A truly INSANE evening! (with the Insane Clown Posse)

January 14th, 2011
Insane Clown Posse, Dayton Family
Expo Five, Louisville, KY
$32
See all the photos from this show here

Ok, I will be the first to admit that I know Insane Clown Posse (ICP) gets a bad rap for a lot of stuff. The media loves to make them out like they are gang leaders, or people who instigate violence. But simply put, none of that is true, and when you look just a little bit harder at what they have to say, they're actually really entertaining! I take their music with a grain of salt. I don't listen to them so I can pull some deep, heart felt meaning out of their music. I listen to them because they're fun...and funny...and on occasion, they do a great job of addressing social issues. I haven't been listening to them for their entire 20 year career (man, at this point, I haven't even been listening to them for an entire year!), but their longevity and icon status in the underground music scene is really something to be impressed by.

Back in 2001, I worked with a Juggalette (that's a female fan of underground music, with a male fan being a Juggalo) who always talked about how awesome ICP live shows were, and how I should go to one with her. But I always brushed it off since I had never listened to them, and really had no intention of listening to them. But knowing what I knew about their live shows, I decided that at some point in life, I was going to make it to an ICP concert, just for the experience if nothing else. Last year, something peeked my interested and I grabbed a few ICP albums, only to discover that I really enjoyed their music! So I decided that now was the time...time to mark "Go to an ICP concert" off of my bucket list!

I'd originally purchased a ticket for their October 19th, 2010 "Old Sh** Tour" show in Atlanta, but that show eventually got rescheduled to a date in December when I couldn't go. So when they announced a Louisville date for the middle of January, I decided that, come hell or high water (or snow, as the case was), I was going to be there! My friend Pamela also decided to join me, which was great since neither of us had to go alone. The days before the show were filled with many texts to the effect of "OMG I'm so excited!!" and when the day finally came, I swear it was the longest day I have ever spent at work! When 3:30 rolled around, I sprinted out to my car, and practically demolished everything in my way so I could get to Pamela's house quickly. When I arrived, she quickly jumped in, we started my "Best of ICP" playlist, and we were on our way to Louisville as fast as we could legally get there!



During a stop for gas just outside Louisville, Pamela and I decided to go ahead and get our face paint on so we could do it where it was light. I did a freehand-able version of Boondox paint...



...while she went with heavy black eyes and a black smile.

We had a little trouble finding the venue, Expo Five, since the street it was on didn't have a street sign, but we found it easily after stopping at a gas station for directions. It was COLD, and we had to park all the way at the back of the lot by a tree, so I decided to go ahead and wear my hoodie inside since I didn't want to walk all that way without it. Once at the front, we waited in line to get ID'ed, and met four people in front of us who were from Nashville as well. Once at the front, we discovered that anyone who was wearing face paint couldn't get a wristband to drink since the local police decided that people in face paint couldn't be accurately ID'ed. Just as well, since neither of us planned on drinking anyway.


This is my "OMG I'm so excited! I'm about to see ICP!!!" face


Pamela, sporting Xs on her hands. "First time my hand's been x'd in a million years!!"


Just before ICP took the stage

Well, once the show started, it was complete pandemonium! The entire audience was jostling, pushing, shoving, moshing...and everyone was crowding up toward the stage so they could get their share of the Faygo shower action! We both started off on the right hand side of the stage about halfway back, but as soon as ICP came on stage, we quickly lost track of each other. I was pushed up as far as maybe 5 or 6 deep from the stage, but was never able to stay in one place very long because of the pushing and shoving. For most of the show, I ended up slightly left of center, slightly forward of halfway back.

During the show, I managed to grab two two-liter bottles of Diet Faygo Cola. The first fell to the floor near me, so I grabbed it as a souvenir. The second came flying directly at me, so I picked that one right out of the air! Also, during "Santa's a Fat Bi***" there were clown Santas that came out and threw gifts out into the audience. One came flying right toward me, and when a dude in front of me went to grab it, it bounced off his hand and landed right in my hand. Sweet!! Of course, that meant that I needed to be even more careful than I was already being since I then had a gift and two two-liter bottles to hang onto!

A few pics from the show...


Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J, doing what they do best


Violent J


Shaggy and Violent J again


Violent J


Another Violent J (he stood still for longer than Shaggy did, so I got better pics of him)


Shaggy with lots of colorful lights


Violent J, once again


A very cool pic, if I do say so myself


You can't really tell what was going on here just by the photo, but this is Shaggy emptying an entire two-liter of Faygo over his head


And if this photo doesn't sum up the experience, I don't know what does

By the time the show was done, I was almost completely soaked in Faygo. During "Murder Go Round" some clowns had come out with Faygo sprayers that acted like giant super soakers, soaking people much farther back than the individual bottles that Violent J and Shaggy were spraying. And their finale...HOLY COW. The last song was "I'm Coming Home," at which point they brought out Corporal Robinson and 2 Tuff Tony, as well as all of the Dayton Family and all the clowns who had been spraying Faygo during the show...and they just started unloading all the remaining Faygo into the crowd! It felt like it went on forever, and I just kept getting more and more and more soaked! At one point, I closed my eyes to wipe the Faygo out of them, and a mostly full two-liter came barreling right at me and beaned me in the shoulder! Ouch! But Pamela said that a guy near her got smacked in the face with one and started bleeding, so I was very glad that it had only hit my shoulder!


The aftermath



Oh yuck! I am SO not cute in that photo, but as you can see, I had a blast, and the only part of me that was dry was a little bit on my legs. Before leaving, I opened the gift I'd caught, and it was a 3X Gathering t-shirt from last year's Gathering. How awesome! But since I knew I wouldn't wear 3X regularly, I jumped back inside and bought a t-shirt to commemorate the event.


Pamela, also soaked, looking only slightly worse for the wear


That's two happy chicks right there. You'd never know that we were shivering when this was taken!

The walk back to the car was excruciatingly cold. It had to have been well below freezing, and there I was, soaked in soda! After putting some plastic on my car seats, we started back toward Nashville, and made a stop at a truck stop a few exits down the road so we could change and rinse our hair out. Not surprisingly, we were not the only people there who had just come from the show! We made it back to Nashville around 2:30am, which was pretty good, all told.

I really can't say enough about how AWESOME this experience was! It was a complete mad house from start to finish, with people packed in and jostling around like I've never experienced before. Really, when I saw Twiztid last November, I thought *that* was a crazy show, but boy was I wrong! It didn't hold a candle to ICP. I am very, very glad that I put forth the effort to see them during this tour, and every mile we drove was absolutely worth it. It's times like these that make me so glad to be alive, and to be able to have experiences that I will remember forever. And it's nice to find out sometimes that I really am younger than my age says I am :-)

-Julie