledge of what's going on. And the one thing that you'll hear that I do feel qualified to speak on is the effects of snobbery on our lives and what it keeps us from taking seriously or realizing we might enjoy.

I mean, I for one, think it's interesting to think about how this show works, how it comes together, what we need and what ends up turning into something different. And I thought you would find that interesting as well. It's a good thing. I find it interesting, because I have to do it a lot. And happy Juggalo month. Happy start of fall. I hope this is a fun one. And I'll see you soon.

*recording*

“The district will be hosting a number of protests on and around the National Mall this weekend. The Juggalos are marching on Washington, DC. The FBI has decided that we're a gang, we're exercising our first amendment, that we have the right to gather, and we have the right to listen to whatever kind of music we want without being labeled a gang.”

“What does ‘whoop whoop’ mean?”

“Everything. It means. Hi, it means bye. It means I'm the shit. You're the shit. We all here doing this shit. Whoop whoop.”

“We're at the motherfucking gathering of the Juggalos, a whoop fam. If we don't take care of each other, who's gonna take care of us?”

Sarah: Welcome to You’re Wrong About, the show where we take you to the dark carnival. I'm Sarah Marshall, and with me today is Nathan Raven, Nathan. Hello?

Nathan: Hello, and a hardy ‘whoop whoop’ to you. Sending mad clown love your way.

Sarah: This is what we need to heal. And I'm going to try something out, because I have little crumbs of Insane Clown Posse/Juggalo knowledge. But I'm gonna ask you to explain this to me as if I have no idea what any of this is. All I know is that I am an exchange student from France. I have a backpack full of baguette and I have heard that there is in this country, a posse of insane clowns. What are they doing? How did they get here? Why is everyone talking about them so much?

Nathan: They are, I guess kind of the bullet point version, is that they are a horrorcore duo out of Detroit that has been performing over three decades and has not only a history, but a legend and a mythology. And it's not just a band. It's not just two weird guys who dropped out of high school and found a very interesting way to make a living. It's a way of life. It's a subculture. It's almost a religion. They're one of the most hated and loved groups over the last 50 years.

Sarah: You can't talk about them without talking about the Juggalos, which is what all this is really about. And alright, I’ll just keep being exchange student Simone. *in french accent* So what is the reputation of these Juggalos?

Nathan: Literally a period about 15 to 20 years, they held the title of the most hated group in the country.

Sarah: I mean, there's no one else worth hating around here, so it makes perfect sense. Well, there's also Nickelback. There's also the Proud Boys. I mean, I don't know if they're in the running, but I guess this is musical group. I was thinking of like groups of any kind of ideal logs in which case.

Nathan: Oh, totally. When I think a lot of it too, like sort of a lot of the hostility and a lot of the contempt that has been directed towards Juggalos is very classist. Because Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope are high school dropouts who have this incredibly garish, vulgar, but ultimately deeply moral and kind of heartwarming and inspirational dynamic. I think there's this idea that they’re scary and evil and bad. And that if you went to the gathering, you would be physically assaulted. Again, I think there was this idea that they weren't just people with bad taste, but that they were bad people.

Sarah: So they're the Tanya Harding of musical groups.

Nathan: Oh totally. And Tonya Harding worked really hard and was really good at what she did. But would never be taken seriously or respected or admired the way Nancy Kerrigan was.

Sarah: Because it's not about how you skate, it's about whether Vera Wang makes you a costume in this sport.

Nathan: Well, and if I can, abuse a metaphor, I would argue that sort of Eminem is sort of the Nancy Kerrigan to Insane Clown Posse is a Tanya Harding, and that was kind of embraced. They kind of came from the same scene. They were both from Detroit. They both kind of came from nothing and made something out of themselves. But Eminem was embraced by the most popular people, not just in hip hop, but in music as a whole.

They're the most wonderful people in the world, which is circus folk. And circus folk know gimmicks, and circus folk know branding, and circus folk know what the common people want, and they know how to give it to them. Part of it was horrorcore, which is kind of a form of a gangster, kind of a gangster rap derivation that's a combination of the most violent in hardcore and intense hip hop, with horror movies and horror movie mythology. And about sort of taking the horrors of inner-city life and taking the horrors of racism and capitalism and gangs and violence, and sort of stylizing them to kind of create something that is this midway point between slasher movies and hardcore gangster rap.

And then you also have stuff like role playing. In his 600-page autobiography, Violent Jay talks about how his older brother was really into Dungeons and his Dragons, and he always wanted to be a part of it. He also thought that was cool. He thought it was neat, but he said he was too fucking stupid to figure out how to do these things.

And there are many very admirable qualities to Insane Clown Posse, one of which is that they're very self-deprecating. So, yeah, they've always been very upfront about their shortcomings as people and their shortcomings as artists. And then one of the other ones was of course wrestling. And they grew up being huge fans of wrestling and sort of the again, I think there are a lot of commonalities between those, Insane Clown Posse and wrestling. And one of them is that you create these images, you create these flamboyant personas, they're larger than life. And you write crazy names and crazy costumes with crazy outfits, and you turn yourself into a character.

And I think that's one of the things that's interesting about the gathering of the Juggalos. They're a yearly festival of arts and culture, this show is on the ground. As much as it is on stage and these people are performing and they're creating personas and they're creating images, and it's a form of creativity that inspires other forms of creativity.

Sarah: Okay. So we're having this conversation. You're telling me what America is, which is very helpful. Thank you. It's hard to figure it out. But, okay. So we're talking about this group. And I'm going to give you the, I think, fascinating task of trying to explain to me if I were to go to a show and try and take in this group, what would I see? What do they look like? What does the music feel like, in your opinion? Like, what is my experience going to be? And are they really insane clowns?

Nathan: I would say, no, they are not insane clowns. And the phrase ‘posse’ generally calls to mind a large group of people, at least more than three people. So the idea of a duo, calling them a ‘posse’ is very amusing to me.

And unfortunately, Violent, J has a heart condition. That means that they won't really be touring going forward. But if you go to the gathering of the Juggalos, I'm just thinking about you will see a lot of people in face paint and a lot of people with crazy hair. There's kind of a signature Juggalo hairstyle, and it's kind of a combination of corn rows and a lot of brightly color crap.

Then a lot of people will be in the specific face paint of Violent J or Shaggy 2 Dope. And then at the gathering, you see a really fascinating combination of performers. God, I've seen everybody at the gathering from Gallagher, the loathsome, right wing prop comic.

Sarah: I just knew that he was a prop comic. That's not good.

Nathan: Oh, he’s terrible. Yeah. Everything about him is terrible. And so what I'm saying is that there are great performers at the gathering of the Juggalos, and then there's also Gallagher.

Sarah: It's all about what you get sprayed with. Right? Because you want to get sprayed with Faygo. You don't want to get the watermelon.

Nathan: It totally is. Well, and the thing about the gathering is, definitely like when I started getting there, you will see a lot of people who are naked. And I feel like the gathering has changed a lot in the 12 years or so that I've been going, 13 years or so that I've been going. And I feel like it used to be a lot more debauched. It used to feel a lot crazier. It used to feel a lot more dangerous, I guess it would be safe to say.

The first couple of gatherings that I went to were in a place called Cave-In-Rock, Illinois. And in order to get to the stage, what would happen is that you would walk past the drug bridge. And as you might imagine, the drug bridge is a bridge where you can buy drugs. People would have little signs saying which of the drugs they were selling. They'd have bullhorns in case the signs weren't clear enough.

Sarah: You don't want to be too subtle on the drug bridge.

Nathan: It's crazy. And the fact that you have to go past the drug bridge, or that you did have to go back past the drug bridge to get to anything, I think just added to this element that things are outta control. And the rules that dictate how everybody else is supposed to behave, do not apply here. Because you're not supposed to be naked in general.

Sarah: Unfortunately. Yeah.

Nathan: And then also you're not supposed to be on drugs. You're not supposed to be selling drugs. You're supposed to really not to be selling drugs that loudly and that egregiously So thankfully the drug bridge is no longer a part of the gathering of the Juggalos. And I think part of that is it did become a lot more wholesome, a lot more family friendly over the course of the last 10 years. And part of it's just, the fans are getting older. Violent J just turned 50. So he is now a man in his fifties. And you are much different when you're 50 years old than you are when you're 18 or 19. And you really want to make an impression, and you really want people to pay attention to you.

And then, yeah, there are all sorts of cornerstones of Insane Clown Posse performances. One of which is that the audience is sprayed with Faygo, which is an off-brand style of a soda that is very popular in the inner cities of our fine country, particularly Detroit. And the thing about Faygo is it's cheap. So it only cost $0.99 cents for a liter or two liter of Faygo. And that's part of an ethos of Insane Clown Posse is in a hip hop realm where being wealthy, where materialism, where mansions and yachts and sports cars are deified and held up as the ideal, Insane Clown Posse has always romanticized being poor and creating something so that life isn't quite so terrible. They came from nothing, and not only did they create something, they created something sustainable. They've created something that has been going strong for over 30 years. Which is one hell of an achievement, particularly for a group that a lot of people see as inherently worthless, and also the literally the worst band in the world.

Sarah: Yeah. And gosh, and I want to come back to that. But to start, I'm very curious. So we have this posse of two people. Who are these people? What are they like? What's their story?

Nathan: It started with three people.

Sarah: Still a very small posse.

Nathan: Yeah. Yeah. You had Violent J, and then Shaggy 2 Dope, and then Johnny Kickjazz. And then yeah, they were just these poor kids, these dropouts who had a dream. They had a dream of being a performer, and their first group was called ICP, but it was for Inner City Posse. And they tried to be gangsters, they tried to be tough, and it didn't work. Their beats weren't great. I mean, they were very primitive. I mean, literally you're talking about taking a drum machine and dicking around with it for a half hour and like, boom, you have the beats for early Insane Clown Posse work.

Then was kind of a trial-and-error situation where they kind of found the various pieces that would be the core of their mythology. At a very early show they had a hype man, and he was dressed up like a clown and he got a really good response. People seemed to enjoy the guy dressed up like a clown. Let's change our entire act so now we're clowns. And instead of being a city posse, we're the Insane Clown Posse.

And then another element was they were performing a song called The Juggala at an early show. And Violent J started messing around with the word Juggala and came with the word Juggalo. And he said, “Y'all a bunch of Juggalos”, and people responded well to it. We love the clown stuff, we love being referred to as Juggalos. Also, we're crazy. We're on a lot of drugs. This is awesome. And again, these were God's among men. These were the original Juggalos. And they were mocked by their families, and mocked by society, and probably fired from their jobs, and they lost custody from their children.

But now we look back at them the way we do the founding fathers. So, yeah, so they're like, oh my God. And then I guess kind of the final piece would be they decided to spray their fans with a soda at a show. And that also got a great response. And you didn't get the response you would with hoity toity, respectable, polite people. Instead you had, “Oh my God, this is amazing.” Along with the weird name and the dressing up like a clown, this is literally giving, this is giving me a reason to live. During this amazing turn of events, this weird clown band took over America, quietly, and they became these huge, big, controversial successes.

Sarah: Why clowns? And this is a question I was talking to my friend, Candace Opper about the other day, who's been on this show a few times. And one of the things she asked, which I really couldn't answer, is like, when did scary clowns become a thing? Because I'm very interested in the plight of the modern clown. My understanding is that clowning is an art. It's something that some people become experts in. It's something that can be this really rewarding, lovely career for people it seems. But in this day and age, if I were to put on a clown costume and walk around my neighborhood, I think people would start calling the cops within a few minutes.

There's just I feel like in the last 5 or 10 years, we've really attached culturally to this idea that clown equals murderer. And I'm sure all the YouTube videos didn't help, but was the tide turning against the clowns after Stephen King's It, which I think was 1986? When did the scary clown enter our society? Where did he come from?

Nathan: Well, three words for you, John Wayne Gacy.

Sarah: Oh yeah. Uh huh. Thank you.

Nathan: And again, I think there's this duality where on one hand, clowns are supposed to be fun and silly and goofy and funny. But I think there is kind of this alternate sort of narrative in terms of clowns where clowns are scary as shit, and clowns are creepy, and clowns are disturbing. And I'm not kidding, I think John Wayne Gacy was a huge part in sort of canonizing the idea of the creepy clown and the killer clown.

Sarah: And for people who don't know that story, can you in a nutshell…?

Nathan: Yeah. Oh, John Wayne Gacy was a guy from Chicago with a very broad Chicago accent. And he was a builder. And one of the things that he did was he murdered 33 boys, and then he buried their bodies in his crawlspace. Who Sufjan Stevens has a great song about it.

Sarah: I do love that song.

Nathan: On his Illinoise album. And one of the things that made him so fascinating and so disturbing was that he was a very gregarious guy. He was involved in local politics. He knew a lot of people. He had a lot of friends. And he had a sideline performing as Pogo the clown.  And if you look up John Wayne Gacy and clown and Pogo, people see it. And you'll say, oh my God, of course that man has dozens of bodies buried in his crawlspace. He's a clown and clowns are incredibly disturbing.

And within Insane Clown Posse, I think that they were connecting with that element of the culture. Particularly since the whole idea was to be scary clowns. And one of the cornerstones of Juggalo mythology is they have this mythology called the joker cards. And each of the joker cards represents a different sinister figure that is part of this dark carnival and will teach you to be a good person by punishing you for being a bad person. And you get both sides. If you go to an Insane Clown Posse show you'll see them performing their horrorcore songs, rooted in the idea being scary, killer, evil, disturbing clowns who are on the side of good, but in a dark sort of way.

But then you'll also see the fun part of clowns. The Faygo, the songs, the chance, like all of that soft stuff. But also this idea of being innocent. Because I think that's one of the things that's really interesting about going to the gathering is that you can relive your childhood in a way you never imagine possible. And you'll see all these elements of your childhood like cotton candy, and rides, and games and hot dogs, and people dressed up in outrageous costumes… but on a lot of drugs.

Sarah: It feels like an attempt to make the feel of an old school horror movie. Like the fun house where it's like the carnival after dark, but nobody gets murdered. We all just chill.

I mean. something I find, because I'm a horror movie person, and so something I find interesting… well, a couple things, is that I'm very used to in that capacity living with and loving culture that people tend to feel suspicious about. Like I’ve had an uncountable number of people very nicely ask me, “How could such a person as you, Sarah, who as far as I know is not evil, how could you love the Saw movies so much?” And I can either go into a full explanation or just go full Apple Jack's kid and be like, “We like what we like.”

I mean that's something that I feel connected to because I feel, and in my experience, there's a big overlap in the Venn diagram between horror fans and people dealing with anxiety or depression or both. And I mean, looking at this also as a fandom, basically that is reviled from afar is the assumption people have just because it's, I'm curious too, because if you hate something from a distance, you're probably not even listening to the music or thinking about the lyrics. So what is this idea that people have about the fandom from a distance?

Nathan: it's crazy to me that we I think the essence of American culture is very vulgar and very tasteless and very kind of raunchy and raw. Yet we have this weird mechanical bent where we pretend that we're above that. We pretend that we're above horror movies, and Insane Clown Posse, and hair metal, and teen pop, and all of these things. And it's utterly ridiculous.

Sarah: All these wonderful things. Yeah.

Nathan: Well, it's hypocritical and I think we're kind of readdressing that now in a way that's really wholesome. I mean, I think with horror movies and with Insane Clown Posse, there is a cathartic element to it. And this idea of going into this dark place so that you can come out into the light, right? Yeah. I think they also speak to a need within the fans for a sense of community. And there's something really beautiful about that. There's something beautiful about the fact that the parents don't understand. And yeah, Violent J said something when I interviewed him that I've quoted many times, and that is, “The colder it is outside of the circle, the warmer it is inside the circle.”

And I mean, I look back at myself when I was not a Juggalo. I wrote a memoir and part of it involved me meeting my long-lost half-brother who had not seen in, I didn't know he existed for most of my life. And I met him for the first time, and we went to the mall, and we went to Hot Topic, and he bought a bunch of Insane Clown Posse merchandise. How on earth could I be related to a Juggalo, they're so tacky and bad and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And when I wrote that, I knew nothing about them. People like to look down on people. They really do, don't they? And without thinking about it, without thinking about the context, without thinking about what does it mean. Because that's the great thing about an Insane Clown Posse show is nobody's looking at other people unless they're like, that's a cool outfit. And that's the other nice thing about the gathering, there's just that wonderful energy when you're around 5,000 people who would rather be there than any other place on earth.

Sarah: I mean, when did they achieve the level of knownness at which they became a punchline? Did this happen before the gathering?

Nathan: That is a good question. I think it's probably in the 1990s, I would say kind of the golden age for Insane Clown Posse. Because they came very close to having mainstream popularity.

Sarah: How did that happen?

Nathan: Well, basically what happened was they built a big following and a very loyal following. And because they played the [inaudible] and because they had gimmicks and because they learned so much from wrestling, they learned so much from D&D, they learned so much from Geto Boys, that they were able to create something they create, not just these songs that people like, but this whole ideology and mythology and shtick and persona. And they got bigger and bigger. And then at one point they were signed by an outlet of Disney.

Sarah: Whyy not? They own everything.

Nathan: Oh, totally. And what happened was Disney had to drop them, because the busy bodies of the 1990s said, why on earth is Disney, the most wholesome, family friendly company in the whole world, why are they literally in bed with these evil clowns who have these sinister, horrible messages and all that. And of course they didn't actually bother to listen to the songs, because they would say they have wonderful messages and they're very positive.

Sarah: How dare they be owned by someone as wonderful and kind as Michael Eisner?

Nathan: For sure. So they kind of took that energy and that spin, and they had albums that went gold and platinum. So, yeah. And then in 2001 with the gathering and with starting their own label Psychopathic Records, they kind of went the independent route.

And then I also, I mean, if you look at the culture at large, you see a paradigm shift where you can't really make money selling albums anymore. Like basically the entire industry just went to shit. And you have to hustle and struggle and figure out something, because the old way of doing it worked terribly before, and now works even worse.

So, yeah, I think you can draw a real distinction between when they were pursuing mainstream success and what they're doing now. Which is doing their own thing and being very successful at it, even though I can like vouch personally, it's so hard. And it's so much harder to do everything yourself than it is to belong to an evil record company that will do things for you and then steal all your money.

Sarah: Getting to just the performance and the experience of the music, the center of I guess, this whole world that now exists. What are these songs about? I'm curious about the mythology. Is there, are there like overarching stories? Is it like Tolkien at all?

Nathan: Yeah, I mean, there definitely are overarching stories. I mean, each of the albums is a concept album. There are two different sides of Insane Clown Posse. There's a horrorcore side, which is very intense and very scary and very not really my favorite part of it.

Sarah: And is that talking about gory stuff? What's that like?

Nathan: Yeah, I mean, again that's kind of rooted in this whole idea of you'd have these songs about if you are a child molester and you beat your wife, these are the horrible things that are going to happen to you in hell. And it's funny, I don’t know if you're familiar with like Christian haunted houses.

Sarah: Yeah. But assume that I'm not and refresh me.

Nathan: Sure. No problem. They were Christian horror. They had those Christian haunted houses are totally a thing. They did a documentary about them and the purpose of them is to use the tools of the devil, such as horror movies and scary stuff and witches and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, to impart a very heavy-handed Christian message.  So you'd have people be like, oh, I shouldn't have gotten this abortion. Now I'm being aborted a million times for eternity. No, abortion is bad!

Sarah: High production values, I would assume. I want to go to your hell house.

Nathan: We just see the aggravations that come with being evil more than more than those other things. So in a similar sort of a way, Insane Clown Posse said if you hit your kid, then you'll be murdered, and Satan will dance a jig on your head. And again, this is a message that I would like to think nobody needs to hear. And one that is self-evident and one that is…

Sarah: And shouldn't be controversial.

Nathan: Oh, definitely. Definitely. Definitely not. But it does resonate with people and they're like, here's our message. Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? Be a good person. That's it, be a good person. Don't hurt people. Don't be racist. Don't be a rapist. Don't hit people. Don't extol the Confederate flag. We just want you to be a good person.

And some people were let down by that. They said that's literally the message of every religion in the world. That's the essence of Judeo Christianity. Like we thought you were cool. We thought you were weird. We thought you were taking us to this bizarre, weird place. And you're literally telling us what our grandma told us.

Sarah: I think it is weird though.

Nathan: It is weird. And it's funny. John Ronson, the wonderful journalist and author and filmmaker and whatnot, he hung out with ICP for a while and he said, “They're Christians. They have this crazy, wild mythology and people think they're the most evil, wicked, abusive out there group in the world. And they're being like, be nice to your mom.” And I don't think that they're Christians. I think it's just a matter of morality.

Sarah: I mean, I feel as if having your closing, like overarching message be “be a good person”. Actually, it feels quite subversive to me because, speaking of Disney, I've always found it a little bit insidious that the moral of the Disney movies that at least millennials grew up with is, be yourself. Believe in yourself. And it's well, that's nice, but what am I, who am I that I'm believing in? Should I do that? What if I'm Donald Trump?

Nathan: Oh, totally. And one of the things that I did when I wrote my book about Insane Clown Posse - and also the popular jam band Phish - was I sort of researched Insane Clown Posse various television appearances. And there were two that I found utterly fascinating and also hilarious. And also incredibly revealing. And one was with Bill O’Reilly. And Bill O’Reilly was kind of standing in for all corrupt authority.

Sarah: That's my dream dinner party.

Nathan: Oh yeah. Well that, but just taking all said, these are horrible monsters who should be ashamed of themselves. And one of my favorite parts of it was him saying like some of your lyrics, “You have this lyric, ‘From Detroit to Uranus. We're underground famous’. Could you explain that line?” And he's, “Well, what do you want to know about it?” He's “Well, isn't it very stupid?” And he is he told somebody to smoke some shit. And at one point he's, “Well, what do you say to your fans who hear you smoke some shit and they go out and they immediately are smoking crack cocaine. How do you feel about promoting crack cocaine?” And this is Satanic panic. This is Elvis Presley is going to destroy our children with his hips. This is Little Richard is too gay, and too weird, and too intense, and he is gonna steal our women and our men and various other people as well. And 1980s, when people thought heavy metal groups were evil. People thought that KISS stood for Knights In the Satanic Service. They thought WASP stood for We Are Sexual Perverts. They fit very much into this paradigm that we have where the busy bodies and the moralists and the self-appointed guardians of our children's innocence say, no, this is bad, and it must be stopped.

And to paraphrase the Satanists, what about the children? What about the children? Violent J is like dude, we're ashamed of some of our past stuff. Now we don't want to be sexist or use homophobic language, and we've outgrown that. We were 26 years old when we did that, and we feel much differently 25 years later. So I think they've grown up, and a lot of the culture sort of has as well.

Sarah: Yeah. And I feel like placing it in a continuum with Elvis and Kiss and the panic with a thousand faces, I guess basically, that often is about youth culture. And it feels to me like a big part of that is because parents freaking out over their kids being invested in a culture that isn't for them, isn't for parents, that is for kids to have a place to, that at a certain point, it doesn't even matter what the thing is. It's about creating a world of your own.

Nathan: Yeah. And it's funny that you mentioned that. Because I think about, I think race has a certain element to do with it as well. That it's. Problematizes it that there are white people performing black music.

And I remember correctly in the introduction to the Bill O'Reilly segment, they literally say there are white rappers who are more violent and extreme than the black rappers. And it's like, you're saying the quiet part out loud.

Sarah: Right. Good job, Bill O'Reilly. That was an instructive moment.

Nathan: Yeah. It's I mean, it's a story about capitalism. It's a story about culture. It's a story about America. It's a story about belonging. It's a story about being misunderstood. It's a story about the FBI. I mean, it's a crazy story.

Sarah: Say more about the FBI part.

Nathan: Sure. Sure. Well, a while back the Juggalos were designated by the FBI as a loosely organized hybrid gang. Which is a fancy way of saying some poor white people who might be up to some shit. And because it was demarcated as a gang, that ended up having very negative consequences for Juggalos.

So if you were a Juggalo and you got divorced and you wanted custody of your child, your partner could say, my ex-husband or ex-wife belongs to a gang called the Juggalos, and here is images of them in the gang makeup. And this is them listening to the gang music. This is them being sprayed with the gang soda. This is their gang terminology. Whoop, mad clown love. And they're like, that's bad. So what they did was they sued the FBI. Like that's an infringement of freedom of speech and that's an infringement of our rights as Americans, it’s infringement it's in violation of the Constitution.

And it's interesting because the ICD was frustrated. They kind of had to fight that battle alone. But it was a beautiful thing. So they had a Juggalo March in Washington, and I was honored to be the final writer to speak, which was very surreal. Now whenever I see the Washington monument in a movie or a television show, I instinctively think, oh, that's where I talked about being a Juggalo. And this was a time when there was a right-wing protest or whatever at the exact same time.

Sarah: When was this?

Nathan: This was in 2017.

Sarah: Oh, wow.

Nathan: Yeah. So I think there was, it might even have been a Proud Boy event. So I think there was this idea of there's going to be skirmishes between Juggalos and the alt-right, and won’t that be hilarious.

What ended up happening is the alt-right barely showed up. And the Juggalo March Washington went off without a hitch. Like it was a very successful thing, and it was very sweet and just kind of a lot of people enjoying each other's company. And that's the nice part. The not so nice part is five years later the gang designation is still there.

Sarah: I mean, not to dwell on the obvious, but God forbid people form a community around a charismatic person, or to who says violent rhetoric from a stage of some kind. And then let's target the one where they all jump around in soda, as opposed to the one where they have marches saying things like, “Jews will not replace us.”

Nathan: Well, and it's interesting too, because I mean, kind of look at people like in, I think Insane Clown Posse fall into the same category as Alice Cooper or Rob Zombie, where their whole schtick is, look at us, we’re scary monsters. And then it's oh, we're charming people who like Frank Capra and to go golf and spend time with our family. And then you have people like Marilyn Manson who has a persona as, ooh, I’m a scary person. And then he literally is just a piece of shit. If anything, like that's underselling what a horrible person he is.

So I think there's this element in our culture where we don't know if the crazy shtick is telling on yourself, or we don't know if the crazy shtick is, I'm a performer and wearing this crazy costume is the reason I'm a millionaire. So I'm going to continue wearing this costume.

Sarah: Which I guess just aligns fine with the concept of if someone puts on a nice suit and gets on a stage and is like ‘family values’. You're like, are you saying that because you care about family values and this is how you're expressing that to me, or is this your little family values costume that you put on before you go and you have hot tub parties with underage people?

Nathan: Well, I mean, look at the 1980s when Insane Clown Posse sort of came to prominence or began, and who was the most respected man in the United States? Bill Cosby.  And who was out there telling people how to live their lives, how to dress, how to talk, what to do, what not to do? Bill Cosby. Interesting to look that sometimes the people who are loudly professing to be the most moral and the most wholesome are evil fuckers. And sometimes people who are professing to be scary and crazy and out there are actually good human beings who care about their fans.

Sarah: I mean, well, and going back to the Juggalo March on Washington, I mean, I'm so curious. And maybe this also will start answering the question of kind of when did your investment in this world begin. But what did you say given this opportunity to ask for justice for the Juggalos?

Nathan: So I sort of talked about, I guess, how sort of the struggle of Juggalos, we've kind of connected to all of their struggles, and it’s related to the struggles of the poor. And it's the struggles of the disenfranchised. And even if it did not ultimately achieve its stated objective, I think it succeeded in the sense of it helped change the narrative around Insane Clown Posse. These aren't bad people. These are poor people with dignity, and they just want to be respected and they just want people to not treat them like shit because of the music that they listen to, or the people they choose to hang out with, or how they choose to paint their faces, no matter how bad their hair looks.

Sarah: I mean, people look weird at the Kentucky Derby, but that's not street wear.

Nathan: That's true. And that's a scene, man. Yeah, probably as many drugs and alcohol at the gathering are at the Kentucky Derby.

Sarah: And not just in the horses, even. That's true. I mean, something that just feels like a question about any culture that's strong is what needs is it meeting? What does it offer people? And I'm asking you this both as a professional Juggalo defender and as a Juggalo.

Nathan: Sure. Well, I think there are a couple of sort of emotional needs that being a Juggalo fulfills. One of which is a sense of community. Being a Juggalo and being out is much, much different than being a fan of Hall and Oates. They're just a band that you listen to. There's some songs that you like. So this whole idea of that there are people who will love you just because you're a Juggalo, just because of who you are. And I think a lot of Juggalos, they grew up poor. They grew up not feeling very popular. They feel kind of out of sorts with the world.

I also see a lot of disabled Juggalos. Which is kind of surprising in part because the gathering is very not handicap accessible or anything. So I think that is part of it is a sense of community and belonging and the idea of acceptance. And then I also think there is this freedom from judgment.

And again it's transcendence, right? It's beyond the day to day, it's beyond going to a concert, it's kind of going to this spiritual level. And part of it is drugs. There are a lot of drugs that the gathering of the Juggalos. And we live in a, I mean also too, like a culture where it's become much more acceptable to use drugs.  So, yeah, I think there's this element of, you go into this world where all the laws are different and all the rules. And I think also an element of it is nostalgia.

Sarah: There's the fear of your kids finding a culture that you're not a part of and kind of expressing autonomy in the fact that they're growing up that way. And then I feel like there's, I don't know, this makes me think of a couple of things. First of all, that what you're describing sounds to me like the goal of so many different experiences, many of them religious, and that there probably is a fear for some people that like their experience of God has something in common with the experience of a bunch of clowns in a forest listening to violent rap music. And that they're both about transcendence, they're both about being present. It feels like some form of ego death, whether aided by something you eat that day or not.

But I mean, that feels to me like maybe the cause of some of the snobbery. Which is like the same way I felt when kids who I didn't like liked musicians that I liked in like eighth grade where I was like, no, my love of this thing, my feelings are better than yours. And it's like, no they're not. We all have just this recognition that we all have some of the same basic needs that we are just going about meeting in different ways.

Nathan: So I think one of the things that I've tried to do over the course of the last nine years or so is to create a counter narrative and to create this and something that's more honest. And also a lot more positive and the negative exists, but I think it's imperative to have the negative and the positive. And it's not perfect. Nothing is. But again, I just feel like there's something fundamentally good and worthwhile at the core of Juggalo culture.

Sarah: Where does the idea that they're racist come from? Because I presume that if you have a largely white fandom, then like some significant number of them are going to be racist. But like, why are we leveling this at them as opposed to like yacht rock or whatever?

Nathan: Well, I think the essence of the reason why they're considered racist or accused of being racist more than yacht rock is because they're poor and their fans are uneducated. And we live in a culture where people who are white people who are poor white people who are uneducated are considered racist.

Sarah: Right. Which really takes the pressure off of rich white people who could never hurt a fly.

Nathan: Look at Kid Rock.

Sarah: Stand-up guy.

Nathan: I think also the face paint, the calling each other ninjas, and the fact that could be, and then also, I mean, like there's a lot of I mean, just even being white dudes rapping.

Sarah: And there's a whole cultural appropriation argument there, but I feel like that's not the one being made most of the time. So I feel like this is hard to distill. But was there a moment that looking back on now was the moment when you were like, today I am a Juggalo.

Nathan: That is a good, good, good question. And I feel like there definitely was a moment with Phish who I kind of, I see Phish and Insane Clown Posse as similar. Because I wrote a book about how I became a big fan of Phish and how I became a big Juggalo. And they sort of fulfill similar roles for one another. And this might not be the moment when I realized that I was a Juggalo, but I think kind of speaks to what a profound, emotional connection I had with the group. In 2016 I had a magical week where I went to the Republican National Convention, the one where a gentleman named Donald Trump was nominated for president. And I went to the gathering of the Juggalos, and I went the same week. I went with my long-lost brother. And yeah, the first three days were at the Republican National Convention. It was really depressing and really sad. And it made me feel bad for my country. It made me feel bad for society. And then I went over to the gathering. I remember standing there next to my brother and weeping uncontrollably, and just tears pouring out of my face. Yeah, it was just this incredibly weird, intense, good moment. So, so much more was just going on than being at the gathering. But I think that speaks to what a profound effect it had that it literally reduced me to sobbing. Yeah. I'm a mother fucking Juggalo and I'm proud of that fact.

Sarah: Snobbery is a concept divorced from morals. It's not about are you having a good effect? Are you having a bad effect on the world? It's all about this thing you love, is it good enough to love? And it's well, God, who cares? I guess really all I want is for people to have accessible to them something like that experience that you just described.

Nathan: Labeling any fandom is inherently, good or bad, is a tricky thing because there’s good and bad in everyone.

Sarah: What is your preferred flavor of Faygo to be covered in?

Nathan: I'm a red pop man. When I go there, I like the red pop. Root beer is very good. The Cola's good. Moon Mist is nice.

Sarah: Juggalos, I hope that you can all be there together and look for the red pop covered gentleman.

Nathan: I’ll be the one having a good time.

Sarah: You’ll be that guy.