Twiztid and KMK fire up the ATL

Friday, May 4th, 2012
Twiztid, Kottonmouth Kings, Blaze Ya Dead Homie, Big B
The Masquerade, Atlanta, GA
$28

Ever since I made it to my first (and only, besides the Gathering) Twiztid show back in November of 2010, I've been longing to make it to another one of their shows. They were fantastic in a small venue, and while I really loved their Gathering performance as well, I was eager to see them in a more intimate setting again.

For a brief moment at the beginning of the year, I thought that Twiztid was going to be playing at a venue just outside of Nashville due to a cryptic Facebook status by the venue, but that apparently fell through. But later, when an Atlanta date was announced, I knew that it was time to make another trip to the ATL! And what's even better is that they were touring with the KOTTONMOUTH KINGS!!! During the Gathering, my pathological liar of an ex-boyfriend caused me to miss almost their entire set, despite them being one of the main acts that I wanted to see. So I was extra, super excited to get to see them as well!

On the day, I slept in and was on my way to Atlanta by about 10:30am. After checking into my hotel (the same one as last time, but wow, had it gone downhill), I got showered, got dressed and did my hair and makeup. I grabbed some McDonald's for dinner on the way out, and didn't get stopped by traffic until I was within about 3 blocks of the venue. On the way in, a guy merged in front of me, then someone in the back seat hung out the window and flashed a wicked clown sign at me...haha awesome!


TwiztEd

Once I made my way inside, the first thing I noticed was how the venue was already really full of people. And the second thing I noticed was that it was FREAKING HOT inside. Since there were so many people there, I staked out a spot on the left side of the stage, and was about 5 people back from the stage at that point. Before the lights even went out, everyone around me was complaining about how badly they were sweating!

Once the lights went out, the first performer was Big B. Oh my...



...why did no one ever tell me that Big B was exactly "my type"??



I'd heard some of his music but somehow had never seen a photo or video of him. Note to self - seek this out, cuz he's very nice to look at. Aside from all that, I thought his performance was great, and everyone showed him a lot of love.

I find it so very unfortunate that, amid all the excitement about seeing Twiztid and KMK, the fact that Blaze was performing tonight as well didn't get as much attention as it deserved! I LOVE Blaze, and I think his live performances are great!



When he came out, he did almost all of my favorites, including Riding the Whip, Escape Artist, Dub Sack and Damn Bitch (which got shortened to only one verse...MAN I wish the guys from KMK would have surprised us and came out to sing their verses!!).


Blaze up!






Once again, hundreds of sweaty Juggalos throw their arms in the air for Escape Artist

As always, his performance was awesome. Blaze is exceptional at making eye contact with people all throughout the crowd, and eventhough I was at least three people back from the stage, he still managed to pinpoint me and look me in the eyes a couple of times.

After Blaze, the crowd started to push forward and compact, and I ended up sandwiched behind a large, soft guy, and a girl about my size. And it was SO HOT...my hair was soaked, I was sweating through my clothes, and this girl in front of me in a tank top actually had sweat rolling all down her back and arms. Ewww haha. But at least no one had BO. Thank heavens for small blessings, huh? :-)



When it was finally time for KMK to perform, their entrance was grand and amazing! They came out full force and immediately the crowd was going insane with excitement. After a minute or so of being onstage, D-Loc took a face-first dive into the crowd right on top of me! So I ended up being one of the people to help push him back onstage! Their performance was non-stop energy and action, and the crowd never seemed to lose their excitement.



The KMK performance was truly amazing! They always stayed right up at the edge of the stage, and were constantly moving around so everyone got a good view of everything.





















The performance actually went on for so long that it seemed like its own headlining performance, and not one of someone opening for another act. At one point, the girl in front of me got kicked in the head VERY hard by a crowd surfer. So hard in fact that she looked like she was going to pass out, though she refused to leave her spot so she could sit down. And at a couple of points, the crowd was so rowdy that the entire floor of the venue was bouncing! That's just a little bit concerning seeing as how we were on the second floor!

After KMK had been on stage for over an hour, I was really starting to get wiped out from the heat, the excitement and the standing. At one point, one of the guys told the crowd to move to the right, then back to the left, and that was when it really started to hit me. I was feeling just a little too faint to continue standing there sandwiched between so many people in the sweltering heat. So I ended up retreating back to the bar area and getting a bottle of water.


I know that there's a little corner of heaven that looks just like this

KMK continued on for another three or four songs, which really amazed me. Those guys are beasts! They were going at full throttle for well over an hour and didn't even look winded! haha Their performance was fantastic, and it alone made the entire trip worth it. Once they were done, it was surprising to see how many people cleared out of the venue and didn't even stay for Twiztid. I watched maybe 150-200 people just stream out the door. At this point, I caught up with some homies from Nashville who I hadn't been able to spot before the show started. But we couldn't linger long because Twiztid was on their way to the stage.

My friends stayed back a little bit, but I wanted to head back toward the front and get as close as I could. I ended up to the left again, but was a good 20 or 25 feet back from the stage. I had a good view, but I didn't get the quality of pictures I would have liked since I was so far back (and because so many people continuously held their cameras in the air to record the show). Twiztid are such amazingly talented guys, so it was awesome to be seeing them again!



Much like last time, they seemed to concentrate on their older Mostasteless/Freek Show stuff, as well as stuff from W.I.C.K.E.D. I really wished that I had been able to stick it out with my close spot, but the benefit of being back further was that I had more room to move around and get into the music. Since I was more comfortable, at some point I just got lost in the music and the time seemed to fly by. When they were done, it seemed like the set had been really short, but I don't think it was. It was clearly shorter than the really long KMK set, but it was easily an average set length.









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Blaze came back out onstage during Triple Threat


OMG look at his face! I wish I remembered what Monoxide was doing to cause this reaction!

At the end of the set, just like last time, they hung around the stage and talked to the audience, which of course turned into improv comedy after a few moments! Madrox is freaking hilarious, and it was funny to watch Monoxide just sort of stand there and laugh at Madrox at times. He told some joke about a woman being so gross that her face smelled like a fish patty, and used the phrase "a bitch with tartar sauce in her mustache" which made the whole crowd laugh hysterically. I LOVE these guys. It just made me that much more excited to catch their seminar again at the Gathering this year!

Once the show was over and the venue started to clear out, I caught up with my Nashville homies again and we all walked out together. My hotel was just a quick drive away, though I did stop for a fruit punch on the way back since I still felt so dehydrated!

This show was a fantastic experience, and worth every penny I spent to get there. It was really like two shows in one...you had an amazing, full KMK show with Blaze as an opener...then almost as a bonus, you had an awesome Twiztid show afterward! Even with as much as I love Twiztid, I must say that KMK really owned this show. So eventhough I was upset when I missed their set at the Gathering, it was pretty awesome to have my first experience with them be in a smaller venue where I was so close.

Overall, the show was really amazing, and an experience that I hope to have again, sooner than later.

The Gathering of the Juggalos, Day 4

Saturday, August 13th, 2011

At around 10:30am, I woke up drenched in my own sweat, and feeling like I was going to suffocate if I left my tent door closed for even one more second, despite the fact that I had my window unzipped. Pamela, Nick and Dennis were all already awake, and the first thing I wanted to do was head for the shower. Luckily when I got there, the line was fairly short, so I was in and out quickly. When I got back to camp, I changed clothes and got ready for the day while the guys were just chilling out for a while. At one point, someone came by selling apple pie and cherry moonshine, which of course caught our attention.



Nick ended up buying a jar of the apple pie moonshine, and Dennis and I got a jar of the cherry. The one sip of cherry that I took tasted really, really strong, but Nick later declared that the apple pie wasn't strong at all, and he drank the entire thing in one night. I didn't actually drink any of the cherry moonshine during the trip though.

By a little before 2:00pm, Dennis and I packed up some water and snacks, and headed over to the autograph tent for the Twiztid signing. The line was looooooong since there had been an ICP signing beforehand that ran late. One of the first things I did when we got in line was head for some food since I was pretty hungry. I left Dennis in line with my stuff, and I first made my way to Spazmatic for a drink.


The Spazmatic Hangout

Being Saturday afternoon, I was surprised to see that they were down to only cola and root beer for sale! Luckily the girl working there was able to find me a cold grape Faygo, so at least I didn't have to resort to drinking the cola! Blech! Afterward, I went over to the pizza stand for a bite, but the girl there explained that they were down to only one working oven. I'd wanted a stromboli, but since they weren't making them, she gave me two slices of pepperoni pizza for the price of one. That was nice of her!

When I got back to the Twiztid line (at least a good 20 minutes after I left), Dennis had barely moved an inch. Ugh!



But he did play the part of my personal umbrella holder as I ate, so I didn't have to eat with the sun beating down on me. The pizza was pretty good, all told, and two slices and a Faygo was the perfect size lunch. Once I was done, we ended up chatting with the people in line around us for a while, but mostly we just stood or sat there bored out of our minds. At some point, I decided that this would be a great time to try to sell the Four Lokos that I'd brought since so many people were walking by us. So I ran back to the camp (leaving Dennis to once again hold the spot in the stationary line) and packed up a bag full of Four Loko to bring back to the line. I also pulled up the sign I'd made and brought that as well.


What the...?

Once I arrived back at the line, I set Dennis on the task of selling as many of the Four Lokos as he could. We actually only ended up selling two of them, but hey, that was $20 I didn't have before! Once business died down and we'd actually managed to move slightly forward in the line (but still nowhere near the switchbacks under the trees), we noticed that the sky was starting to get really dark. Luckily I had enough data service to check the radar on my phone, and a big, nasty looking line of heavy rain was headed right our way. I once again told Dennis that I wanted to run back to camp and try to close up and protect as much as I could from the rain. I left my Four Lokos with him, and headed back to camp as fast as I could.

As soon as I arrived back at camp, it started to rain. And what started as a gentle little sprinkle very quickly became a full on downpour! I managed to pull all the chairs inside, close up the food tub, pick Dennis' bedding off the floor and zip up the living room of the tent before the downpour got too bad. Some water had dibbled in and gotten some of Dennis' stuff wet, but I saved what I could. I still needed to get some trash bags out of the trunk, so I grabbed them, and managed to get Pamela's purse bagged up as well since the left side of my trunk leaks, and it was sitting right where it gets wet. Luckily everything was fairly well protected. I bagged up my camera, phone and printed photos for the signing, then headed back out in the pouring rain.

By the time I reached the autograph line, I was soaked to the bone. But lucky for us, well over half the people in line had left when it was raining, so we were only about two switchbacks away from the front of the line! Of course this meant that everything was horrendously muddy, but we all managed to survive. By about 5:00pm, a group was let in, then the rest of us waited...and waited...and waited. Inside the tent, we could hear music and chanting that lasted for an entire hour, and everyone seemed to be having a blast. Then...TWIZTID LEFT. Just up and LEFT the signing!! I bet there weren't 100 people left in the line, and they stranded us! We'd waited through all the rain and the mud for a total of FOUR HOURS for NOTHING. We were pissed. And I mean PISSED. Everyone was booing and yelling obscenities at them as they happily rolled away on their golf cart.

So, needless to say, once we left the line, we were tired and dirty, and just wanted to sit down for a while. We went back to the camp, and luckily most things were still fairly dry. It was only then that Dennis said "You remembered to zip up the window in your bedroom, right?" *dramatic pause*...D'OH!!! No, I had completely forgotten that I'd left my mesh window open that morning! I opened up my bedroom, and everything was wet. My bed, sheets, blanket, pillow, towels, dirty clothes and the bottom layer of clean clothes in my duffel bag. All the towels were soaked through, but luckily the pillow and towels were just a little moist, and I was able to get them kind of dried out over the next few days. I grabbed one of my clean towels and threw it onto the sunny top of the tent in hopes that it would dry out before I actually needed to dry off with it the next day. My Boondox photo print had also gotten slightly damp, so I sat down and blew it dry.

Since we were both still getting over our pissy moods from the Twiztid signing gone wrong, we just hung around the camp for a long time. I changed out of my wet clothes into dry ones, and even decided to brave the thought of wearing a tank top in public. Some of the lettes at the Gathering were much bigger than me and wearing much, much less, and everyone was totally cool with it, so I figured that no one would make fun of my flabby arms :-) Once we were both well rested and ready for some dinner, Dennis decided to introduce me to the wonder of the Stoner Boat. I'd heard everyone talk about them beforehand, and figured that I'd at least want to check out what was in a Stoner Boat to see if it was something I'd eat.

When we left, we took a look at the food stand by the showers, but he declared that those weren't *real* Stoner Boats, so we moved on to the main food area. We ended up at the place on the very end, which apparently sold the *real* Stoner Boats. It was pretty much just a big pile of stuff that I don't eat, the base of which was Philly steak. No way did I want to be sitting on every Port-a-potty in the campground for the rest of the trip, so I opted for the much more Julie friendly chicken strips and fries. He did get one though, and it ended up being a gooey pile of mess that he later said was unbelievably delicious hahaha Dennis also said that he wanted a Diet Coke, and was very happy to discover that one of the food stands sold it. He got a giant Diet Coke and treated me to a giant regular Coke, then we both grabbed a seat at a picnic table in a nearby seating area.

While we ate, we chatted with some of the people around us, and even shared in a large plate of twisty potato chips covered in ketchup (which were much tastier than I would have guessed!). There was also some guy in the area who was very emphatically selling his "liquid liquid liquid acid" over a megaphone haha. After a while, we just ended up engrossed in conversation, while listening to George Clinton in the background. Once he was done, we knew that we wanted to watch Blaze, so we ditched our trash (but kept the huge drinks) and made our way over to the Main stage area.



We arrived just in time to catch the start of Blaze's set, who was introduced by Charlie Sheen! It was pretty awesome to see him, but Dennis was WAY more excited than I was! I also thought it was funny that no one clued him in that Blaze is only one person, since he kept saying "they" and "them" when referring to him.


Since we were so far back, I didn't really get any good pics of Blaze

The set was great, though we didn't stress out about being up close. I'd just been at one of his shows and was up against the stage, so I figured I'd let someone else have the better spot. Tech N9ne was up next, but I've never really listened to any of his music, so when Dennis suggested riding a couple of carnival rides, I was all for it. First up was the Ferris wheel...wait, actually...first up was the trek through mud that was literally three inches deep across the center of the Main Stage field. In hind sight, I'm really surprised that people weren't playing in it since it would have made for great sliding around and wallowing. But everyone was just walking very, very carefully in hopes that they wouldn't fall.

When we finally made our way to the Ferris wheel, everything was just completely crusted in mud! The ramp up to the loading area was so slick that people were basically pulling themselves up with their arms. It reminded me of that obstacle on Double Dare where they covered the slide with whipped cream and you had to climb up it. Yeah, it was pretty much exactly like that, only dirtier. Dennis and I rode in separate cars, and Tech N9ne ended up taking the stage right as I was near the top of the wheel. It was awesome! At the end of the ride, the exit ramp was just as muddy and slick, but at least you could just brace yourself and slide down it with no struggle.


Tech N9ne took the stage right as I was at the top of the Ferris wheel


Dennis sneaks a peck on the Scrambler

Next up was the Scrambler, where we were able to ride together. I really hate riding Scramblers with other people since I feel like I'm squishing them, but he insisted that he was fine the whole time. Whew! Afterward, we stopped at the little food stand near the rides so Dennis could grab another drink, then we made our way up as far as we could for the Twiztid set. Charlie Sheen introduced them, which again made Dennis as happy as a little girl haha.

Twiztid's set was really great, and contained numerous uses of a big screen that was hanging behind them.











Everyone's favorite part was a skit where they were dressed as Batman and Robin, then came out on stage in the costumes to sing a couple of songs.



Everyone went wild! It was great! There was also a skit where Monoxide was rolling up a huge blunt, which they also walked out on stage with! It was like four feet long, and everyone was dying laughing! Much to the dismay of most of the crowd, as soon as they started to sing “So High,” it started to lightly rain just hard enough for no one to want to light up right then! It was pretty cool though, to have all the lights shining through the rain. It was a really cool moment.







Toward the end of their set, Violent J and Shaggy came out on stage and sang a song with them, which made the whole audience erupt into pandemonium!



Every camera in the audience went straight into the air, and you could barely see for all the arms haha

Once Twiztid was done, almost everyone in the entire place swarmed over to the wrestling stage for Bloodymania. I'm not a wrestling fan, but I'd heard that Bloodymania was the main event that shouldn't be missed as far as JCW goes, so I figured that I'd go check it out for a minute. Once again, I was practically dead on my feet, but I managed to drag myself over to the far side of the arena and grab a couple of seats up near the top.



As expected, the action was really, really lame. That, coupled with the fact that I was so exhausted and that nearly every single person in the area was smoking, which was making me choke, meant that I just wanted to head back to the tent for the night.

In between two rounds, we excused ourselves and made our way back to our camp. As we got to the end of the road our camp was on, we saw a large group of people gathered around trying to pull an SUV out of the ditch on the right side of the road.



Apparently the SUV had slid while going up the hill, and now both right side tires were in the ditch and it was almost on its side. Someone had a Suburban in front of it with a chain tied to the hitch, and an army of probably 15 or more Juggalos were all around and underneath the SUV trying to pull it out. After a few failed attempts, they were able to successfully get the SUV out, and it was able to drive away without much incident. Of course, everyone started to chant "Fam-uh-ly fam-uh-ly" as the SUV was pulled out, and everyone applauded. It was a great example of how Juggalos jump to the rescue when a fellow Juggalo needs a helping hand.

As Dennis and I stood there watching this scene unfold, we jokingly started to wonder why Moonshine wasn't there supervising the efforts, since he seemed to be in all the important places at just the right time. And what do you know...just before the SUV was pulled out, Moonshine popped around the corner! He said he was headed to the comedy tent to watch some wrestler comedians, but I was just too freaking exhausted to even think about going anywhere else. I'd only had about 7 hours of sleep total over the last two nights, so I was hitting the wall hard. He walked back to our camp with us, and I asked if it would be ok if he inflated my mattress a little more. That was no problem, so we all went up to his camp, which was WAY farther than I'd expected! Once that was done, Moonshine went off to the comedy tent while Dennis and I headed back to the tent for some Zzzs.

Since most of my stuff was still wet, I dried off what I could, and flipped my mattress over to the plain plastic side since it would dry faster than the felt side. The pillow was tolerable, as was the blanket, so I went ahead and laid down, hoping that I could sleep and wouldn't get sick from all the dampness. After a quick, relaxing foot rub, I had no trouble at all falling asleep.