Let’s keep getting up all these live music photos from The Gathering of the Juggalos! Up next we have photos of the master of funk George Clinton, the master of P, Master P and the master of what-the-fuck-is-he-doing-on-this-bill-oh-wait-it-kinda-makes-sense Danny Brown.

George Clinton was at The Gathering of the Juggalos last year and it was awesome. He returned this year and I think it was even better. I sort of wish I shot more than just the first three songs because he has so many weird puppets and things on stage with him. It’s so weird to see a giant alien smoking a joint hanging out back stage next to Onyx. I think one of the strangest parts of seeing George Clinton at the Gathering is realizing that no one in the crowd cares about him and they are just waiting to see Dark Lotus headline. I bet 90% of the people reading this have never even heard of Dark Lotus. The whole thing is very surreal.

Click here to see all the pictures of George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic at the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos.

You would think that Master P has enough money that he wouldn’t need to be playing the Gathering of the Juggalos but clearly he knows that juggalos are a hungry audience and playing to them is a good idea. Juggalos on the other hand were not really psyched about Master P and his No Limit soldiers. They threw more shit at him than anyone else but Master P took it like a champ. They threw so much shit back at the Juggalos including a ton of $1 bills and a hundred or so t-shirts. People seemed psyched about this but they seemed more psyched to throw bottles of water at Master P’s head.  Although he was older and fatter than I remember, Master P still brought it and had a ton of energy and the same crazy dance moves. He made all the juggalos say uhhh nah nah nah nah.

Click here to see all the photos of Master P at the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos.

When I saw Danny Brown on the Gathering of the Juggalos I was like “What the fuck?” Here is this underground rapper on Fool’s Gold Records playing the Insane Clown Posse’s music festival. I don’t really know Danny but I still feel like he is a homie because aside from being on Fool’s Gold he tours with my dude Childish Gambino and I have photographed him opening for Das Racist and I had photos of him published in Frank 151. So it’s weird to see someone like that play the Gathering, but then I thought about it. Danny is from Detroit so you know he is really familiar with ICP. He is one of the most fucked up rappers in the game so juggalos will at least think he’s funny. Plus he is a weird ass dude and juggalos love that shit. ICP totally hyped him and he went over surprisingly well. There were a pocket of juggalos who knew every word and the ones that didn’t seemed to be really into it. Danny ended up hanging out all day and could be seen driving with ICP on golf carts all over the place. It was pretty funny.

Click here to see all the photos of Danny Brown at the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos.

The Gathering of the Juggalos is a yearly music festival in Cave In Rock, IL created by the Insane Clown Posse that I have now photographed three times. Every year it produces some of the best photos I have ever taken. To see my complete GOTJ archives please click here.

This weekend I am going to get up all 14 galleries of bands I have left from the Gathering of the Juggalos and I am going to get it done in five posts so let’s start with three of my favorite sets from the Gathering: Onyx, Three Six Mafia and The Geto Boys.

When I looked at the Gathering schedule there were two groups I HAD to see. They were The Pharcyde (who I already mentioned) and Onyx. Onyx were one of my favorite rap groups growing up and I recently have been listening to them a lot. I have this idea of starting a punk band that is co-fronted by a rapper friend of mine and I have been listening to a ton of really agressive rap like Onyx and MOP. I tweeted about how I wanted to start a punk band that sounded like Onyx and when I was talking to Sticky Fingaz he remembered the Tweet and gave me his email to send him some music. Onyx put on a fucking amazing show. This was a group that came out 20 years ago and (with the exception of MC Hammer believe it or not) most aging hip hop acts I have seen have been unfortunately mediocre. Onyx came out full force and didn’t stop. By the end they were  climbing scaffolding and when they finally did Slam the juggalos lost their shit. I came away so amazingly impressed and was talking about their set all weekend.

Click here to see all the pictures of Onyx at the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos.

The Geto Boys played right before the Insane Clown Posse on Saturday night. Evidently they haven’t played together in years but they are ICP’s favorite band and I am sure they handed them a ton of cash and got them on stage. Whatever the case the Geto Boys seemed psyched to be there. Bushwick Bill was rolling around the Gathering all weekend and he and Scarface came out wearing clown make up. Scarface was even wearing a Psychopathic jersey on stage. They were fucking incredible and seeing Bushwick Bill slide around stage in real life is both amazing and a little terrifying. I got some amazing photos of them with ICP after the show which I will be posting later so look for that plus Bill tried to spray me with spray paint which was mildly surreal.

Click here to see all the photos of the Geto Boys at the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos.

Three Six Mafia were a group that I was always aware of but didn’t really start listening to until the mid-2000’s. Probably around 2004 I bought one of their CDs and I was hooked. I fuck with them so hard and they have so many god damn hits. I mean they won a fucking Oscar. You cannot, not fuck with them.  Right now the group is just DJ Paul and Juicy J who have a ton of hits in their solo careers and they played everything. I mean it was just one amazing track after another. All the security dudes in the pit were losing their shit too. It was fucking amazing. Also I did one of the less professional things in my life before their set. My friend bought a bunch of nitrous balloons right before they went on and handed me one. I felt if I was going to do drugs before any set Three Six Mafia was ideal. I actually finished the balloon off in the photo pit and was pretty much retarded for their first song and a half. Woops.

Click here for all the picture of Three Six Mafia at the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos.

The Gathering of the Juggalos is a yearly music festival in Cave In Rock, IL created by the Insane Clown Posse that I have now photographed three times. Every year it produces some of the best photos I have ever taken. To see my complete GOTJ archives please click here.

One of my favorite part of the Gathering of the Juggalos is the comedy tent. They actually get some really amazing (and sometimes awful) comedians and you get to see some great stand up sets and you get to see them react to the juggalos which is pretty funny in itself. The weirdest night of my life involved Tom Green & Gallagher at the Gathering and I met my homie Hannibal Burres there before his set. This year there were four comedians scheduled to play the Gathering. I skipped Ralphie May and Jamie Kennedy showed up three hours late so they told him to go home.

I did get a chance to see two, pretty awesome acts. The first was Cheech & Chong which seemed to be one of the most anticipated things at any Gathering I have ever been to. There were hundreds of people waiting in the comedy tent hours before they were supposed to go on. They went on late and people didn’t even care. They were just psyched to see Cheech and Chong.  Tommy came out first and they made him take hits from the biggest bong and biggest joint I have ever seen. After that Cheech came up as some hillbilly character and they switched on and off doing different characters while juggalos screamed things at them. It was a little dated but honestly hilarious and I wish I could have seen the whole set but I was off to something else.

On Saturday night I got a chance to see Bobcat Goldthwait which I was really excited about. I am a pretty big fan of both him as a comedian and him as a director. I met him on a press junket for his film World’s Greatest Dad and he seemed like a great dude and it was amazing to hear his signature voice when talking about serious things like scriptwriting. I was expecting him to be good, but not as good as he was. He delivered the best set I have seen in three years at the Gathering and everyone in the press area stayed for his whole set and the guy mixing the sound was laughing so hard he was crying. He was well researched and did a lot of great juggalo material, picked on some people in the audience and no one said shit or threw anything. At the end he put on an Insane Clown Posse shirt that Upchuck the Clown gave him. It was sort of perfect.

Check out all the pictures from comedy at the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos featuring Bobcat Goldthwait and Cheech & Chong.

The Gathering of the Juggalos is a yearly music festival in Cave In Rock, IL created by the Insane Clown Posse that I have now photographed three times. Every year it produces some of the best photos I have ever taken. To see my complete GOTJ archives please click here.

One of the best sets at the Gathering of the Juggalos every year is Tech N9ne. It’s so funny how many people love this dude. My friends into mainstream rap love him, juggalos ride for him so fucking hard and even my girlfriend gave me shit when I asked her if she knew Tech N9ne. Turns out she is a huge fan. For a dude that everyone fucking loves I am surprised he doesn’t get more top 40 play… at least I would be if his songs weren’t so fucked up and weird and awesome.

Non-juggalos seem surprised that Tech N9ne would play the Gathering every year, but not only does Tech N9ne love playing the Gathering he actually has a song that sugests you can swallow his dick if you talk shit about juggalos. Juggalos on the other hand universally love Tech N9ne like no other rapper. Outside Psychopathic Records artists there are only two musicians that every juggalo seems down with: Kottonmouth Kings and Tech N9ne. It’s a very weird combination.

Anyway, I was excited for Tech N9ne’s set and I shot the entire thing for two reasons. 1) As I previously mentioned Tech N9ne is awesome. 2) Tech N9ne gets every girl in the crowd topless. I have no idea how he does it but he does a song called Areola and every single juggalette gets on someones shoulders and takes her top off. At one point in the set Tech N9ne asks people to throw him their bras and panties and he runs around for a song holding a huge handful of undoubtedly disgusting underwear. There are photos in this set where you can see more than a dozen girls topless at the same time. It’s pretty wild.

I can’t show any of that in the preview pics below because I am too lazy to censor all those boobs in one shot, but just know these pictures are pretty awesomely NSFW even if there are a few (a lot) of juggalettes in the crowd you probably don’t actually want to see with their shirts off.

Click here to see all the pictures of Tech N9ne and topless juggalettes at 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos.

The Gathering of the Juggalos is a yearly music festival in Cave In Rock, IL created by the Insane Clown Posse that I have now photographed three times. Every year it produces some of the best photos I have ever taken. To see my complete GOTJ archives please click here.

The big news out of the Gathering of the Juggalos is that the Insane Clown Posse is going to sue the F.B.I. I am sure people read some Tweets or saw a headline and laughed and went on with their day, but the truth is this is some weirdly serious shit. The F.B.I. added juggalos to their gang watch list. When I read about that before I kept thinking how stupid that shit was, but in reality it has had some serious impact on peoples lives. Make fun of juggalos all you want but they are fucking people with families and jobs and they are being fucked with on levels I could never imagine.

ICP had a big seminar where they announced the news. They told everyone about new shows they are doing and a couple of documentaries and all the fun stuff going on with ICP. And then at the end they started talking about how the F.B.I. is fucking up their business and their fans. Being on this watch list means ICP shows are gang activities. If they can find a venue to host one of their shows they have to pay extra insurance on it. Their merch is considered gang gear and can be confiscated. Many stores like Hot Topic have stopped selling their stuff. But on a serious, human rights violation, fascist level peoples lives are being fucked with. People are showing up at their parole officers with a little hatchet necklace on and having their paroles violated. Juggalos are getting pulled over 2-3 times a week for having ICP stickers on their car. Soldiers are being dishonorably discharged for having ICP CDs. ICP decided the only way to fight the law was to use the law and they announced they are suing the F.B.I.

After the announcement the seminar tent was electric. People stood up and cheered. It was honestly touching. I felt like I was in the middle of a movie where someone makes this big speech that changes the course of a war or something. It was sort of amazing. ICP introduced one of their lawyers, Farris Haddad, who was actually a juggalo growing up. And he set up a trailer where any juggalos could come tell him their stories. I became friends with Farris over the next few days and he told me some amazing and sad stories about things happening to these people.

After the announcement I went over to Farris’ trailer and talked to some of the juggalos waiting outside. I heard a story of someone who got sent to prison because they had violated their parole by associating with gang members by friending a juggalo on Facebook. I talked to a guy who had been fired from his job in private security for coming to the Gathering. I talked to people who had lost custody of their kids over this and people who had been arrested and had their tattoos documented and added to gang lists. My friend Kev Buc who came to the Gathering with me told me that he was pulled over once for something little and they photographed all his tattoos and added him to some gang list because he has a Twiztid tattoo. Kev is not some redneck drug dealer or something. He runs Mishka’s NYC flagship store and blogs. I assure you he is not a gangster.

Long story short this juggalos as a gang thing is bullshit. They are just kids who like a band. A lot of these people sell drugs and probably do some dumb shit and end up getting arrested, but that’s just cause the music is popular with poor uneducated kids, but this shit is clearly not organized and them committing crimes has nothing to do with ICP. So I really hope ICP wins and gets juggalos off the F.B.I. gang list.

If you have been fucked with by the cops because you are a juggalo go to juggalosfightback.com. If you want to know more better written, better researched info about all of this read my juggalo anthropology partner in crime Camile Dodero’s interview with ICP on the Village Voice.

I also posted the video of the announcement below the photos. I am in it a lot. At one point you can see me picking my nose which is not a good look but in my defense that place is super dusty and all my boogers looked like rocks.

Now click here to see all my pictures from the Insane Clown Posse’s announcement that they are going to sue the F.B.I.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwyFjrp8lRY[/youtube]

The Gathering of the Juggalos is a yearly music festival in Cave In Rock, IL created by the Insane Clown Posse that I have now photographed three times. Every year it produces some of the best photos I have ever taken. To see my complete GOTJ archives please click here.

W-Fuck-Off Radio returned to The Gathering of the Juggalos. Hosted by the dudes in Wolfpac, Psychopathic Radio is a one stop shop to see totally fucking wild shit at The Gathering of the Juggalos. For four hours every day they mix insane clown tunes with making people do horrible things and then they add in a bunch of strippers. Aside from taking photos of topless girls dancing on poles I shot three actual events that Wolfpac was instigating. The first was a drinking contest involving four beer bongs, four shots of vodka and four shots of hot sauce. Four people did this and only two of them made it through without quitting. One of those two guys then went on to face another guy who had not been drinking in a vodka shot contest. You had to do a beer bong and then do 10 straight shots in a row. The sober guy did his 10 shots and then started vomiting. The other guy who in total did about 5 beers and 15 shots of vodka was totally fine and won a bunch of prizes. I am sure he died several minutes after I left.

The next thing I saw was kinda stupid. They had a tug-a-war contest with one guy on each team in roller skates and another guy blindfolded. In the middle was a baby pool full of thumbtacks and pond water and other horrible things so that they would get nice and infected. Unfortunately no one really fell in the baby pool so they just put the thumbtacks everywhere and people got them in their hands and knees and stuff which was kinda funny but it was a lot of build up for mediocre results.

The third event went above and beyond. I was riding around with the Psychopathic publicist on her golf cart when I saw people just punching each other on stage. I jumped off and ran over and it seemed there was some sort of gimmick originally where they had their hands tied or something but by the time I got there these dudes were just punching each other in the face. This black dude with burn scars all over his body seemed to have some Muy Thai training and ended the fight by kneeing the other dude in his head over and over again. It was fucking brutal. Both dudes stood up to a lot of blows and I was really impressed. The dude who won gave all his prizes to the crowd… he was just into it for the glory. It was one of the best things I saw all week and I took a lot of 35mm shots too. I can’t wait to get that shit developed. Amazing.

Click here to see all the very NSFW shots from Wolfpac’s W-Fuck-Off radio show at the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos.

The Gathering of the Juggalos is a yearly music festival in Cave In Rock, IL created by the Insane Clown Posse that I have now photographed three times. Every year it produces some of the best photos I have ever taken. To see my complete GOTJ archives please click here.

The Gathering of the Juggalos lasted five days this year. That’s one extra day than last year. Based on the fact that I haven’t stopped coughing since I got back it was probably a day too long. Wednesday was the opening day and Sunday was a chill day that was over early but on Thursday, Friday and Saturday shit went all night. Each day there was an after party that started at 2AM and in at least one case didn’t end until the sun came up. The parties were held in this little tent called The Bomb House and featured a lot of sick artists and were some of the best events of the Gathering.

On Thursday night Violent J hosted his West Side party where he brought up a bunch of west coast legends to do their thing. Although I generally prefer east coast rap to the west I actually thought J’s party was the best of the three. Warren G started shit off which aside from being awesome it itself was a little blast from the recent juggalo past. At my first Gathering Warren G was actually the first artist as I saw walking into the event. I was pretty terrified so it was cool to see how far I have come in between Warren G sets. He did a Nate Dogg medley which everyone in the crowd sang a long to. They also did Nate’s verses in Regulator. It was pretty amazing. After Warren G a dude name Glasses Malone came up. He is on Cash Money and I don’t know much about him but he went over well. After that you had the Pharcyde… well actually just Booty Brown and Imani are all that’s left of the Pharcyde but I am not fucking complaining. I am a HUGE Pharcyde fan and I was sitting on the stage trying to take photos but just singing along to every word making a fool of myself. I actually caught a juggalo in the crowd video taping me losing it. Seriously the Pharcyde killed it and between them and Onyx it was the musical highlight of my trip. Lil Eazy came up to end the night. He is the son of Eazy E and opened his set doing Eazy E covers which was fucking amazing since I am the worlds biggest white kid from the suburbs Eazy E fan. Again I was singing along to every word until my friends dragged me the fuck out of there cause it was 5AM and we had an hour drive back to our cabin.

Click here to see all the pictures from Violent J’s West Side Party at the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos.

On Friday night Shaggy 2 Dope hosted his Beasts of the East party. I was pretty pumped for this because the Fat Boys were going to be there. I know most people think of the Fat Boys as this novelty act from the 80’s but I am honestly a really big fan. How many people do you know that own multiple Fat Boys’ records on CD, tape and vinyl? Unfortunately they canceled but we were still left with a pretty serious line up. In one of the more surreal moments of my life both Biz Markie and Rahzel came out together and beat boxed as a team. We are talking about (along with Doug E. Fresh) the best beat boxers in history performing together. It was awesome. After that shit got even crazier with Raekwon the Chef from the Wu Tang Clan coming out and just destroying shit. Of all three parties the crowd responded most to Raekwon and it seemed juggalos know ever word to every Wu Tang jam. Lastly former Psychopathic records artist Myzery showed up to replace The Fat Boys. Juggalos seemed psyched but I don’t know any of his stuff so I took a few pictures and bounced. The dude is from NYC though so I had to give him some respect at least. Not too many New  Yorkers at Cave In Rock.

Click here to see all the pictures from Shaggy 2 Dope’s Beast of the East party at the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos.

Saturday night Twiztid hosted the Dirty Dirty Party. Now I don’t really fuck with that much dirty south shit and my friends Wolfpac were playing at the same time so I decided not to shoot much of the party. I showed up late right as Jellyroll was leaving the stage. I had met Lil Wyte earlier in the day so I shot most of his set the party was bumping and there were naked juggalette’s on stage. By Saturday everyone had lost their minds and shit was getting weird. Haystak came on so I shot a little bit of his set and then I rolled over to the Wolfpac’s show. I missed Rittz who I really wanted to see and figured I would miss Project Pat but by the time I got back at 5AM Project Pat had just taken the stage. I figured all my friends had left but they were all there and we jammed out to Project Pat doing a couple of songs that Three Six Mafia had done the night before. All my media crew was completely tore up and it ended up being some of the most fun I had the whole trip. It was daylight by the time we left and I think I ended up going to bed at 9am. Good times.

Click here to see all the pictures from Twizid’s Dirty Dirty party at the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos. Some shots in this set are NSFW.

The Gathering of the Juggalos is a yearly music festival in Cave In Rock, IL created by the Insane Clown Posse that I have now photographed three times. Every year it produces some of the best photos I have ever taken. To see my complete GOTJ archives please click here.

I have returned from my favorite yearly photographic adventure, The Gathering of the Juggalos. I have returned with some sort of insane juggalo virus and have slept about 25 hours out of the last 36. In the remaning 11 hours I have edited all 7000 photos down to about 1700 and sent everything off to clients and organized everything into roughly 30 galleries that I will be posting between now and when I go on a much needed vacation next Wednesday.

For those of you who are somehow out of the loop, the Gathering of the Juggalos is a music festival in Cave In Rock, IL right by the Ohio river on the  border of Illinois and Kentucky. To get there I drove three and a half hours from St. Louis through back roads. There is no cell service and no cops. You are in the wild with thousands and thousands of kids in clown make up. This is my third year at the Gathering and the first time there was a serious media presence. There was a WIFI network set up and it felt a little less dangerous than in the past but it’s still a wild fucking place.

This year I was actually hired by Psychopathic Records as the official in house photographer and I got some great access and I think I ended up with my best pictures yet. You can be the judge but I am pretty happy with the photos.

I thought we would start this off with the big Insane Clown Posse show held on Saturday night of the five day weekend. Say what you will about the Insane Clown Posse’s music, but they put on one of the best live shows I have ever seen. I talked to several members of the media who had never seen them before and they were all blown away by how good it was. Even if you hate ICP I can’t imagine you wouldn’t leave their show impressed.

ICP is also one of the hardest bands to photograph because they pour Faygo cola all over everyone. I was prepared with rain gear but I still had to leave the photo pit every few songs to clean off my lens. Even then my rain gear would get pushed too far over my lens and I ended up with vignetting which actually kinda looks cool in a few shots.

At the end of every Insane Clown Posse show they have what they call the “Faygo Armageddon” where they invite everyone back stage on to stage to throw all the remaining Faygo onto the crowd. I got to do it last year and it was honestly one of the most fun moments of my life. This year I had to document the thing so I went to the back of the stage and just kept firing off shots. I probably took 300 photos of one song and few of them came out because I was just firing and praying stuff would look good. I probably should have switched to auto mode for it but I was mostly just trying not to get hit with enough Faygo to destroy my camera. In the end I got some truly amazing shots of the thing and had a blast in the process. My camera even made it out in pretty good shape.

Now I think it is finally time to look at some pictures! There will be a LOT more coming soon!

Click here to see all the photos from the Insane Clown Posse show at the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos in Cave In Rock, IL.

The Gathering of the Juggalos is a yearly music festival in Cave In Rock, IL created by the Insane Clown Posse that I have now photographed three times. Every year it produces some of the best photos I have ever taken. To see my complete GOTJ archives please click here.

During this years Gathering of the Juggalos I got a chance to sit along side Camille Dodero while she interviewed the Insane Clown Posse and their proteges Twiztid. During and after the interviews I had a chance to take some photos of the guys up close and I got some shots I really liked. I was planning on running these pictures way back in August but I was waiting for Camille to run her interviews. She ultimately ended holding on to the Twiztid interview until it was time to promote their recent show in NYC. I was going to finally publish the photos then but I got stuck with all this CMJ Fest coverage and then Voodoo Fest and Fun Fun Fun and I am just now getting around to posting these photos. So click the links above to check out the interviews and then check out my photos by clicking the link below. It’s a good mix of digital and 35mm including some 35mm black and white which really brings out the violent clowniness in their eyes.

Click here to check out my portraits of the Insane Clown Posse and Twiztid from the Gathering of the Juggalos.