March 28, 2024
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2017 Gathering Review [by Scottie D]

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Right now I’m sitting at my desk trying to figure out how to begin the review of this year’s 18th Annual Gathering of the Juggalos.  It has officially been two weeks since the event ended, and it’ll probably be close to three by the time anyone else sees the Gathering through my eyes.

If you decide to chalk this Gathering up as a loss, you probably spent a lot of time on Facebook reading thoughts about it by people who weren’t even there.  If you set out to believe something without seeing and experiencing it for yourself, then you’re going to have an easy time dissecting every negative thing that happened this year in Oklahoma City.  If you want to hear how shit REALLY went down though, I welcome you to give my yearly review a read.

Now, let’s get this show on the road!

Pre-Gathering Preparation

Now that the Gathering has come and gone, you might have forgotten how short of notice that Juggalos were given to get all of their plans together.  The dates were announced in late March, giving us about four months to get your work time off requested.  Then, we were given the location of the Lost Lakes Amphitheater in mid April.  Usually we know a majority of the details by the end of the previous year.  Sometimes we are even lucky enough to know about the next year’s location and dates at the Gathering itself, giving us a full year to prepare.

For 2017 though, we got a few months.  That didn’t sway us in the least though, because #AlwaysGather!

A little more than a month before the Gathering actually happened, my family and our homie ZZ went to Lost Lakes to scope the place out.  It’s only about a 3 hour drive from where we live, so why not see the future home of the Gathering of the Juggalos!  We didn’t have a cart to drive around in, so we hoofed it all throughout the park.  We walked for probably 45 minutes and got through a majority of it…but that was at our own pace, and not trying to make it to any scheduled events.  We could tell that the place was gigantic…far more spread out than Legend Valley.  The coolest feature of it besides the camping spots with lots of tree cover was the big-ass lake and water slides. Late July in this part of the country is BRUTAL, so it was a necessity to have something like that to keep cool.

You can see our Lost Lakes walk-through from June here:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Prior to our walk-through, we had reserved our RV (another necessity for us) through RVShare.com.  Since we didn’t have to make the 18-20 hour trek to Ohio this year, I decided to rent the trailer close to the campground so I could just drive there in my truck, hook up the trailer, and haul it a few miles to the Gathering!  Seemed like a decent plan, right?

The other good thing is that I wouldn’t have to borrow my dad’s 3/4 ton truck, AND the RV this year only cost about 2/3 the price of the one last year!  Score!

**Side note/Suggestion: For those who have never Gathered, or want to upgrade their experience at a future one, listen up!  I know that at Legend Valley, and now at Lost Lakes, that there are hotels nearby.  Even Hog Rock had hotels close enough to make the daily drive back and forth.  For me, it’s just not the same!  For us to be able to pile into a cold RV to cool off during the day and get a decent amount of sleep every night (I know I know…fuck my sleep!) is well worth the price!  For instance, this year, we found our RV for $900 for the week (including the additional insurance), paid $400 for our Ballas pass, and just had to get enough food to eat for the week.  Divide that up by six people, and it’s a hell of a deal!  Not to mention the fact that you have a home base to meet up at, store your valuables while you’re away, and when you DO get some sleep, you just wake up and open your door and you’re Gathering again! With a hotel, you all have to agree on a time that you want to leave, have to carry your shit with you everywhere, and if the rest of your crew doesn’t want to leave the hotel yet to get to the Gathering, you’ve got to sit there and wait.  You might save a few bucks, get a nice daily hot shower, and possibly a complementary breakfast, but my recommendation is to start making your plans now and rent an RV for next year! You won’t regret it! That’s my $.02.

OK, back to your regularly scheduled Gathering review!  I make it no secret that I have somehow managed to be at every single Gathering since its inception.  One thing that I’ve never done is actually have a golf cart to get to and from each event.  This year, that was going to change!   PsykoScott and I had always talked about just bringing one, but the wheels were already in motion for GOTJ18!  He had a little clunker of one that had been sitting, batteries not in the greatest of shape, but should be fine to just get around on.  He let me know that he would bring it with him in his truck since we were just meeting at the Gathering this year, rather than at some other place (usually his house) and driving there together.

Starting about 3 weeks before GOTJ, I started getting texts about all of these little upgrades that he was doing to the cart…

Then, he started sending me little glimpses of other stuff that he was working on, but didn’t want to spoil the surprise.

Those little teasers definitely had me hype to see what the finished product looked like!

Among all of our other pre-Gathering preparations, something brand new was to be introduced that I’m hoping will continue for years to come!  Our homie Don E Theis of the PGT contacted several crews that are always at the Gathering with an idea that he had.  He called it the Campsite Scavenger Hunt, and it would consist of 17 Different Campsites that participants would have to visit, in order, to obtain clues to get to the next campsite.  Those who were persistent enough to get to all 17 sites, pick up all clues, and have a representative of each site sign off would be entered into the drawing to receive a HUGE grand prize!  First, here are the little goody bags that my wife created for each participant:

Scavenger hunt clues/goodies!

We bought enough candy to make 500 packs, though less than 100 were used.  Still, we thought it was a fresh way to give out the next clue!  As for the prizes, every site donated something to the prize pool.  I know there were t-shirts, posters, pins, etc donated among other things.  I had a recreation of the “Just When You Thought They Were Dead” poster along with a few Faygoluvers hat pins that I threw in.  Nothing huge, but bundle those with the prizes from 16 other campsites along with the insanely fresh prize that Psychopathic Records donated, and you’ve got a hell of a pot!

While I’m thinking about it, I’ll go ahead and let you know what Psychopathic donated to the cause.  They were presented with the scavenger hunt idea and decided to pitch in on it…we just didn’t know how dope the prize would be!  What they ended up donating were the stage-worn Tunnel Of Love Jerseys from Juggalo Weekend!  You read that right!  The Faygo-stained white and pink jerseys that were designed by Violent J himself were up for grabs!  We’ll let you know how that all played out later!

Scavenger Hunt Grand Prize!

Fast-forward to the week before the Gathering. I had been on our homie Brice’s ass for weeks about coming to my place to spend the night so we weren’t waiting on him to leave the next morning.  I checked in on him every couple of days just due to having to play the waiting game with him before.  I worked the Monday before the Gathering, and since it was only 3 hours away, we decided that we would leave bright and early Tuesday morning.  He said he’d be there by 7 PM Monday night, and I told him “So that means 11 PM, right?”  He said “Fuck you, I’ll see you later”, and that was that.  Guess what time he finally showed?  A few minutes after 11, of course.

My wife (Amanda, aka Manderz) and I had already loaded up my truck and dropped our kiddo off at our friend’s house.  The dogs were at another friend’s house (Thanks James and Nikki!) for the week so they wouldn’t have to be boarded, so we were all set!  We got Brice’s stuff loaded into the truck and decided to wake up a little before 6 AM on Tuesday morning to get on the road!

Day 0: Tuesday, July 25th

We did get up out of bed at about 6, loaded everything into the truck that wasn’t already packed (some refrigerated items, bedding, etc), and got on the road a little before 7!  This was WAY better than the year prior, but we had to be on point since we were leaving the day that Ballas were being let in!

The drive was pretty uneventful.  Not much could happen on the 3 hour trek.  So after listening to Howard Stern on the radio for a few hours, we were already at our pickup spot for the trailer!

Getting the trailer was as smooth as could be!   I know that RVShare is just a bunch of individuals renting out their stuff, but we found a good dude named Clint who couldn’t have been more helpful!   I never told him where we were going, and only that we were staying local.  I think I may have even mentioned that we’d be at Lost Lakes for the week, but that didn’t seem to ring a bell for him, or maybe he just didn’t care.  He helped me hook up to the truck, showed us around, and then we were on our way!

Trailer attached!

Our next stop was to meet up with our homie PsykoScott at the Walmart a few minutes from the Gathering.  Last year, we went fuckin’ NUTS on buying food and all kinds of other shit that we didn’t end up needing.  This year, we brought some stuff from home, and still ended up dropping about $100 in groceries.  Not too bad, I suppose.  On the way out of Wally world, we saw our first Juggalos….and it just happened to be our homies from the Scrub Care Unit! We chopped it up for a few minutes, found out that Walmart’s freezer for the bags of ice was broken, and then we were off to search for a gas station for some ice.  We also needed to find a place with water for the RV tank.

So we left the Walmart parking lot, found a gas station, and went in to grab some ice for our coolers.  PsykoScott and I pulled the trailer up to the water fill station so we could get what we needed for the week.  Unfortunately, this water pump didn’t have a hose, or a threaded end so we could attach one.  So, we improvised.  PsykoScott and I alternated between holding the hose in the trailer, and holding the other hose end up to the pump.  In order to make a good seal, you had to hold the hose end up to the pump tightly, and cork a second hole with your thumb.  Needless to say, we both ended up soaked!

This may have been my least favorite part of the Gathering.

It probably took a good half hour to fill up the tank.  After that though, we were heading HOME!

We got back on the road, a mere 10 minutes from the Gathering grounds!  It was only about noon, so we still had plenty of time to get there. We were within 2 miles of Lost Lakes when we came to a train track with what seemed to be the world’s longest train.  After about 10 minutes of waiting, it came to a stop.  We waited another 5 minutes or so, and then the fucking thing started going BACKWARDS!  We figured out that we were near a station where they swapped cars out.  Just a minor setback though. We waited it out and eventually got past it.

And finally…a little before 1 PM on Tuesday, we got there…well to the parking lot across the street at least.

It didn’t look all too crowded yet, but it was 100 degrees out, and I’m sure ninjas were looking to spend the most amount of time possible in their air conditioned homes and hotel rooms.  Security led the way to the Ballas spots, and PsykoScott followed close behind in his truck.  After a little confusion with the security guards, we settled in where would chill for the next few hours.

Parked in the Parking lot…waiting.

While we were there, we met up with a TON of Juggalos including ZZ, Throwdoff, Scruffy, Krunkazphuk, Psyral, FLH’s own NikkiWickked, and a ton of others!  Of course my Philly Scrubs were already there wreaking havoc too!  While talking to our Faygoluvers Forum crew, we decided to just wait to exchange the cash for the yearly forum shirts that we had made.  They were SUPER dope if you didn’t see ’em!

FLH Forum Shirt designed by BizShaw.com!

We walked around the parking lot saying what’s up to everyone we saw.  I touched base with Natalie (the ring girl) who was working the ticket booth all by herself.  She had a lot going on and the ticket line crawled along, but she was a fuckin’ trooper! I eventually made my way to the front of the line where I picked up the Faygoluvers press passes and signed the waivers and everything.  We chatted briefly and then she told me that her hubby Donny was over at another tent taking care of handing out booklets, bracelets, and Gathering charms.  We said our goodbyes and I made my way over there.  Donny showed me all of the colors of charms that were available and we talked for a bit.  I had my eyes on one of those light blue crew shirts though…

After making the rounds and talking to a few ninjas, we found a big ass tree to chill under for a while.  Like I said, it was 100 degrees out, but being under that tree’s shade made it bearable at 15-20 degrees cooler.

Just so I don’t bore you with too many details (this review is gonna be long enough as it is!), I’ll just tell you that up until they let the Ballas into the gates across the street, we just kicked it and caught up with people we hadn’t seen all year.  There were already rumblings of cops fucking with Juggalos for jay walking and making them take the LONG way around to get into the lot.  They were just being unreasonably difficult. But there will be more on that later in the review!

It got to be past 5 PM, and waves of rumors started floating throughout the parking lot that they were about to open up for Ballas.  Of course Jugga-Rumors at the Gathering are always crazy about when the gates would open.  This year it wasn’t so rampant, but I did hear a few about general admission being let in a little after Ballas.  I’m pretty sure that never happened.  Just so I remember to mention it, Ballas had a shiny silver wristband letting security know that we were allowed in a day before everyone else.

I swear that it was 6 PM on the dot, the time that they had said Ballas would get in, when the line started moving.  I knew I had a bit of a task in front of me because I wasn’t facing the same way as the other Ballas, so I had to whip around and do a U-turn outside of the Ballas area and then try to squeeze back in.  I did that, and Scott and ZZ followed behind me.  I have a pretty big truck and was hauling a 30 foot trailer behind me…so I was all of 45+ feet long. It’s not like you can just cut someone off with that big bitch in tow.  So while the other Ballas were making their way in via single-file line, I was off to the side with a security guard in front of me kind of questioning what the fuck I was trying to do.  Some of these guys already had a chip on their shoulders.  I told them that I was in Ballas and had been there for several hours and was trying to get in. One guard snapped back saying that people had been there for days.  Of course that’s true, but again, I was just following their procedure.  I saw a break in the line so I tried to inch forward to squeeze in. Another guard was right in front of the truck with his hand up, but not paying attention.  I crept up a little more and nudged him a little.  lol.  He was like “Woah woah woah!”  I pointed at the gap in the line, and after a little bit of jawing back and forth, he let me squeeze in.  PsykoScott and ZZ followed suit, and we were good to go!

I’ve said it in reviews before…you’ve gotta be aggressive to get through the parking lot at the Gathering.  I hate it, but everyone’s anxious to get inside and get a prime spot.  That part was at least past us though, and we made our way onto the main road and into the official grounds of the 18th Annual Gathering of the Juggalos!

It was around this point that I noticed that a pretty big crack had surfaced on my windshield.  It looks like it hit the edge of it at some point along the drive (I do remember a loud smack on it but didn’t see any damage at the time), and it was already spreading.

The windshield after getting back home

The heat wasn’t helping any, and it was definitely beyond repair.  So that cost me $209 when I got back home.  Good times!

We drove through the grounds and noticed Ballas spots with generators already hooked up next to one of the “lakes”.  We went through, past the big water slides, and found an opening on top of a hill overlooking the water.  It was definitely a prime location, and we were pretty happy with it.  Electricity wasn’t ran yet, and we hoped it wouldn’t be a repeat of last year.  If you don’t remember, we got in early as usual, parked, set up shop, and waited on this poor old dude who seemed to be the only one working until we were finally hooked up at 3 AM. That was last year though, so our hopes were high.

In the meantime, we had a lot to setup at our camp.  We had to get the trailer slide-out leveled along with the rest of the trailer, the awning set up, food put into the fridge (which was powered by propane until our generator was hooked up), clothes and equipment unpacked, and everything else that comes with setting up a site! We still had to put all of the banners and stuff out, but wouldn’t end up getting around to most of that until the next morning.

The generator guys were in the park, but it didn’t look like we were going to get any attention at our site for a while.  So now, it was time to take the FLH Golf Cart out for a spin!

Yes, it was finally unveiled to me in all of its black, red, and gold glory!  There was a plethora of plain white carts roaming the grounds, and then there was THIS one that was craftily put together by PsykoScott!  He drove it off the truck and we were off!

We took a drive around the entire park trying to get our bearings.  Nothing was close to anything.  I know people on day 3 and 4 that still didn’t know where the fuck the Red Moon stage was.  The map that came on the Gathering program was basically useless as things had moved around since it was printed.  Even so, we more or less figured it out.  If I haven’t mentioned it yet, it was DUSTY!  If you watched the video, you saw that they had water trucks spraying the ground in an attempt to settle all of the dust, but it was all for nothing.  5 minutes later, dust bowl again.

At one point on our drive, we were stopped by security and asked if we had approval to have the golf cart on the grounds.  I said “Yeah man, you can call Rob about it if you need to”…totally lying out my ass.  He said “OK, just tell people who aren’t approved that we are kicking them out of here if we see them driving around.  I agreed and was on my way. Shortly after, I sent Rob a text giving him a head’s up in case an angry security guy asked about us.  It’s probably best that it happened that day, because from that point on, we were never bothered about it again.

PsykoScott decided he wanted to grab a bite to eat from one of the vendors there. He got a meat plate with 2 sides that looked like warmed over ass, and it was $16.00.  Needless to say, besides the $8.00 bags of ice, that would be the last food purchase from the official vendors that weekend.  I stuck to a couple of sandwiches and Quest bars.  I mean we didn’t buy all that food from Walmart for nothing, right?

As the sun finally went away on Tuesday night, the weather got a little bit more bearable.  It was still way too hot to be in the trailer with no AC, that’s for sure.  Speaking of which, it was time to find out exactly what the fuck was going on with the generator hookup.  Everyone in our area was getting a little restless about it, while almost all of the surrounding areas had been powered up for hours.  I went up to ask one of the guys working on it if they knew how long it would be.  He just said they were working on it and it’d still be a while.  I also overheard one of them say that only 75 boxes were ordered, and they didn’t have any others to put out.  Basically, if you didn’t get a box, you were shit outta luck.  At that point, I stayed around, hovering like a fucking drone.  PsykoScott was on the case too.  At one point, they said that we may have to turn our trailer around to get hooked up because the cables weren’t long enough. I thought PsykoScott was about to show why his name is PsykoScott. lol. But luckily things got worked out, and we got a box.

Since there was a shortage of boxes, and ninjas who paid for Ballas spots weren’t hooked up yet, we just let everyone that didn’t need a trailer hookup leech off of our box.  It’s not like we needed the additional outlets as long as it powered our AC and electronics inside.  Oh yeah, did I mention that it was about 2 AM when we finally got it all hooked up?

During all the downtime, we got camp pretty much setup, I put up a shower tent and solar water bag (which I’m so thankful that I bought last minute), and we just were playing the waiting game.

Now, the AC was blowing, fridge was cooling off, and we could finally think about getting some sleep to prepare for the actual FIRST DAY of the 18th Annual Gathering of the Juggalos!  It was supposed to be me, Amanda, PsykoScott, Brice, and Rachel Paul in the trailer with us.  Rachel was so busy doing official work for the Gathering though that she never made it over.  I think we may have seen each other for a split second that day.  But we still had FOUR days to Gather!  We all crashed at around 3:30 AM.

Day 1: Wednesday, July 26th

Everyone was up and moving at about 9 AM.  Nothing officially started until Psychopathic Radio at noon, and the first must-see on my schedule was Skitzo at the Red Moon Stage at 2 PM.  So we definitely had some time to kill.

We started out with some sausage, egg, and cheese taquitos.  Fucking delicious!  Oh, and did I mention that the AC was working?  Blowing icicles in that bitch!  Since it was super hot the day before, and we were lazy, we didn’t finish setting up the camp and signage on Tuesday. So that was priority #1 on Wednesday morning.

I still had some little cardboard Faygomen (Thanks Trish!) that I put on stakes outside so everyone doing the Scavenger Hunt would have an easier time finding us.  I thought the stakes would be a good idea, but when I tried to hammer them into the ground, it was so hard and dry that I split the stakes hammering on them!  God dammit Oklahoma!  So I just ended up zip-tying them onto the leg of our pop-up.  I also had our old school banner that I first had printed in 2007 hung up, along with 2 all new designs that McNastee put together!  One I’m sure I’ll be using for years to come, and the other was a Shangri-La themed one!

Camp Faygoluvers

After setting up a few more things at the camp site, we decided to go peep the merch this year.  There were two spots that I really wanted to see: Psychopathic’s merch, and the Tom Wood Traveling Art Emporium!  First stop: The Psychopathic merch booth!  We already knew that the Into The Echoside expansion didn’t get finished in time.  But we didn’t find out that the Juggalos Against Sanity expansion pack not being ready until we asked the merch booth employees.  That sucks, but I guess we’ve got some stocking stuffers to look forward to for Xmas!  Overall, the Psychopathic merch was pretty dope! There were four or five new Gathering T-shirt designs, a bunch of Lyte items, including a dope ass jersey, and other miscellaneous new or recent designs available for purchase!  You can see those here:

Next stop: Native World!  They had a separate merch booth there with some pretty fresh gear too!  My wife had her eye on this workout outfit, but they unfortunately couldn’t find her size.  Still, take a look at what they had to offer:

Props to them for digging through all of their crates only to come up empty.  It was a valiant effort!

Now to my next pit stop: Tom Wood’s Art Emporium!  I was so excited to see what he brought this year! I’m sure you already know by now, but Tom is an incredibly talented artist!  The depth of his art is ridiculous, and you can see why Psychopathic tapped him to give his spin on the Joker’s cards, among other things!  PsykoScott and I both had planned on picking something up, and I ended up with a Ringmaster stretch canvas while PsykoScott got a print of the Joker’s cards meeting.  (You can see it in the pictures below.)

Guess who was there to show us around and take payment?  Why Tom Wood of course! He was sweating his ass off (as we all were) and said that they hadn’t received their power hookups either.  At least I knew that we weren’t the only ones at the time!  We talked for a minute while trying to decide which piece of art we’d be taking home.  I’ve gotta give it up to Tom.  He has been involved in the Juggalo scene for a minute now, but really dove in just a couple of years ago.  He has embraced us like a family, and could NOT be a nicer guy!  If you’ve never had a chance to meet him, seek him out at the next Gathering or DCG Con!  Much love to you Tom!

Our last stop in the area was at the Morton’s List booth!  While I haven’t personally played ML for years, I absolutely love how dedicated and seriously it’s taken by these ninjas!  They had some dope looking backpacks among other things.  There was a black backpack with gold design sporting a ouija board that I REALLY liked, but I was planning on buying it for my son and he’s starting Kindergarten.  I didn’t think that’d be a good look. So I decided on the silver design with the DCG logo.

On our way back, we stopped by the Info Tent where the homie and FLH photographer Rachelette was holding down the fort.   She had a lot of goodies to show us including ALL of the contest prizes, auction items, and other miscellaneous items.  Check out some of those below:

By FAR one of the dopest auction items I got to thumb through was the Psychopathic photo album!  If I had the extra funds, I would have picked it up myself.  There were probably 50-100 pictures that were either rare, or never seen before that had been compiled in a photo album emblazoned with a Hatchetman.  I didn’t take any pics of that to preserve its sanctity, but trust me when I say it was the shit!

We still hadn’t quite figured out where everything at the Gathering grounds were, so we spent a lot of time that morning and early afternoon getting acquainted with the stages. There were 4 Stages this year: Diamond Stage (main), Red Moon Stage (second), The Madhouse (third), and Chaos Stage (mostly for Psychopathic Radio and other various events).  Ninjas had a hard time finding the Red Moon stage, so we made sure we knew the best routes to get there and back.  Let me reiterate this: If we didn’t have a golf cart this year, we would have been running EVERYWHERE to cover all of the scheduled events!  I know a lot of ninjas mentioned how far shows were from one to the next, and I’m not sure how often or close the Trippin’ Trolley got to the stages in the middle of nowhere.  Still, the deeper we got into the Gathering, the more those stages filled up with Juggalos spectatin’.  Props to those I saw running everywhere trying not to miss shows!

Our first scheduled event of the day was Skitzo at 2 PM.  Now he was the first act to EVER play the Red Moon stage, and being the middle of the afternoon in Oklahoma City in late July…that shit was HOT!  Was there much of a crowd at this point?  No, not really.  But again, ninjas didn’t really know where anything was, and the general admission Juggalos were still rolling in and getting their shit set up.  That didn’t matter because Skitzo tore shit DOWN to officially start the music performances at the Gathering!  We caught a few minutes of his set via our live stream:

My wifey (Manderz Photography) caught some great pics of him too:

If you aren’t up on Skitzo’s latest, you can find his latest album and everything else you need to know at SkitzoOnline.com!

We stayed for Skitzo’s entire set, and I was already a fan of the Murder Musick roster, so we stayed there and caught some of their set too!  The crowd was still light there, but every one of the MM crew held it down like they were playing in front of thousands!  I know the guy with a plunger over his nipple was exceedingly happy to see them (see video)! Check out some of our live feed:

Although Playboy The Beast is the CEO and biggest name on the Murder Musick roster, he wasn’t able to make it yet again this year.  One of these Gatherings I’m gonna be able to see that motherfucker perform! Until then though, I’ll just keep putting in the good word for him.

I think we were all sweating balls at this point in the day, so we went back to kick it at camp for a few.  I didn’t want to miss the homie Bukshot who was up next, so we split about halfway through the Murder Musick showcase.  Guess what we fucked around and did?  Missed Buk’s set.  I don’t remember exactly what happened, but we didn’t make it over until Buk had completely left the Red Moon stage.  My bad homie.  Check out his new long-awaited album Weirdo though as soon as you get a chance!

The entire Native World roster was next on the schedule, and headlining the Red Moon stage that afternoon!  Our homie Brice headed up the live stream and caught the FULL HOUR of their performance!  They had everyone there including Freddy Grimes, Flagrant, Mad V, Mr. Y.U.G., Jay Villain, Worm, …pretty much everybody but Killa himself.  It was a good little showcase that I wish more people saw LIVE, but at least we were able to stream it for the ninjas at home!  You can see it here:

And here are a few (but not even close to all) of the pics courtesy of Manderz Photography:

Our homies Jimmy and his girl Nicole had flagged us down while we were riding back to camp.  I’ve been talking to Jimmy for a minute via FB and we’ve met a time or two, but we share 2 huge interests: Juggalos and Howard Stern. Now I haven’t missed a minute of Howard since he came to Sirius in 2006.  Sometimes I’m a few hours, or even a day or so behind, but I always catch up (which is easy considering his 3 day work week).  Jimmy and I talk pretty frequently about Howard on Facebook, but it’s always nice to be able to chill in person.  I am constantly on the move at the Gathering, but before I had to jet, he said he had something he wanted me to have.  He found a 14 DVD Set of Howard’s old Channel 9 Show on eBay that he gifted to me!  Just to briefly explain, Stern had an old cable access show that used to air in New York that was a bit of a variety show.  The quality is horrible, but I can’t wait to find the time to sit down and watch it all!  Much props to you for that one Jimmy!

I know that we met up with our homies Doenut (who has been doing most of our video editing for the past couple of years), my long-time homie McNastee, and another blast from the Juggalo past: Big Slack!  McNastee is originally from Oklahoma, and Slack still lives here.  I put them on my yearly list of suggestions of artists who should play that I sent to Jumpsteady, and luckily they were given the opportunity to!  We chopped it up, and then had to cut things short because the main stage was about to start.

Scottie D, Amanda, Chad Carsten, and Mankini (Notice the DVD set in my hands?)

It was now time to head to the Diamond Stage!  Tonight’s main stage performances would start with those crazy, hilarious, hard-rockin’ motherfuckers PsychoStick!  This would mark their 2nd appearance at the Gathering of the Juggalos…the first one being back in 2010 at Cave-In-Rock if my memory (and Wikipedia) serve correctly.  This ALSO marks their FIRST Main stage performance, so they had to be running on all cylinders!

When we got to the Diamond Stage, we noticed a pretty long line that was formed where you would go backstage.  That’s when I remembered that the All Star Experience was scheduled at that time (about 6 PM).  I ran into Jimmy and Nicole who were waiting in line waiting for some kind of update.  He asked if I had heard about the All Stars being postponed until the following day.  I told them I’d try to do my best to find out what was going on since it already seemed to be running behind.  I reached out to Natalie “The Ring Girl” to see if she knew anything about it.  She said that it was postponed until tomorrow (Thursday July 27th) at the same time.  So I started to spread the word along the line.  Ninjas were questioning me like “are you sure?!”, but I assured them that it was the case.  Small bone, but it would all be worth it 24 hours from then!

So how did Psychostick do officially opening up the main stage at GOTJ18?  Fucking OUTSTANDING!  These guys are true showmen, had a ton of crowd participation, and their music not only rocks, but is hysterical!  Their cover of “Bodies” by Drowning Pool called “I Can Only Count to 4” had me laughing my ass off while they performed!

“I Can Only Count To 4!”

Then they did a track called “Sombrero Prophecy”.  Now THAT was entertaining!  They throw a sombrero made of straw out into the audience and have them battle to see who can get their hands on the biggest chunk of it.  It was completely ridiculous, and unexpectedly gratifying!  You can see our live stream of part of their set here:

I guess we didn’t catch any of the “Sombrero Prophecy” in this clip, but trust me, it is worth going to one of their shows if ONLY to see that!

Next on the schedule was Canada’s own Madchild!  We knew that he was on the Gathering grounds, but didn’t know of the piece of staleness that we were about to receive.  The homie Kevin Gill, who is a HUGE fan of Madchild, came onto the Diamond stage and announced that while Madchild was here, he was too sick to perform tonight.  While that sucked, at least he didn’t no-show completely.  KG stated that Madchild would perform the following night, so all hope wasn’t lost!

After a little bit of downtime, it was time for Big Hoodoo to make his presence felt at the Gathering!  I had been talking to our homie Trish in weeks prior, and some of you who were at DCG Con may already know that a lot of the signs, stand-ups, and even the badges were printed by her!  Well I guess word got around to Big Hoodoo about that and he asked her to make ALL of his stage props!  We’re talking about a HUGE Hatchetman, the cartoon Hoodoo face, and the original Big Hoodoo logo sprawled across the entirety of the Diamond stage!  The shit looked DOPE!

Photo by: Blade’s Dark

For his performance, Big Hoodoo brought something fresh and new to his performance with a Live Guitarist!  Hoodoo has never had an issue captivating his audience, but this added a whole other element to his show that I really dug!  Hopefully he keeps that talented ninja as a part of his act!  Check out the 10+ minutes of footage from his set here:

After Hoodoo’s set, it was closing in on 9 PM, so the sun was setting for the day.  What a PERFECT time to bring MushroomHead to the stage in all of their crazy mask, water drum, blacklight glory!  Mushroomhead are Gathering vets to the fullest, hitting at least 5 Gatherings including their first appearance in Cave-In-Rock in 2007!  They have toured with ICP, have love for Juggalos, and Juggalos certainly seem to love them!

KG came out to give them a super hype intro, calling them one of the most imitated but never duplicated acts ever, and then all 6 or 7 members hit the stage! You can’t help but be mesmerized by their water drum and light show combo!  I know the water drums are just for show…if you’re close enough, say in the photo pit, you can hear the thuds as they hit them but they are obviously not mic’d and don’t make a pleasant sound. lol.  But don’t let me spoil that for you…just check them out live, get your mosh pit on, and rock the fuck out!

Also, their show was so hype that I went live again while one of them dove into the crowd:

Juggalos, including myself, were eating that shit up!  Mushroomhead tore up the stage for close to an hour! I would love to see them be a yearly staple at the Gathering!

Next up, and headlining the Diamond stage for Wednesday night was everyone’s favorite Native Warrior: Anybody Killa!  Before Killa hit the stage, our homie Ronnie Blaze reached out to me to ask if we’d be able to help him with a cart ride so he could get his equipment over to the Chaos Stage for both Sup3rsayin and Ronnie Blaze‘s sets.  I would get the first few minutes (usually 3 songs) of ABK‘s set, and then hurry my ass over close to where the main gate was to help him out.  Again, EVERYTHING was a trek at the Gathering grounds this year, so had we not been able to help him out, he would have had to lug a laptop, turntables, and more around for like a mile. Can’t leave a homie hangin’ like that!

Killa was introduced by the one and only Kevin Gill who hyped the wrestling that would be taking place right after the Diamond Stage closed out for the night, and then ABK’s intro started playing.  We got his standard 2 minute intro before he hit the stage for the track “Close Call” off of The Hatchet Warrior!   Then he went on to play “Kill Me” directly followed by “Ghetto Neighbor” which REALLY got Juggalos hype!

And here’s another few clips that I had on my phone that are quite a bit cleaner than the live stream:

It was about this point that I had to duck out and go meet up with Ronnie Blaze and his girl Tiffany.  Amanda and PsykoScott stayed back to stream and snap photos.  I let Ronnie know that I was on the way and had a little FB interaction I thought was pretty funny:

That may not be funny for anyone else, but a golf cart with a disco ball is hilarious to me. lol.  Anyways, I scooped them up, strategically got his gear put on the cart, and we were off to the Chaos stage! I dropped them off, told them I’d be back a little after 11 for Sup3rsayin’s set, and then went back to Diamond to scoop up PsykoScott and Amanda.

By the time I got back over to the Diamond stage, I had unfortunately missed a majority of the rest of Killa’s set.  I know we’ve got some good pics of it though!

Now, it was time for the late night festivities starting with Sup3rsayin!  This kid is a homie of mine from the D/FW area, and was extremely excited to bring his Texas brand of hip hop to the Gathering!  Ronnie Blaze would be his DJ, and a bunch of his family was actually in attendance for his set!  Sup3rsayin’ started out with a “Fuck Donald Trump” chant, which was pretty brave considering where the Gathering was.  Brice got some live streaming action going, but it sounds like the bass was too much for his phone.  Even so, you can check that out here:

The ninjas there seemed to dig his set, so I’d say it was a pretty successful Gathering debut for him!

At night, the Gathering schedule is all over the place.  So I had to either pick one event over the other, or catch partial sets of everything.  I chose the latter, and it seemed to work out well!

The next show on my agenda was from an underground veteran who was actually signed to Psychopathic Records back in the early 2000s!  I’m talking about the one and only V-Sinizter!  Several months ago, Jumpteady reached out to me to see if I had his contact info.  I found V-Sin on FB and linked them up, so I’d like to think I played a small part in bringing him back to the Gathering after all these years.

There may not have been much of an audience there, but V-Sinizter really showcased his talents for those who did witness his set!  He has always been super humble, almost to a fault.  But if he’s reading this review, just know that you killed it homie!  Take a look at some of his performance here:

I know that PsykoScott wanted to make sure to be back in the area for Marc Rubben at the seminar tent.  I wanted to catch Headshot Louie‘s set at the Chaos stage which was surprisingly close to the seminar tent, so this worked out well.  If you’re not up on Headshot Louie or his crew, get schooled at BFMSTL.com!  He brings a devastating live show with face paint fully responsive to black light that adds a whole other dope element.  He’s performed at the DCG Con after party this year and has been tapped to be at several Juggalo events recently.  Check him out and see what you think here:

We met up with PsykoScott at the Seminar tent for Marc Rubben.  Marc is a ventriloquist comedian, and say what you will of prop comics, but I usually dig them.  This guy though…not so much.  I thought he was boring and kind of all over the place, and even caught up with Upchuck side stage and told him the same.  So after a few minutes of his set, we went to the trailer to kick it for a bit. I’m sure there was some food consumed at that point, because I don’t remember eating much before then.  After that though, it was on to see my homie Ronnie Blaze back at the Chaos stage, which was luckily a quick walk from our camp site.

Earlier in the day, Chad Carsten hit me up asking if I would be available to be the cameraman for an interview with September Mourning.  My Gathering schedule is always getting places by the seat of my pants, so if ninjas want me somewhere at a certain point, they better keep bugging me about it. lol.  Anyways, not 5 minutes into Ronnie Blaze’s performance I got a text from Chad asking if I was about ready for the interview. I was like “oh shit, gotta go”, and bounced.  We met up with Chad side stage, and I went back with him while Amanda got some shots of FLAW who was currently performing.

Chad and I waited outside of the dressing room trailer for a few minutes while September and the rest of the band got ready.  When their manager let us in, everyone was super nice and accommodating.  I got my camera settings straight and in position while September and Riven of September Mourning got situated with Chad between them, and the interview was conducted!

I have to give it up to Chad…this kid is an encyclopedia of music…everything from hip-hop, rock, to little niche markets of music like September Mourning…I swear he knows it all!  He’s completely well-researched, so while some of his interviews may seem like they’re off the top of his dome, it’s actually pretty calculated.

At the time that I’m typing this, the interview isn’t finished editing yet.  But for now, you can see Chad, Riven, and September in all of her gothic hotness here:

Riven, Chad T. Carsten, and September

After the 10 minute or so interview which they praised Chad for, it was off to get ready to watch them perform. September Mourning’s performance reminded me a lot of last year’s Wizard of the Hood set.  Not the same music by any means, but the show told a complete story, and they actually make comic books to accompany their albums!  A big screen is setup onstage showing comic book-esque videos to help follow the travels of September. Take a look at some of their set here:

While I wasn’t a huge fan of the music, their set was pretty entertaining, and September sang and headbanged with the best of them!

Next up on the late-night bill was something that I’ve been waiting a whole year for: The return of Green Jelly to the Gathering of the Juggalos!  I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I was when they announced the Green Jelly would be making their return!  If you didn’t read last year’s review, then let me briefly tell you that next to Wizard of the Hood, that was probably my favorite set of the weekend!  I was also heavily engulfed in the madness.  If this year’s performance brought even HALF of the energy that last year’s did, it would be a night to remember!  Green Jelly even claims that last year’s Gathering performance was the BEST show that they’ve EVER had!

Before September Mourning left the stage, I remembered that I needed to go back and get my Faygo bottle head courtesy of my Scrub homie Eugene from last year.  I don’t know how many of you follow Green Jelly frontman William Manspeaker on Facebook, but this guy’s life always seems to be in the middle of something chaotic.  He told his followers that he was basically flying in from Hollywood, California, getting a ride to the Gathering from the airport, doing his set, getting a ride BACK to the airport, and then flying back to Hollywood to be home with his family.  He’d be gone for FAR less than a day.

Something else going on with the Green Jelly set is that the person who had all of the puppet heads, who lives in Oregon, was NOT going to be able to make it to the show.  We’re talking DOZENS of duct tape puppet heads, all chillin’ in a garage, unable to make the trip.  Fuck.  I asked Eugene if he thought I should bring my Faygo bottle head out of retirement from last year.  It got pretty beaten up in the pit, but was still in OK shape. He told me that it may not be a bad idea, so I had packed it along with the rest of the Gathering supplies.   Anyways, fast forward to a few minutes before the show, and I had my bottlehead in hand, and was ready to be a part of the insanity that is a Green Jelly show.

By the time I made it back to the Red Moon stage, there was a group of people with puppet heads congregating on the side of the stage.  I figured that’s where I needed to be, so I went over there to see what the plan was.  We were instructed to wait until Bill went onstage for a few minutes, got ninjas hype, and then we were to be called on stage to start acting a fool.  Luckily, probably 20+ puppetheads were there. I’m not sure if they were made on that same day, or how so many were available, but I was happy to see it!  That’s kind of the focal point of the entire show, you know?

Anyways, that was exactly how it happened.  Bill came out, started the show, called the punk rock puppets to the stage, and then started into their ONLY hit song: “Three Little Pigs”!  The few minutes of footage that we caught on video doesn’t even come close to how the night played out!  It cuts off right before we all get off of the stage and start a circle pit.  Still, you can see how the show started out here:

After everyone was off the stage and onto the ground, that’s when the real fun started!  The punk rock puppets listened to Manspeaker’s every command, starting pits, laying on the ground simulating a nap, getting back up, hoisting him onto our shoulders, whatever he asked!

At some point during the insanity of the Green Jelly mosh pit, a kid actually hurt his leg. I’m not sure if it was a twisted ankle, or an actual broken bone, but it looked pretty bad.  A crowd formed around him to protect him from moshers, but the show went on!  A medical cart was on the scene within minutes, so don’t worry, he was taken care of.  And ninja, if you’re reading this, I hope you’re back to 100%!

Overall, Green Jelly’s show was a lot of fun, but not nearly as good as last year in my opinion.  Maybe it was the fact that last year was under a tent and a LOT more packed.  Maybe it was because it seemed like there were 100 punk rock puppets there, and the energy and excitement of not knowing what we were about to see overtook us.  Whatever it was, this year was still awesome, and I’d love to have them back again…hopefully a little more prepared.  Props to Notslim1, Mankini, Justin G, and of course Eugene who saw rockin’ out under masks with me!

After running around and moshing in a foam and duct tape puppet head for nearly an hour, I was a sweaty fuckin’ mess. But Shaggy 2 Dope was due up on stage at around 3:30 AM, and you know god damn good and well that I wasn’t going to miss that!

It didn’t take long for the stage to get set for 2 Dope’s first performance since releasing F.T.F.O.M.F.  DJ Clay manned the wheels of steel, and after a brief intro, went right into my 5 year old son’s favorite track: “Tell These Bitches”!  Shaggy was sportin’ a shirt with 2 middle fingers that looked to be bedazzled.  lol.  Shit looked fresh though, and I’m pretty sure his wifey either made that herself or had it made because she was wearing a similar one backstage the following night.  I’m not 100% sure if this was his first time to perform this song, but Shaggy schooled it!  It goes without saying, but Shaggy is a true professional when it comes to commanding the stage.  He was all over the stage rapping songs old and new, including “They Shootin'”, “Fuck The Fuck Off”, “Fuck Off”, “Get Off Me Dog”, and more!  We stayed steady streaming for about 15 minutes before kicking back and enjoying the rest of the performance.  We’ve gotta give you ninjas a reason to actually COME TO THE GATHERING versus staying home and watching shows from the comfort of your own home.  Fuck that shit…#AlwaysGather!

Here’s the footage we caught:

It was like 4:30 in the morning by the time Shaggy had finished up his set!  This was definitely one of the highlights of my Gathering this year, and it was only Wednesday night (well, technically Thursday morning). I know that Shaggy usually makes unscheduled appearances at parties at the Gathering which is why I usually miss him.  I live and die by the timeline at the Gathering, so hopefully he’s an official part of it in the future!

We all headed back to camp to hopefully catch a little bit of sleep.  Before that though, it was time to put our shower tent to the test!  Amanda and I got our sleep clothes ready, set up a chair outside of the tent to throw our clothes onto, and got our toiletries ready.  Overall, I’d say that it worked pretty well!  There wasn’t much pressure from the water bag, and it wasn’t all that warm, but it was super refreshing, and far better than going to sleep with nut butter.

After cleaning up, we set all of our equipment up to charge, and called it a night!

Day 2: Thursday, July 27th

We got out of bed at around 10 AM feeling pretty fuckin’ refreshed!  5 hours of sleep at the Gathering is like an eternity!  I didn’t plan on being anywhere until around 2 PM again to see the Psychopathic Auctions, so we had some time.

Since Rachel Paul still no-showed at our camper to sleep, Chad crashed in there with us, soaking up the AC while he could. I can’t say I blame him!

Since everyone was still asleep, I went ahead and started making some sausage gravy with biscuits.  You’ve all had that, right?  Nice flaky Grands biscuits split in half and slathered with white gravy with breakfast sausage in it?  *drools*  It took me 20-30 minutes to get things prepared, but it was worth it!  By the time I was done, almost everyone was up and moving, and got to partake in the deliciousness!

While I was cooking, PsykoScott ran off to get a few more $8.00 bags of ice to keep our drinks and some of the things that wouldn’t fit in the freezer cool.

I think that it was at about this point that we had our first set of Campsite Scavenger Hunt contestants stop by.  It may have been Wednesday, but for my sake, we’ll call it Thursday.  As I said before, we gave out little bags of candy with a clue for their next scavenger hunt stop, and a Faygoluvers sticker.  We were required to sign a piece of paper showing that they had visited our site.  It seemed to work out well, except for the fact that we were RARELY at our camper.  I know that several who had participated in the hunt never seemed to be able to track us down!  Next year, we’ll make sure to put things into place where even if we’re not there, you’ll be able to move on to the next site.  We’ve got nearly a year to figure it out!

One thing that I DIDN’T do a lot of at this year’s Gathering was spend time on my computer.  Over the past several Gatherings, when I wasn’t at a show or event, I was parked in front of my computer posting updates and things to the site and social media.  This year, while it was unfortunate that both Rosco and PunkRockJuggalo couldn’t make it to the Gathering, I at least knew they had my back while I was out covering events.  So much props to those guys for always holdin’ it down!

The Psychopathic Auctions were approaching, so we made our way to the seminar tent to see a bunch of ninjas throw around some major cash.  If you’ll remember, last year’s Mystery Box went for like $7-8,000 (I can’t remember specifically), and the ninja that won wasn’t all too happy about what was inside.  This year, the Gathering program didn’t even mention a Mystery Box, which is more times than not the highlight of the Psychopathic Auctions.

Still, there were some super dope items up for bid, and all of our big spenders including Todd (and the Juggalo Yacht Club) along with BJ and a few other familiar faces.  Some of the items up for bid were Into The Echoside promo cards, several banners including Bang! Pow! Boom!, uncut tickets to the 2016 Gathering of the Juggalos, a Dog Beats test press vinyl, jerseys, that super dope photo album that I mentioned earlier, original Shaggy 2 Dope artwork, and tons more!

I took live streams throughout the hour-long auction, but broke them up into some of the bigger ticket items.  You can see those here:

To the bidders: I just want to know what kind of drugs that you guys are selling and how do I get started? (Just kidding…not really)  Even with no mystery box, you can see from the vids above that the homies were STILL throwing their weight around.  Even though I haven’t and probably never will bid a dime, it’s always fun watching other ninjas flex on each other with their credit cards.

I know the auctions ran a little over the allotted hour, so we only had a little bit of time to go back to the trailer, get a bite to eat, and be back at the seminar tent for the Big Hoodoo Seminar!

Now I would be remiss in mentioning the Wet T-shirt Contest that happened at the Red Moon Stage.  I wasn’t personally there, but of course our homie Brice made it a point to go over to check it out.  He called it the “Not so wild Wet T-shirt contest” due to the nudity restrictions…Thanks Oklahoma!  The girls still got pretty wild up there though, and Mike Busey always makes a party fun!  So check those out here:

This year, Hoodoo had a LOT to say to those in attendance!  He spoke about the new element of a live guitarist at his show the night before, introduced the guitarist, Tristan, to everyone there, talked about the music he was supposed to put out every month in 2017, and answered a ton of questions from the audience.  (Much props to Blake aka Notslim1 for being there to record it!)

Here’s the full seminar:

Hoodoo started a little bit late, and went on for nearly a full hour.  So after that, we went back to camp to get ready for the night’s Diamond Stage festivities.  Tonight’s headlining show would be ICP performing The Wraith: Shangri-La in its entirety!  I was so hype for this show and actually wondered why it wasn’t the headlining performance on Saturday night instead.  But either way, I was gonna be there to see it!

*DOPE STORY ALERT* Around the time that main stage was supposed to start, I was asked by Dougie to do something completely fresh that would make a handful of Juggalos happy.  He asked for me to round up about 30 Juggalos to partake in the Faygo Armageddon at the end of the Shangri-La set during “Thy Unveiling”.  First off, I haven’t expressed how awesome that it was that we were going to experience not only ONE, but TWO Faygo Armageddons at this year’s Gathering!  I probably say this every year, but being on stage for it is one of my top highlights of the Gathering!  Whether it’s being invited to partake, or just climbing onto the stage OG style, you NEED to make it a point to get up there!

That being said, I had a mission to complete, and I don’t think that it would be hard finding Juggalos to participate.  Look, I’m gonna be honest with you and tell you that I was pretty selfish about this.  Though I asked a few random ninjas to be there, I mostly reached out to my homies that I knew would truly appreciate it.  I asked my whole camp, Doenut, McNastee, Beardo, some homies from the Dallas area, and a few others. I was asked to tell them to be on the side stage when the song “The Wraith” started, which is the next-to-last track of the album.  More on that when I get to it, ya impatient bastard.

First though, it was time for the Psychopathic All Star Experience!  Amanda and I had planned to go back there and cover the festivities (and get a few pictures of our own, of course) and maybe even get some of the included buffet. We weren’t really sure where the All Stars were supposed to enter.  There were lines at two separate entrances backstage.  We ended up just going through the one behind the stage, flashing our press passes on the way in. The VIP experience was already underway.  There were a good amount of Juggalos back there scattered about.  Some were in line for food, others were talking with their favorite Psychopathic and underground artists, and we hopped between conversations.

PsykoScott stayed out at the main stage and got live streams for most of the artists who were on stage during the All Star experience.  I think Brice may have started the live stream during Kissing Candice, because his phone kinda sucks and the audio on their stream is terrible.  Still though, if you want better, come Gather yourself and stop bitching!

I know that Amanda was back and forth between the All Stars and the photo pit to make sure she got plenty of shots of those giving their all on the main stage too!  Nothing but love from your Faygoluvin’ homies!

Now, here’s some of that Kissing Candice footage:

After Amanda got back from their set, we grabbed some of the food that was catered in.  There were burgers and hot dogs being grilled, and I got some chicken fingers myself.  For the record, they weren’t bad…kind of along the lines of school cafeteria or hospital food, but edible.  After stuffing down our food, we took the opportunity to get pics with just about EVERYBODY back there!  I mean we were already there, so why not document some of those memories while we were having conversations with them, right?  After all, we are Juggalos just like everyone else there…so we still get excited to see the artists that we’ve been listening to for years!

PsykoScott came back to the All Star experience to show the ninjas at home what they were missing.  We’ve got about 10 minutes of footage of him walking around shouting out Juggalos who were back there:

Here are a few of the pics we took:

I also got my annual pic with Upchuck!  Couldn’t let the Gathering go by without that happening!

My homie Upchuck!

While we were back there, Kegan Ault asked both Mankini and myself if we’d help him with something before he introduced the band DOPE.  All I knew was that it involved piñatas…sign me up!

I also wanted to give props to Shaggy’s wife Renee who hooked us up with some ice cold cooling towels to wear around our necks and keep us from spontaneously combusting.  They helped tremendously and we used them for the rest of the weekend!

Next up on the main stage was Kung Fu Vampire!  Again, I didn’t get to see any of the Diamond stage performances until DOPE, so I completely missed this set too.  I know that he voiced his concern with being on stage at the same time that the All Star experience was happening, but he still had a hell of a crowd and schooled it as always!  Check out the footage from PsykoScott here:

It wasn’t long after KFV was off the stage when Kegan went back up to introduce the next artist to perform: Cage! Amanda didn’t make it over to take photos of this one, but PsykoScott DID have a chance to get about 10 minutes of it on the live stream!  You can see that here:

Now I don’t know anything about Cage or his music, but I do know that he’s an underground legend.  I guess he didn’t impress PsykoScott though:

A little TMI? Probably. But it’s OK because everybody poops.

In the meantime, after getting the rest of our pics taken while the All Star Experience was wrapping up (and after pinching one off backstage), I went back to the side stage area to wait on my instructions from Kegan.  While waiting, I got to chop it up with my homie Coral (Team Shawarma!) for a bit.  Amanda and I both also talked to this super nice ninja named Kieb.  He’s very recognizable because he’s got tattooed eyeballs:

What up Kieb?!

It wasn’t long before I met up with Kegan and Mankini to go and help them introduce DOPE!  He handed piñatas to both me and Mankini, and basically said that we’d throw them into the crowd on his command.  When it was time for him to hit the stage, he went out, hyped the crowd up, and called us on stage.  I went with the go-to “Dick in a Box” joke and held the present-shaped piñata against my junk.  People were laughing and yelling, but probably just wanted what was in my piñata.

Photo Credit: Kevin Fosnot of DesertJuggalos.com

After pacing the stage a few times, Kegan told us to throw it into the sea of Juggalos below, and they were promptly ripped to shreds!  Then Dope came up and rocked the fuck out of the crowd!  Dope are Gathering veterans, and this would be the 3rd time in the Gathering’s 18 year existence that they would grace the stage.  They are pretty spread out though, first playing in 2003, and most recently in 2011.  So this would be the first time in 6 years for them to perform there!  You can see the footage of the introduction and the first few tracks of Dope here:

Before moving on to the headliner of the night, I just wanted to note that there was never a mention of Madchild performing that night to make up for his absence the night before.  I honestly didn’t think about it until after the fact, but it still sucks to not see him do his thing at the Gathering.

Holy shit…was it already almost time to see the Insane Clown Posse perform The Wraith: Shangri-La from front to back?  It looked to be that way!  Before DOPE was over though, we went back to the trailer to snag our Faygo shoes and get our Faygoluvers jerseys so they could be rechristened.

We all lined up by the photo pit to get ready to go in, and PsykoScott panned the crowd a few times to show the people watching from home that it was, indeed, a packed house!  That seemed to be the ongoing theme from people who weren’t even at the Gathering: “The Gathering looks Dead.”  Was it the most crowded Gathering I’ve ever seen?  No, not by a long shot.  But plenty of ninjas showed up and had a hell of a great time!  If you can afford to, you should always Gather!  Check out the crowd footage of Juggalos anxiously awaiting the Wicked Clowns:

I think I may have already mentioned this, but security this year was super lax for us photo pit ninjas!  For the most part, we left the photo pit after the first 3 songs were played. For ICP though, we decided to tempt fate and just kick it in there. They never once asked us to leave the area, so we got to stay front row the entire time snapping pics, streaming, and just enjoying the show!  While PsykoScott livestreamed, I caught just about all of the set on my cell phone.  Now of course I’m not gonna post an hour-long set.  You’ve gotta be there to see that!  But, you can see clips from most songs from the album along with a little bit of the Faygo Armageddon here:

(Footage is great, audio, not so much.)  As the song “The Wraith” started blasting over the monitors, I got ready to start letting ninjas through on the side of the stage. The security guard standing by the gate was completely accommodating and let me do my thing.  I’m pretty sure more than a handful of people who I didn’t pick out got through to participate, because some of my homies Matt and Moo were cut off from going up. The guard was like “That’s more than 30!”, and let a few more people (including McNastee) through.  So my apologies to Matt and Moo…I think she’s still miffed about it, but there unfortunately wasn’t anything I could do.

God damn…what a great way to end the night on the main stage!  I had such an amazing time up there, and those who I helped to be on stage with us couldn’t stop thanking me for reaching out to them!  Jimmy, Nicole, Slack, McNastee, Doenut, iLL, Beardo, and others were in a state of euphoria coming off of there!  Doenut and McNastee both told me that they fulfilled Juggalo dreams being up there alongside J and Shaggy.  I appreciate Dougie and Natalie reaching out and trusting me enough to make that happen too!

When the insanity of Faygo Armageddon ended, PsykoScott, Amanda, and I walked straight from the Diamond stage, across the bridge, and right into the lake…fully clothed, shoes and all. We were already all soaked in Faygo, so lake water wasn’t going to make it any worse. It was pretty refreshing, and we were pretty certain that we’d use that method for Saturday night’s show too.

Here we were on a Thursday, and it was already time for the late-night festivities.  The Gathering was already nearly halfway over!  It goes by SO FAST when you’re there!  We got dried off, changed, and headed over to Balla Beach for the next event on our schedule.

One of the most anticipated events of the evening…hell, I won’t short change it…of the whole Gathering was the Oklahoma Wine Mixer being put on by the Juggalo Yacht Club, of which I’m a member of. Prior to the Gathering, the JYC was going through some of the things that were needed for the party.  One of those things was a 6 foot x 6 foot banner donning the JYC logo.  I was like “I’ve got this!”, since I work for a printing company, and showed up with it in all of its blue and gold perfection.  I also needed a sailor’s hat of my own.  So my wife went onto the Oriental Trading Company website and got one of those for me, and 100 leis to give to the first 100 people who asked for them at the party.  She did my hat up with a gold 17 on the top of it, and a Faygoman in the front so I could represent 2 things that I was a part of.

Now I know a lot of ninjas aren’t in on the joke…thinking that Yacht Club members are saying they’re better than other Juggalos or some bullshit like that.  Trust me…that is NOT the case.  Again, it’s a joke, and if you’ve gotta ask, it probably already went over your head.

Either way, there was a little bit of shit talking about the party, and how lame it sounded or whatever.  I guarantee that if you hit the Yacht Club party, you left there smiling!  There was something for EVERYBODY there!  We had a Faygo 2 Liter Chugging Contest, Limbo Contest, a dance-off/bikini contest, and of course free booze!  Heather Marrs and Z also manned the grills of steel with burgers and hot dogs!

Yacht Club!

Limbo Cheater: Rachel Paul

A couple of highlights were the Limbo contest, where Rachel Paul came out of the woodwork and was able to walk under the bar the first few times without so much as ducking.  Every time it was her turn, we all booed at her genetic advantage.  (If you haven’t ever seen Rachel, she’s like 4 feet tall. lol)

Then, there was the bikini contest.  Lyte and Sewerside were hosts and I joined them as a judge.  They wanted me to speak during it but I got a little stage fright.  So Mankini filled in for me.  It was around that time that a paintless Joe Bruce came over to see what the fuss was about.

Joe Bruce at the Oklahoma Wine Mixer!

I’m telling you…Balla Beach was POPPIN’ that night!  Music was bumping, ninjas were dancing, drinking, smoking, and having a hell of a good time!  I took a little bit of footage while I was there that you can see here:

Brice also made it to the Oklahoma Wine Mixer and live streamed for a few minutes:

Before I forget about it, and I wish I could, there was a ninja named Flip Flop The Clown who I had spoken to for a few months prior to the Gathering.  He’s a clown with a foot fetish, and he actually even purchased advertising space on Faygoluvers to advertise his latest rap song: “Feet On My Face”

Well, let me be the first to tell you…this ninja wasn’t just talking.  He was ALL ABOUT THAT LIFE!  He sucked on the feet of a random Juggalette who had been walking through the sand at Balla Beach, licking them clean for literally 15-20 minutes.

Flip Flop The Clown

Overall, I’d say that the party was a HUGE success, and to the best of my knowledge, it’ll happen again next year!  I urge those of you who are Gathering bound to make it a point to hit up this party!

We stayed over there for a majority of it, so I know it had to be close to 3 AM by the time we left.

The ONLY thing that I regret missing due to being at the JYC party was the Dandypunk performance. I  have heard from PsykoScott who was there, along with Upchuck, and several others who witnessed it that it was AMAZING!  I don’t even know how to describe it, because I didn’t see it. But his 10-15 minute show was talked about for the remainder of the Gathering. I don’t know if he’ll ever be back, but from what I understand, he really dug Juggalos!

One group that I wanted to see was A.X.E.  Those dudes always put on a great show, and I don’t see why this year would be any different.  We went over there as the Wine Mixer wrapped things up, and were there for what seemed like the beginning of A.X.E’s set.  I think I was pretty spent that night, because we stood there live streaming for a few minutes and it looked like they weren’t ever going to get their technical difficulties worked out.  I don’t know who’s fault it was, and nothing against those guys, but I decided to bounce from there.  You can see what I’m talking about though in the short live stream that we did:

It was finally time for the headliner of the late night festivities: RA The Rugged Man!  Now again, I told you that I may have been a little tired and impatient. We went over to the Red Moon stage a little after 3:30 AM, probably closer to 3:45 but my memory is a little foggy at this point. On the way over, we saw some people shooting big ass super soakers at passer-bys. They were laughing and having a great time!  I saw them take a shot and about to reload, so I floored the golf cart hoping to make it past them and out of range.  My efforts were futile…they got a DIRECT HIT on us. I ended up looking back to see that it was one of our long-time homies Teah who hadn’t Gathered in like a decade, along with her husband John.  They definitely got us, and we’ll remember that for next year…

We got to the Red Moon stage and stood there among a pretty good crowd waiting for things to start, and they simply didn’t.  I don’t know how long I waited, but I ABSOLUTELY regret not waiting longer!  We left on foot and couldn’t hear anything happening within earshot even on the way back, so we thought he may have no-showed or was having issues.  What I found out the next day is that while he did go on late, his set got Shut Down at 4 AM due to the noise ordinance.  R.A. doesn’t take shit from ANYONE, so he grabbed a megaphone and performed the rest of his set on that!  This was while security was trying to pull him off stage and everything!  I obviously don’t have any footage that we took, but did find this gem:

That is truly fuckin’ fresh, and I’ve GOT to give props to R.A. for persevering and keeping shit moving!  He fucking LOVED us, and wanted to make sure to give us the show that we deserved.  He already said that he’d be back next year!

Always in work mode, Chad T. Carsten caught up with him after his semi-fucked set and conducted a 5 minute interview with him that you can see here:

Again, extra super props to both R.A. for speaking to us, and to Chad for getting the scoop!

By the time that interview was conducted, Amanda and I had already showered and were sawing logs.  Whack points for us.

Day 3: Friday, July 28th

Now, the Gathering was officially over halfway finished.  Here’s the deal though…throughout all of the bones that people were getting, and all of the shit that was talked about it by those who weren’t even on the grounds for a second, this was the turning point.  Jumpsteady himself said that he heard from multiple Juggalos that the LAST TWO days of this year’s Gathering was their favorite of ANY Gathering they’ve been to.  I’m telling you…take away the lame ass cops and city ordinances this year and you would have been able to put up with the heat and dust.  If that same venue were in a spot that was more welcoming to Juggalos, I think it would be our Gathering location for at least a few more years.  But that’s not my call to make.  Just my 2 cents.

We woke up fairly early for Gathering time on Friday morning…probably around 10 AM.  I still needed to get our Campsite Scavenger Hunt prizes over to the Scrub Care Unit, so that was on the top of the priority list that morning.  We got up, I ate a few microwave pancakes (FTW!), and then we loaded up the golf cart to head over to see our homies at the SCU.  They had a small group of people there waiting to munch on some breakfast.  After catching up with the crew for a few minutes and dropping our prizes off, they asked if we wanted some biscuits with sausage gravy…the same thing we had yesterday morning.  So of course my fatass said “hell yeah!” and ate my second breakfast of the day.

While we were getting our grub on, the SCU told us how they had their cart stolen and to keep a lookout for it.  That seemed to be a running theme this year.  The good thing is, as I said before, our cart is so recognizable that if it wasn’t PsykoScott or myself driving it, they’d stick out like a sore thumb.  I do know that the SCU recovered their cart…eventually.

Another event that I unfortunately missed were the Juggalo Auctions.  I heard from a few people that there were some KILLER deals on items there!  The turnout on bidders wasn’t too packed, so items were going on the cheap!  I always feel like I’m going 90-nothing at the Gathering and end up missing some great events.  Hell, I never once made it over to see my homie Vinnie (The ICP Kid) while he was reffing for the Beach Volleyball matches.  But as they say, you just can’t be everywhere at once.

Now, for the first official event that I actually made it to: Killer Clown Academy!  I’m not sure what year they started conducting this event, but I had a hell of a good time watching it from the stage this year!  I think I had mostly seen it in passing or through pictures, but this year I caught the bulk of it first hand!  I walked up to it after it had started.  Jumpsteady and Kevin Gill were your hosts for the event, and Natalie The Ring Girl, Tom Wood, and Farris (The JuggaLawyer) were the judges.  DJ Carlito provided the tunes, and Mad Man Pondo was there to assist in the contests wherever he was needed.

Before describing the event, I’d be remiss to not mention that there were literally 15-20 people watching.  It was 1 in the afternoon in Oklahoma and close to 100 degrees.  I’m pretty sure ninjas were trying as hard as they could to stay out of the heat.  Hell, that’s why I went up on the stage to watch and stream it because at least that has some kind of cover!

The first round that I saw in person was the Faygo Relay Contest.  The point of that was to move all of the Faygos in one barrel across the stage to another empty barrel in the quickest amount of time.  Sounds simple, but there’s a lot of strategy to it!

The next round put your aim and speed to the test! Faygo bottles were stacked on milk crates at various heights a few feet away from the stage.  Each contestant who was still in the running was to fill a super soaker with Faygo and spray with enough force to knock the Faygo bottle off of the milk crates.  Each contestant had to knock down 5 bottles and try to do so with the quickness!  That was hilarious to watch too!

In the end, the top 3 winners who flexed their skills hard enough were going to be on stage with ICP as one of the killer clowns!  Congrats to the winners!  You can check out over a half hour of that footage here:

Before I forget, I want to give an extra special shout-out to both KG and Jumpsteady on their hosting duties for this event.  They both came through with some one-liners that had me cracking the fuck up!

We went back to the trailer to cool off for a bit since it was hotter than Satan’s asshole.  Again, thank goodness for that golf cart!  (Are you seeing a theme yet?)

I knew some people had some costumes that they put a hell of a lot of work into for the Costume Contest this year.  My homie Justin Gillmore gave me a sneak peek at his custom Hatchetman costume which he had a hat/helmet molded to look like the 3D version of the Hatchetman hair.  He would then peel into a skin-tight red suit, hold a meat cleaver, and call it a day.  lol.

Anyways, other contestants of note were the 10 foot tall WRAITH, the Juff Beer guy, Chewbacca (complete with a long dangly rubber nutsack), Mr. Rotten Treats, a Killer Klown from Outer Space, and your eventual winner: Heather Marrs as a dope ass Mermaid!  You can see quite a bit of the contest here:

And the announcement of the winner here:

Much props to ALL who entered…especially if you hand-crafted the costumes yourself!  Nice work!

Now it was time to hit the ABK Seminar.  I’m not gonna lie, I was kind of depending on him answering some questions for 10-15 minutes and then turning into a smoking/drinking session.  I really wanted to go and see my homie McNastee who I haven’t seen live in YEARS.  So I went over to the seminar tent and got ready to live stream.

Then we waited…and waited…and waited some more. Killa and the crew showed up at around 4:45 PM, which is right around the time that McNastee’s performance was supposed to start.  Damn.  So PsykoScott and Amanda went over to get some shots and footage of McNastee while I stayed at Killa’s seminar and made sure to get the info out to you.

Killa started off by taking questions.  I was actually among the first few, and asked him about the status of Tha Hav Knots.  He immediately peeked around the back of the GOTJ banner, confirmed with whoever was sitting back there, and then said he couldn’t talk about it.  Then he threatened my life (jokingly…I hope. lol).  He spoke about things such as Drive By, announced the Dirty Warrior Tour (combo of Dirty History and Hatchet Warrior), and then brought Syn of Zug Izland out to chop it up with the seminar attendees.

It was around then that my phone seemed to overheat.  I gave it a minute and then started up the 2nd part of our ABK seminar coverage.  Killa brought out every artist on the Native World, Inc. label, introduced them, and let them all briefly say what projects they were working on.  See the rest of the seminar in the following 2 segments:

Even though I missed McNastee’s set, I still had a good time hearing Killa and the NWI crew just chillin’ with everyone.  Everyone on that label is truly good people.  So with taking right at an hour for their seminar even after starting 45 minutes late, I had to hurry back to the trailer and get ready to go over to the Diamond Stage!  Before I talk about LSP opening up the main stage for the night, let me go ahead and give some shine to McNastee and Big Slack!  PsykoScott went over to the Madhouse Stage to start the stream, and he apparently just went live for the whole set!  Props to PsykoScott for that so at least I was able to watch it later on my computer!  Looks like they fuckin’ killed it!

OK, now back to the main stage!  The homies from Lyrikal Snuff Productions got their FIRST main stage spot at the Gathering this year!  You’ve heard all of their names individually over the years.  SCUM, Insane Poetry, CLAAS, Liquid Assassin, Smallz One…but it’s not until you see something like this collaborative 51 Shades of Snuff set that you realize just how talented a roster the Gorefather has assembled!  Don’t think I forgot about Damien Quinn, Statik G, and JP Tha Hustler either!  Everyone brings their own flavor of horrorcore or hip hop to the label.  I hope you’re not sleepin’ on this whole crew!

Take a look at a combined 40+ minutes of their performance here:

Some time during LSP’s set, I got contacted on Facebook about a rumor concerning Violent J‘s arrest.  I won’t call anyone out, but let’s just say that someone who you would think would verify something as serious as this posted all over Facebook that Violent J had been arrested….though I didn’t get details about what it may have been over.  Shortly after LSP’s set, I went over to the Rude Boy and asked if he had heard anything about it.  He said he had just talked to Joe no more than an hour ago, so unless it happened between then and now, there was very little chance that it was true.

I saw the LSP ninjas getting offstage, so I went back to talk to them and show some love for their killer set!  In between talking to all of them, my phone kept blowing up asking me about J getting arrested. Just then, I peeked over and saw both J and Shaggy sitting on a golf cart painted up and eating.  I sent a quick shot from backstage of J and Shaggy and replied with “not unless this is an imposter”.  Fucking Jugga-Rumors.

Next up, Rudy came out to introduce the metal band Upon A Burning Body.  PsykoScott was up front and center keeping the streams going while Amanda snapped some pics.  Here’s a little bit of our live stream:

In the meantime, Liquid Assassin had asked me if I would introduce him to Violent J.  We were standing a ways off, so I asked Dougie about it.  Before I knew it, L.A. saw an opening and just went over and introduced himself to the Duke.  That was probably the best way for it to happen anyways, and I’m sure he’s glad he did it.

I was able to chop it up with J for a few minutes after that as well.  He was in good spirits and seemed to be having a good time despite the cops and the heat.  He also told me about something that he’d go into detail about the next afternoon at the ICP Seminar.  He actually showed me a picture of a car accident that he was involved in about two months prior to that.  It totaled his Suburban, every single one of the airbags deployed, and he amazingly was able to walk away from the accident with just a few scratches!  He texted me the picture and asked me to post it on Faygoluvers right after the ICP seminar so ninjas could put a visual to his story.  Here’s that pic:

The Aftermath of Violent J’s Car Accident

You can hear the full story about that later in the review when I post the seminar footage.  Consider that a teaser!  I’m just glad he made it out alive!

OK, back to your regularly scheduled main stage performances!  ¡MAYDAY! was up next, and you know god damn good and well that they ALWAYS school their performances!  They were one of only two Strange Music artists to be booked this year as compared to half a dozen or so in previous years.  But we all know the story behind that. If you don’t, then Google is your friend.  Let’s get back to the performance though, shall we?

Their set started out with a multifaceted drum solo spanning a few different percussion instruments by the one and only Nonymous!  Dude’s hands are lightning fast, and it’s a super hype way to start out their set!  After a few minutes flexing his skills, the rest of the band including frontmen Bernz and Wrekonize came out and put on a high-energy performance more than worthy of a main stage set!  These guys deserve the spotlight, and I wouldn’t be disappointed to see them rockin’ the Gathering main stage again next year!  Check out about 10 minutes from the beginning of their set here:

After ¡MAYDAY!, it was time for something that has been in the works since he started with Psychopathic Records well over a decade ago.  I’m talking about the FIRST DJ CLAY Solo Set to happen on the Diamond Stage at the Gathering of the Juggalos!  I talked to DJ Clay about a week before the Gathering and he could NOT be more hype about this!  He said he had been working on his set for a minute now, and was happy that the moment was finally almost here!  Fast forward to 9 PM on Friday night, and his time had arrived!  DJ Clay came out with some turntables setup on a pulpit draped with a big DJ Clay banner and started spinning some straight up club bangers!   The bass was rockin’ the entire audience who were dancing and having the time of their lives!

Clay was plenty energetic behind the turn tables, but after a few minutes of that, he came out from the back and lost his mind dancing at the edge of the Diamond stage!  Juggalos went nuts as DJ Clay moved back and forth across the stage dancing to the beat.  He turned the Gathering into a big ass house party!  Check out some of his set below:

After the first few tracks, I had to get ready for something backstage that I’ll tell you about in a minute.  But while I was over there, I took a little more footage of DJ Clay’s set from the side.  Like a boss!

*STORY TIME* OK, so I’m going to take you back a few months and tell you about something that I’ve been pretty heavily involved with this year.  Back in January, Billy Bill of Psychopathic Records passed my info along to some people who were directing a movie with a heavy Juggalo theme.  I wasn’t sure how big a production it would be, but after hearing the details and hearing a brief synopsis of it, I totally bought into it, and within a week had signed on to help.  One of the biggest scenes in the movie takes place at the Gathering of the Juggalos.  So it was my job to provide pictures and video, answer any questions they had, and just be an overall consultant so they could help recreate the Gathering for their movie!  I was then asked to put a call out to have 100-150 Juggalos meet up in March for a weekend of a movie shoot!  In Hollywood terms, this was a small budget movie. But when you’ve got a company sinking MILLIONS of dollars into the project, I’d consider it a pretty big deal!  The shoot in March was a complete success, and I can’t wait to see how the movie turned out!  All of us who were a part of the shoot deemed the movie shoot the 17.5 Gathering of the Juggalos.  Only a few were there to witness and partake, but it’s something we’ll never forget!  We even had our badass graphics guru Trish design a t-shirt to commemorate the experience:

Click the pic to enlarge!

OK, I promise that this is relevant to the actual Gathering.  Stick with me.  The director of the movie (titled FAM-I-LY), Laura Steinel, had been in contact with me since the movie shoot in March.  I kept her up to speed about the actual Gathering, where it would take place, and again answered any questions she had about it.  As the Gathering got closer, Laura and the movie studio decided that they would bring a small film crew to the official GOTJ so they could reshoot a scene with THOUSANDS of Juggalos in it, rather than just a hundred or so.  That time came right after DJ Clay‘s set!

The Rude Boy came on stage to tell Juggalos a little about the movie, and asked if they wanted to be a part of it!  An overwhelming majority were down, and Laura came out to recreate some of the scenes we shot!  I captured it all on my phone, and you can see it here:

I know that just watching that video on its own probably doesn’t make much sense, but again trust me when I say that the movie shines Juggalos in a truly positive light!  Oh, did I mention that Taylor Schilling and Natasha Lyonne from Orange is the New Black are both in the movie?  We’ll have more on this closer to the time of the movie release!  If you were in the audience when this went down, thank you for being willing participants!

It was now time for a show from a man who within two minutes made the 2015 Gathering of the Juggalos do a complete 180 on what they thought of him. I’m talking about none other than Waka Flocka Flame!  Two years ago, he was a HUGE unexpected highlight of my Gathering experience, and it was gonna be hard to top that performance!  Could he do it?

Let me tell those of you who weren’t there…this motherfucker DID JUST THAT!  Juggalos and Juggalettes had already accepted him from schooling it a couple of years ago, so he was shown love almost unanimously!  For those who have never seen a Waka show, I don’t really even know how to describe it.  Knowing so little about him, I’m not sure if he raps, or if he’s just the world’s greatest hype man!  Either way, Juggalos, including myself, enjoyed the fuck out of it!  He eventually made his way into the crowd and weaved through the entire main stage audience again! The shit was absolutely ridiculous! PsykoScott recorded about the first 15 minutes of his set, but unfortunately cut it short before Waka started mosh pits of his own.  You can still check it out here though:

After our time in the photo pit, we went to chill stage right with our golf cart, and Waka had already made his way into the crowd!  You could see the wave of ninjas jumping up and down with him as he snaked his way through!  I decided to go in there and check out the insanity!  The shit was WILD!  I don’t know a regular Waka show stacks up, but I know that he DESTROYS at the Gathering!  Much love from the Juggalos to you Waka!

Finally, it was time to see our headliner for the night who would be making his first Gathering of the Juggalos appearance in 4 years!  He never made it to Legend Valley, and was at the final year of Cave-In-Rock, so his presence here was LONG overdue! I’m talking about the funky white boy himself: Vanilla Ice!

I’d say that if ANY night at the Gathering had a party vibe, it was definitely Friday night! Vanilla Ice was no exception to this!  Ice will actually turn 50 this year, but looks no older than his mid-30s and doesn’t seem to have lost a step in his nearly 30 year career!  His stage presence is undeniable, they had a killer light show, and his live DJ and drummer really topped off his performance!

Something MAJOR happened for Ice’s second track that he performed.  For any old school fans of both Ice and Insane Poetry, you’re gonna flip your shit if you didn’t see or hear about this already!  Back in 2001, he released an album called Bi-Polar which had a track called “O.K.S. (Original Killa Shit)” on it.  Insane Poetry was featured on that track.  I had seen OKS performed at past Gatherings before, but this time, for his 2nd song of the set, he brought out Insane Poetry himself to spit his verses!  I don’t know how deep you ninjas go, but for me, this was like a bucket list item to see!  You can check that out a few minutes into our live stream here:

About 20 minutes into his set, it turned into a full-blown block party on the stage!  Vanilla Ice called ALL Juggalos who wanted to particpate onto the stage!  HUNDREDS obliged, and throughout the next 20-30 minutes, Vanilla Ice performed with a grip of Juggalos surrounding him!  We even helped our homie Joe Mekan up onto the stage so he could join in on the festivities!  What a great fuckin’ time, and an awesome way to end Friday night’s main stage!

Now, it was time for us to head back to the trailer, change out of our sweaty clothes, and see what we could get into for the late night shows and parties!  One event that I actually helped come to fruition, and that we all really wanted to see was JAWS on the water!   A giant inflatable screen would be setup on Balla Beach and the movies JAWS and Piranha 3D would play for around 4 hours.  The BEST seat in the house is on a raft in the lake!

But, we weren’t ready for that just yet.   First, we went over to the Chaos Stage to briefly see our homie T-Ryde from Texas put it down.  He was unfortunately butted up against Froggy Fresh, so we had to leave his set early so we could be at one of the performances that everyone was talking about.

While Amanda and I were out and about, PsykoScott was trying to figure out what to do next.  We were all so hype about Jaws on the Water that it caught him off guard when we went to see some of the musical acts while the movies were already playing.  He asked for us to come scoop him up, but I assured him that we’d be back in a few minutes after seeing a few minutes of the Froggy Fresh set.

So at the Red Moon stage, we were all set for Froggy to make his Gathering debut.  Juggalos…I’m SO glad that I made it over there!  There’s not much NOT to like about Froggy Fresh!  He’s a very personable dude, his music is hilarious (to me, anyways), and he seemed to get an extremely welcome response from those in attendance!  Let me tell you this…that was NOT a light crowd!  The Red Moon stage was probably the 2nd most packed it had been that weekend, dwarfed only by Shaggy 2 Dope himself!

For those who follow Froggy, I think most of the audience was pleasantly surprised when Money Maker Mike joined him onstage!  Was this the most dynamic set of the Gathering?  Nah.  Did Froggy’s stage presence leave something to be desired?  Yeah, a little. But what he lacked in stage and performance skills, he brought with super positive energy.  Everyone I saw was smiling ear to ear, singing right along with some of his Youtube hits!

You can see some of his performance here:

Brice aka StrangeOne was also there and got more of the performance live streamed. The audo is shit, but just in case you’re clamoring for some more Froggy Fresh:

StrangeOne also met up with Froggy backstage, and he gave Juggalos and ICP a special shout-out:

About halfway through Froggy’s performance, Amanda and I took the cart back to the trailer to get changed to our swimming suits.  We were FINALLY about to check out one of my most anticipated events: Jaws on the Water!  A few days before leaving for the Gathering, I purchased a big ass 10 foot x 10 foot float that seated 4 people. We had already blown it up earlier that day, so all we had to do was bring it down to the lake and jump on!

That’s the exact float that I bought, and while massive in size, it was actually small compared to some of the other rigs ninjas brought!

PsykoScott, Amanda, and I entered the lake right by where we were camped, but had to swim a ways dragging the raft behind us. It was a little tedious getting almost all the way to Balla Beach, but nothing we couldn’t handle.

Ninjas were chilling watching the movie, laughing, partying, and having a great time!  Not long after we got settled into our raft, the homie Crimson Chin from Juggalo News started a battle with us with those little Nerf “splash bomb” balls.  This was a side of Crimson Chin that I had never seen, and it was fucking HILARIOUS!  He had a bottle of booze in one hand, and was launching splash bombs at us with the other.  All of us retaliated, getting closer as we whipped them back and forth at each other.  Ninjas around us watched us act a fool, and seemed to be having a good time doing it, finding the balls that came nowhere close to connecting and handing them back to us.  The battle raged on for probably 20 minutes until we all called a truce.

Then, we watched the remainder of JAWS, which I had forgotten how fresh it was!  The experience of watching it on the water definitely elevated it!  The FLH team didn’t take much time to ourselves to just relax this Gathering, so I definitely didn’t feel guilty taking it easy for an hour or so on the water.  Peep a quick video that PsykoScott took to envision the flavor:

Right after JAWS ended, we made our way back to the shoreline next to our campsite, towing that big ass raft behind us.  I swear it seemed like it was 10 times further a swim than on our way out there.  We made it though, got back to the trailer, dried off, and then there was one more set that I could possibly catch that night: Insane Poetry!

Rumors that Brotha Lynch Hung had no-showed were confirmed, so Insane Poetry would be headlining the Red Moon stage that night!

Unfortunately, we sacrificed seeing the homie Myzery‘s set that night due to being in the lake…so we missed the surprise of Violent J showing up to spit his verse from “Witching Hour” up there! Fuck! Still, no regrets from me, and luckily through the power of the interwebs, I caught the performance from home post-Gathering.  It’s not our video, but I figured I’d share that piece of flavor with you anyways:

Also of note is that BEFORE Myzery’s set, Lil Debbie gave her full performance at the Red Moon stage!  I know that StrangeOne was there, so he and his horrible phone mic caught this footage:

Alright, now back to MY review, goddammit!  Amanda and I saw Insane Poetry take the stage shortly after 3 AM, and he fuckin’ KILLED it!  Don’t forget that he performed on the main stage at 6 PM with LSP, jumped on stage for a track during Vanilla Ice’s set, and now had his own headlining set deep into the night!  That killa is a machine!  If he was exhausted from the day, you would never have known it!

He was accompanied during some of his tracks by JP Tha Hustler and SCUM too! I’ve given them props before, but LSP has been steadily killin’ the game for YEARS now!  Take a look at about 20 minutes of his set here:

If you haven’t picked up a copy of IP’s Snuff Reels (Director’s Cut) yet, you can do that right here!

Our night was winding down, but we weren’t quite ready for bed yet. So we took a drive around the Gathering grounds on the cart to see if anything else was poppin’ off.  We drove towards the entrance of Lost Lakes, and it was our first time to actually see Bizarro World in action!  We stopped there and spoke to one of the dancers from the Sirens Of The Flame dance crew for a few minutes. She thought that there would be at least one more performance, but the torches and everything were being put out as soon as she said that.  She LOVED the Gathering environment though, and hoped that she and her troupe would be invited back the following year!

With that said, and it being after 4 AM, it was time for us to catch a few hours of sleep. The plan was to stay up through the night the next night and drive home once there was a path out of the Gathering.

Day 4: Saturday, July 29th

Here it is, the most bittersweet day of the Gathering.  Juggalos and Juggalettes wait ALL YEAR for this week, and we were less than 24 hours away from it all being over.

There was no time to dwell on that though, because we still had a full day of Gathering, and the headlining ICP show tonight!

We all woke up between 9 and 10 AM Saturday morning.  Look, I’m an old ass man in Juggalo standards (36). If I can get a good 5-6 hours of sleep after having an action-packed day, and then wake up and do it all over again, then sign me the fuck up!  I know I definitely miss out on some things between 5-10 AM, but for the most part, I feel pretty good about that.

Since we would essentially be leaving after ICP, Amanda and I started to get our shit together, laid our clothes out for the day, and packed up the stuff that had been tossed around the trailer all week.  We got the shoes we’d wear for the day, the Faygo Armageddon shoes, and our patented crispy Faygoluvers jerseys ready for ICP later that night.

At a little after noon, Chad Carsten hit me up asking if I was ready to help conduct the P.O.D. interview that he setup!  Earlier that weekend, he had confirmed with their manager that they would make some time to chop it up with us for a few minutes!  I’ve always liked those guys, and they couldn’t be cooler!  Amanda and I went over to the artist trailers behind the Diamond Stage and met up with their manager.  He checked inside the trailer to see if they were ready, and we were invited inside!

Chad always has his shit together.  He was throwing questions out there left and right, and is almost always complimented on bringing unique questions to the table instead of doing just the same old canned questions.

Chad T Carsten and POD in action!

After completing the interview, which should be posted ANY day now, we said our thank yous, got some pics, wished them luck at the show later that night, and then said our goodbyes.

POD with Chad & Scottie D

It was getting dangerously close to 2 PM, and that meant it was time for the first official event of the day, we had the ever-important, bomb-dropping event: The Insane Clown Posse seminar!  This year there was an infinite number of topics that could have been covered, and ninjas were clamoring for info!  Amanda and I got to the seminar tent by around 1:50, and that bitch was  PACKED!  Everyone with media passes were asked to pile onto one side of the stage to snap photos, take video, etc.  We all setup over there and waited, and not long after that, we were asked to leave.  Yeah, staleness.

I went around back where Upchuck and some other personnel were setting up, and they had boxes FULL of the free giveaway: Golden Goldies!  I snagged one and took some pics of it to give our readers a sneak peek of what the seminar giveaway would be.  They had THOUSANDS of these things in boxes upon boxes, so it would insure that everyone got one.  Funny enough, Kevin Gill and Natalie both texted me because they saw my post on Faygoluvers and asked me if I could grab one for them in case they couldn’t make it over.  I of course told them that it wouldn’t be a problem.  I kind of just made my way to the OTHER side of the stage and setup my tripod and video camera to record the seminar.  Nobody else was over there other than some all access ninjas, but I just acted like I was supposed to be there, and never ran into any issues.

Everyone was waiting, and of course Juggalos got restless.  So, the Umpteenth annual Seminar Trash Wars began.  Now I’m not particularly a fan of throwing trash at each other, especially when I’m within reach of a half eaten turkey leg, or a nearly full can of beer. I WILL say that they are hilarious to watch though!  I’m not even sure who caught this footage from our site, but you can see a little of what went down here:

By the time that ICP pulled up in their carts, they were around 35-40 minutes past their scheduled time….which is right on time for the ICP seminar. lol. Our trusty FLH webmaster PunkRockJuggalo made a post about it covering all of the important bulletpoints in case you would like a text rundown. You can see that here: https://www.faygoluvers.net/v5/2017/07/insane-clown-posses-seminar-from-gathering-of-the-juggalos/

Or, you can watch the full 1-1/2 hour seminar via our Faygoluvers live stream thanks to Hanka:

For those who don’t watch that video or click on the above link to read the bulletpoints, let me just mention a few things concerning future Gatherings.  For one, PLEASE stop tagging the port-a-potties!  Something as stupid as that NEARLY cost us the Gathering this year.  So next time you think about tagging one up with your crew name to rep, please think again.  Also, Rob reiterated that the chief of police for Oklahoma City had a giant stick up his ass about Juggalos, and wanted to make sure that he heard our “FUCK YOU”‘s reverberate throughout the city.

After J and Shaggy said farewell to those in attendance, it was time to give out the free Golden Goldies CD: Gimme Dem Fuckin’ Nuggets Bitch, Or I’ll Punch Your Fuckin’ Face!  I grabbed a few and stuffed them in my pocket for those who requested them, and PsykoScott who was chillin’ back at the trailer.  Then I just started grabbing boxes of them and handing them out one-by-one to a sea of Juggalo hands! I know for sure that ninjas snagged two or more, but it was a madhouse and really hard to keep up with who already had one. However many you ended up with, I hope you shared with your homies!

So with ICP’s seminar starting over a half hour late, and then running for nearly 90 minutes, it was already time for Lyte‘s seminar.  I went ahead and stuck around there so I didn’t miss anything.  Unless you have been COMPLETELY in the dark about Psychopathic happenings, then you already know that 3 versions of his debut EP Psychopathic Monstar were released AT the Gathering!  Also, if you haven’t picked any of them up yet, I highly suggest you do over at PsychopathicMerch.com!

Lyte came out and talked about his background, grinding hard to get signed, his long-time homie and manager MattE, and took questions from Juggalos in the house. Watch the seminar in 2 parts here:

Lyte is a good, solid dude, and I know for a fact that although he’s young, he’s been hustlin’ for years trying to get this opportunity!  I see big things for him, and am excited for his future at Psychopathic Records!

Even though his seminar was short, it started pretty late, so the Miss Juggalette pageant was already in session.  I had asked Amanda to go over to the Red Moon stage while Lyte was onstage so she didn’t miss her opportunity to get pics of all of the contestants.  After Lyte was finished, I hit up PsykoScott who was cooling off back in the trailer.  He grabbed the cart and came to scoop me up and get to the Red Moon stage!

The Miss Juggalette pageant was already in full effect!  Luckily, our homie StrangeOne was there to live stream it from the beginning!  You can see it pretty much from start to finish in the following two videos:

Damn…was it already time for the final night of performances on the Diamond Stage?  I can’t believe it flew by so quickly, but god dammit, it was time.

*Side Story* So our plan for the night was to go to the main stage, grab some footage and photos for the first half or so of each performance, and then get back to the trailer to continue packing things up.  Why were we being so anal about getting shit ready to leave?  Well before the Gathering, our homies Jimmy and Nicole from Massachusetts said that they had someone who lived in Oklahoma who was going to drive from there to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and back home to Oklahoma.  Jimmy and Nicole had booked tickets from MA to Dallas to save some serious cash.  Unfortunately, their flight left to go back home at like 1 PM on Sunday. It was a 3+ hour drive from the Gathering to the DFW Airport, and we still had to somehow find our way out of the Gathering grounds, return the trailer, and get back home with time to spare for them to make it through security and onto the plane!  Whew…that was putting us under the gun, but as long as we got out of Lost Lakes at a decent hour, it’d be all good.

*Side Story 2*: I can’t remember when they started getting in, but we had some friends from Dallas who drove up to Oklahoma JUST to see ICP for the night!  My homies Marty, Courtney, Wesley, David, and a few others made the trek because they wanted to Gather…if even just for part of one day.  That’s dedication right there, and they have no regrets about it!

We got into the Faygoluvers whip and made it to the Diamond stage in time for Zug Izland to start!  First, Mike Busey asked Juggalos and Juggalettes how the Gathering was treating them and got…well let’s just say mixed reactions.  Syn came out sportin’ an old school Wraith: Shangri-La shirt and they started off their set with the track “Sunny Day”!  From there, they rocked the Gathering for the next half hour or so! You can see our footage here:

Syn!

I can’t remember the exact time that this happened, and I’m not trying to out anyone, but I got called over by someone on the official Gathering crew who was backstage.  They handed me something all wrapped up and told me to open it later, just not right there by the stage. I took it over to the cart, unwrapped it, and found a Crew shirt and one of every color of GOTJ 18 medallions!  I even finally got my hands on the neon green variation!  Much props to this mysterious Santa Claus-like Ninja!

Next up, it was time for one of the most highly anticipated acts of the Gathering: Lyte!  He had been seen by Juggalos who went out to the Riddle Box tour, but this was a whole different level of exposure!  First, Mike Busey and the Busey’s Beauties came out to introduce Lyte.  Before bringing him onto the stage though, he offered the Juggalos in attendance some Free Pizza!  Several dozen boxes of Little Caesar’s were brought out and handed out by the Busey’s Beauties!  I took a few boxes and handed some slices out myself, so at least I made myself useful.

Pizza Pizza!

No time to stop!

Now, it was time for THOUSANDS of ninjas to experience Lyte as they had never seen him!  His intro started to play, and 2 devils in black robes wheeled a box onstage behind some red curtains.  A minute or so later after the excitement was built up, the devils peeled away the curtains revealing Lyte with giant monster hands and a red robe.  He stepped out of the box, and began spitting hot lava! Lyte chopped it up for the first song, dropped the robe, and then went into the track “No Sleep”, which is my favorite track from his brand new Psychopathic Monstar EP! Big Zane was up in the photo pit goin’ nuts and singing along as Lyte tore the stage in half!  I really dug his shit, and hope you feel the same:

*Side Note*: Next on the schedule was JellyRoll, who is always great live!  I had heard previously that he had been canceling a bunch of tour dates due to health issues, and didn’t know if the Gathering would be affected by that.  Unfortunately, it was.  We later found out specifics about his lack of touring, and you can see that Right Here!

We decided that during this break, we would head back to the trailer and get changed into the clothes that we would wear during ICP’s performance.  For me, that included a jersey, my old Faygo-proven shoes, and a Faygoluvers hat that has seen its fair share of Faygo too.  We also decided to just walk back to the main stage so we could leave the cart at the trailer.  It was gonna be a madhouse getting around everyone who was leaving the area, which is essentially the whole Gathering, so we’d just hoof it along with everyone else.  Under my jersey, I decided to wear my secret weapon…just in case I needed to put it to use.  For the past several Gatherings, I’ve either officially or unofficially been invited to partake in Faygo Armageddon. With security being so fresh to the photo pit ninjas this year, I didn’t think we’d have a problem getting up there.  But JUST in case, I put on that Gathering crew shirt that I was handed not long before then.  That way I could just flash that to security and hopefully they’d let me by. Luckily, that wasn’t needed…but I’ll tell you more about that later.

After Lyte, there was a short wait before Mike Busey came back onto the stage and introduced the next act like only he can.  Remember that foot licking ninja Flip Flop the Clown that I told you about around 12,000 words ago?  Yeah?  Me neither.  Well anyways, Mike Busey apparently caught wind of his foot fetish and brought him onstage to display his talents in front of a few thousands Juggalos!  They had chosen a Juggalette from the audience, gave him some chocolate syrup, and let him go to town on her feet!  As gross as this sounds, it actually seemed more sanitary than the Yacht Club party.  I mean for that one, she was on a beach, so you can imagine how gritty her feet were.  *holds back puke*  Ugh…anyways, it was like a train wreck because no matter how bad it was, nobody looked away!

After that debacle was over, Mike Busey introduced the ninjas that we had the pleasure of interviewing earlier that day: P.O.D.!  The guys came out and started just rocking the main stage!  I don’t know a lot of their song names, but they played ALL of their hits including “Southtown”, “BOOM”, “Youth of the Nation”, and “Alive”!  You can see some of their performance, and the entire intro (including the feet licking) here:

As we were making our way through the crowd between sets, we actually ran into the Campsite Scavenger Hunt winners who had their Tunnel Of Love jerseys on, ready to get christened with Faygo!  I still cringed a little at them choosing those jerseys to wear over anything else, but hey, they won them fair and square!

Campsite Scavenger Hunt Winners!

The next act on the bill is sometimes a super tough spot.  Juggalos want nothing more than to see the Insane Clown Posse do what they do best onstage!  So bringing an artist who is relatively unknown in the Juggalo world and putting him right before the Wicked clowns is a bit of a gamble.  Don’t tell that to Prof though, because he shut shit down!  I had never seen Prof before, and only saw a few music videos from him online. From what I heard of him though, I really dug it!

Mike Busey came out to introduce him, but brought out some scantily clad dancers and fire breathers, and gave Prof a proper introduction!  After that, Prof’s DJ came onstage behind the turntables and got the crowd hype with a little bit of music for a few minutes.  Then, Prof came out in basketball shorts and a cutoff shirt and just murdered his performance!  His stage show was so unique and diverse that you couldn’t stop watching!  The crowd interaction was a big part of it, and he seemed to have a hell of a good time doing his thing up there!  If you weren’t there, see what you think here:

After Prof’s set, it was only a short matter of time before the Insane Clown Posse would grace the stage for the FINAL act of the 2017 Gathering of the Juggalos.  Damn, this week had flown by! While waiting for the grand finale, Juggalos grew a little restless.  Shit was being thrown, there were chants, and then out of nowhere, a double decker blow up Queen size mattress floated towards the stage from the back.  It wasn’t fully inflated, so it’s not like you could get leverage on it and push it away.  It was definitely hilarious to see it coming towards us over and over again.  Ninjas were getting on top of it, riding the wave of Juggalos atop their cushy platform.  People tried to pop it, but it was relentless! Finally, I think someone got it to tear, and it was put out of everyone’s misery.

Mattress Rydin’!

The lights of the main stage went dark, the giant ICP lights with a Hatchetman on either side of them were revealed.  Faygo barrels were wheeled onto the stage, and DJ Clay’s turntables were set up in the center of the set towards the back.  Some intro music that has been used before (but is still dope!) started playing. It’s set to the tune of the Brady Bunch, and begins with “Here’s a story, of some wicked jokers…”  Fresh!  They began their set with “Hokus Pokus”, “Chicken Huntin'”, and then “Night of the 44”! They went on for a solid hour playing both their usuals and some rarities!  (“Sleep Walker” FTW!!)

About 20-25 minutes into the set, the barricade started to give way.  The pressure against them started to make the metal grates give way and split from the steel bars.  The Faygo soaked the ground into quicksand, and that didn’t help matters much either!  I have to hand it to security who started an assembly line, bringing 2x4s into the photo pit to brace against the stage and hold the barricade.  Us photo pit ninjas had to help too, kicking the boards until they held.  The space in front of the barricade was starting to get noticably crowded, and that’s because Juggalos were jumping the barricade, and even crawling through the part that had split to get up front.  A few minutes later, security resigned to the fact that the pit was gone.  I looked up at one of the guards who had been cool as fuck all weekend and just saw him shaking his head.  Seriously though, props to all of the pit security guys. They earned their keep at the Gathering for sure!

I was told before the set that those who had purchased the All Star Experience were to go to the side stage when they heard the song “Down with the Clown” start.  I swear it was another 20 minutes before that song started.  This was one of the CRAZIEST ICP sets I have ever been a part of! I mean it was fuckin’ pandemonium in the crowd, while J and Shaggy gave it their all onstage!

I remember when “Cherry Pie” started, and ICP invited ALL of the Juggalettes onto the stage to dance.  That’s when we knew there was no turning back.  I asked any ninjas trying to get onstage to just wait until at least after the song was over since it was strictly for the Juggalettes.  After that though, Juggalos were ALL OVER the stage!  The All Stars were even asked to stay back because the stage was too crowded, but most of them just ran up anyways!

You can catch pretty much the first half of the set in our live stream here:

Another cool angle was provided by Hazin of JuggaloNews who setup a 360° camera for the first part of their set.  move the camera a little to the right to see me wylin’ the fuck out!

UTTER….FUCKING….INSANITY!  When “Pass Me By” came on, ninjas changed their tune a little and started hugging, high-fiving, and showing love to each other after another Gathering had gone into the history books!  I saw just about EVERYBODY up there!  People I hadn’t seen for the entire Gathering were up on stage! I ran into Vinnie and gave him a big fuckin’ hug.  Vinnie played a stage clown along with the winners of the Killer Clown Academy, Natalie the Ring Girl, and her husband Donny (who got Amanda with an entire bucket of Faygo during a Faygo Break)!  I probably say this every year, but if you’ve never partaken in a Faygo Armageddon at the end of an ICP set, there’s nothing else quite like it! I’ve done it a few dozen times at this point in my life, and I would NEVER pass up on the opportunity to do it again!  If you have the chance, or even if you don’t want to do it the old school way by jumping up on stage, then get a fucking VIP pass and do it when Milenko’s 20 year anniversary tour comes rolling through your town!

DAMN….what a show!  We had setup a meeting spot for after ICP and all congregated there, sharing stories of each other’s experience during the set.  After everyone got there, we snapped a few aftermath pictures and then repeated history by walking our soggy, Faygo-soaked asses right into the fucking lake.  Being July in Oklahoma, the water was still plenty warm, even after midnight.

I know that DJ Carlito had a big ass late-night party happening until 4 AM the next morning, but we still had a LOT of work to do once we got back to the trailer.  Amanda and I took our final shower using the solar bag and shower tent, and then packed all of that away. Then we had the ever-so-fun task of clearing out all of the trash and anything else that we wouldn’t be taking home, cleaning out the fridge, wiping everything down with 409 and Windex, and getting it ready to return the next day.  We had to pack the truck too and be ready for two extra passengers as well.  All of that took a few hours…at least!  I remember kickin’ it with people inside the trailer for a bit, eating, and letting PsykoScott get a few hours of sleep before his drive home.  I definitely stayed up through the night and kept looking around the campsites seeing if anyone had cleared a path for us to get out.

One final anecdote before I start wrapping things up.  Chad came back to the trailer sweaty, covered with glitter, and he had the look of love in his eyes.  He said that a girl asked him to watch her purse for a minute while at the final after party, and when she came back, thanked him by giving him a huge kiss!  He was smitten, and walked in dazed and confused at what had just happened, but smiling from ear to ear!

The sun started to come up at 5:30 or so, and now it was really time to start getting our exit game plan together.  We had everyone with us…except Brice, of course. I had asked some ninjas who were in our direct path if they would be able to move in the next hour or so for us to get out.  They did, and just as we were about to get worried, Brice rolled up on a golf cart with Anybody Killa and some of the Native World crew.  They were all up the whole night, of course. lol.  We said goodbye to Killa and crew, and then got ready to depart.  Leaving the Gathering ALWAYS sucks.  I mean seriously, who wants to go back to reality after 4+ days of flavor?  Not this guy!

The hardest person to say bye to every year, of course, is my road dog PsykoScott.  It’s usually months between seeing him, but luckily he’s planning on Marching with us!  So we’ll see him just a few weeks from when I finished typing this!

The craziness wasn’t done just yet.  I’ll make this brief though.  On the way out of the Gathering, I felt something happen to my brakes!  I had a 30 foot trailer on the back and all of a sudden had to mash on the brakes with just about all of my leg strength to get them to respond.  Fuck!  Of course nothing was going to be open on Sunday, and I had the lives of 4 other people in the car in my hands, so I just took it easy.  We went the 20 or so miles to drop off the trailer, the owner checked it out and signed off on it for cleanliness and no damage, and we were off to the D/FW airport!

It was around 8 AM by now, and I knew we were pressing our luck on time, but Jimmy and Nicole (who were flying out of D/FW) weren’t all that worried about it.  In the end, after a close call or two due to not having my brakes at 100%, we got there safely.  (For those curious, it ended up being something called the brake booster, which is a vacuum system that makes the pedal easier to push.  Perfect timing for it to go out!)  We said our goodbyes to Jimmy and Nicole, went to pick up our dogs and our son at my mom’s place, and met up with Brice’s ride so he could get back home.

On another bonus post-Gathering note, our Scrub homies Toots and Joey got stuck at the D/FW airport the next day for like a 12 hour layover! So we made the 45 minute or so trek to the airport, scooped them up, brought them back to our place, ate, swam, and kicked it for a few hours before they had to catch a flight later that afternoon.  Shit, I’ll take unexpected extra time with my homies that I rarely get to see ANY day of the week!

IN CONCLUSION: Those who weren’t at the Gathering sure had a lot to say about how bad it was this year which is CRAZY to me!  I mean I don’t do any kind of drugs (corporate job FTW!), but even if I did, I wouldn’t be doing blow and banging hookers in the middle of the main road at the Gathering. lol.  Cops and security eased up about halfway through when they realized that the apocalypse wasn’t coming due to OKC playing host to the Gathering.  Most of them realized that we were just there to let loose, hang with friends, and have a good time.

For the few who left early, you fucked up!  Did the Gathering feel different than those of previous years and locations?  Definitely.  Could you still have a great time there regardless of the cops?  Pshhh…hell yeah you could!  If you planned on doing anything illegal, just fuckin’ do it in your tent or trailer.  That’s it! They weren’t raiding people inside of the grounds, you know?

For those who were negatively affected by the police presence and overzealous security, I’m truly sorry to hear that.  I know that a personal homie of mine got into some bullshit on the way back from the Gathering, so it’s not like it didn’t happen.  I DO want to say one more time though that this Gathering was the shit!  It wasn’t just because I only had a 3 hour drive vs our normal 20 (though that was a nice perk).  It wasn’t because of the line-up (though 2 ICP shows at a Gathering was absolutely incredible). It’s because of the exact same reason that it’s fun at EVERY Gathering: The Juggalos!  YOU guys make Gatherings, concerts, cons, and everything else that we are involved with FUN!  Thank YOU for making it worth going to every single year!  18 and counting for this Juggalo!  Much Love!

Thank Yous: There are a LOT of people who deserve high praise for the Gathering this year!  I am 100% sure that I’ll forget about somebody, but I promise that it’s not intentional!  If you aren’t named explicitly, just know that I still love you homie!

  • Amanda: You’re always there by my side, and to my surprise were actually able to keep up with me even after 4 and 5 am!  You stepped your game up, and I couldn’t ask for a better partner in crime! Love you lots!
  • PsykoScott: You are the live stream king!  You saved our ass by providing a dope ass golf cart.  And most of all, you’re one of the best people on the planet.  Love you bro!
  • Jumpsteady: What can I say?  Another Gathering down, and though all odds were stacked against you and your team, you pulled it off (and quite successfully in my book!). Much props to you for all of your continued hard work and dedication!  Looking forward to working with you on the next one!
  • Rachel Paul: I don’t know how many people know how involved you were in this year’s Gathering! From the booklet and flyer designs to just being Johnny On The Spot, you realy schooled it this year! Hopefully you get a little more off-time the next time around.
  • Psychopathic Records: There’s a small crew of dedicated ninjas that breathe the life into events like the Gathering, DCG Con, Juggalo Weekend, etc.  Billy, Dougie, Jason, MattE, Dean, Rudie, Rob (he deserves double props), and everyone else who does behind the scenes work…much love!
  • POD / September Mourning: It’s always an honor when bands agree to have interviews conducted right before or after hitting the stage.  Thanks for giving us some time out of your busy schedule!
  • Brice: You stepped your game up! Thanks for streaming at events I either couldn’t get all of, or couldn’t make it to at all. I’m sure the ninjas at home thank you too!
  • Chad: You schooled it on the interviews yet again, and somehow always manage to find yourself in the most opportune places.  I’m proud to have you as part of the team, and look forward to working with you for years to come!
  • Hanka: Man, I appreciate your hard work and dedication this year! I know you worked your ass off for that press pass, and though you were presented with a few bones, you still schooled it!  For those who haven’t read it yet, check out HIS Gathering 18 Review!
  • Shifty and Rosco: I already thanked you earlier in the review, but thank you once again for holding it down on Faygoluvers from home while I was Gathering!  You guys are the shit!
  • Tom Wood: It’s been great getting to know you even more over the past few years!  I’m still gonna hit you up about that visit, and some more artwork.
  • Faygoluvers Village: I feel like I barely got to see you guys, and I fucking hate that it played out that way!  Thank you so much for continuing to rep Faygoluvers to the fullest though!  I swear we’ve gotta meet up outside of the Gathering one of these years!
  • Natalie/Donny: With you both working the official tip, I had an easy in for getting info when JuggaRumors were flying!  You guys are the best!
  • Rachelette: I know you were stuck at a booth for the majority of the Gathering, but god dammit you schooled it!  I can’t wait to see the rest of your pics, and will hopefully get to kick it with you at a Juggalo event in the very near future!
  • McNastee and Trish: I’m pretty sure you don’t know each other, but you both provided some BADASSERY for Faygoluvers this year!  Chris, thank you for the banner hookups!  They’ll be used for years to come!  Trish, thank you for BOTH T-shirt designs, and for putting together our new stickers too!
  • Dallas/Fort Worth Juggalos: My homies that I see on a weekly basis!  Some of you have been to multiple Gatherings, but I love that with it being relatively close to Texas, more of my local Juggalo homies could make the trip up!  Hope Oklahoma didn’t treat you too badly, and that you’ll all Gather next year, no matter where it may be held!
  • Lost Lakes Amphitheater: This may be one of the most controversial thank-yous in my list, but I mean it with all sincerity. Was everything perfect on their part?  No. But they had a team of people between the owners and the employees who seemed to try their best to make it as enjoyable an experience as possible!
  • Photo Pit Ninjas: I gotta give you guys love every year! The number seems to be growing, but those spots aren’t undeserved!  There’s SO much talent out there that I’m glad all are given their chance to shine!  Much love to all of you who helped out when shit got outta hand too!
  • The Juggalo Family: As I said earlier in the review, YOU guys are the reason that I continue to Gather!  All of the music and events is just a perk!  Keep being the awesome individuals that you are, and let’s MARCH to show the rest of the world how special our bond is!
  • The Gathering Artists: With two of the biggest underground labels in the game being almost completely absent from the Gathering, some other artists had to step up, and others relatively unknown to the Juggalo scene were invited to play the biggest stage at the Gathering!  There were ZERO Tila Tequila moments this year, and I’d say a majority of the acts were well received by Juggalos!  Much love to you for rockin’ the crowd, and taking a chance on us!
  • Photo Pit Security Ninjas: I saw at least half of you singing every word during ICP’s set.  You were also extremely nice to all of us…even when shit got crazy up there.  Thank you for NOT being the dicks that we had run into before!
  • Everyone Else: I’m sure that as I’m typing this late at night trying to wrap it up, I’m forgetting someone.  I love all of you guys and gals, and can’t wait to see you at the next Gathering, if not sooner!

Much Clown Love!

 

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    Faygoluvers Comments

  1. scruffy

    scruffy

    Comment posted on Friday, August 25th, 2017 02:43 pm GMT -5 at 2:43 pm

    good shit.

  2. PunkRockJuggalo

    Comment posted on Friday, August 25th, 2017 04:15 pm GMT -5 at 4:15 pm

    Good read

  3. Xanarki

    Xanarki

    Comment posted on Saturday, August 26th, 2017 09:01 pm GMT -5 at 9:01 pm

    Always grateful for the badass write ups. Thanks for another good one!

  4. Radam

    Radam

    Comment posted on Sunday, August 27th, 2017 09:25 am GMT -5 at 9:25 am

    Another amazing review thanks mate! It means a lot to a ninja that can’t be there. MCL

  5. sk8rat1209

    sk8rat1209

    Comment posted on Tuesday, November 28th, 2017 12:41 pm GMT -5 at 12:41 pm

    haven’t been to a gathering yet but its a really welcoming environment from what I read im looking forward to going to a future gathering much love too you fellow ninja whoop whoop!!!

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