INTERVIEW: NATHAN RABIN ON THE JUGGALO-PHISHHEAD NEXUS
Diehard fans aren't made. They're called.
Ask a Bengals fan, or a Mets fan, or a Phish fan. Nobody gets into Phish music because Phish music is cool. We get into it and we bend our lives around it because we can't not do that.
Sometimes, nobody seems to understand. But any Juggalo would, and that's the axis of rotation for Nathan Rabin's new book You Don't Know Me But You Don't Like Me.
Rabin, who recently left his post as Head Writer at The A.V. Club, compares and contrasts the Phish and Insane Clown Posse communities through the lens of his own personal and professional turmoil. We caught up with Rabin as he finished a promotional stop in Madison, WI.
It seems like you enjoy re-examining easy targets that are scorned by pop culture critics – not just Phish and ICP, but also through your My Year of Flops and Ephemereview series.
Are you serving a larger personal thesis?
I definitely am serving a larger personal thesis. When I began writing My Year Of Flops in early 2007, I stumbled upon my purpose as an advocate for the underdog. My first idea for the series that became My World of Flops was to spend a year writing about either art house classics or Oscar winners. I'm glad both of those were nixed because my heart really wasn't in them: it was with the losers, the misunderstood, and the carnival freaks.
You Don't Know Me But You Don't Like Me is a continuation and ultimate manifestation of this instinct. It's appropriate that it takes its name from a Buck Owens song that he recorded with Dwight Yoakam, and has a title that could apply to many of the films I wrote about for My Year Of Flops.
Juggalos in particular have been treated as sub-human by people who've never taken the time to talk to them or imagine that there’s a nice young man behind the Hatchet Man neck tattoo. The same thing with Phish: I was among the people who sneered at them in my writing without really taking the time to listen to them or really understand what they're about. There's a big difference between hearing and listening, and it wasn't until I really started listening to ICP and Phish that this book came alive and began to feel genuine and not like some weird vanity project from someone who had lost the plot and gone upriver.
Trying to find the value in entertainment that's considered devoid of value has been an obsession for a very long time and will continue to be.
There was an easier way to go about writing this book, which is to say, “I’m a lab technician performing an experiment, and here’s my hypothesis and my data, but I’m not part of the experiment.” Can you describe the moment you knew you couldn’t do that book, but had to do something deeper?
It happened on 5/27/11 at Bethel Woods. I had been careening towards a breakdown for months, if not a year. Everything was spinning out of control and I had no idea how I would finish the book. Then I had this epiphany that in order to tell this story honestly it would have to be my story, and while that was self-indulgent, it was also necessary.
I remembered that Hunter Thompson failed to cover the Mint 400 race that Sports Illustrated was paying him to write about, but he got Fear and Loathing out of it. I just knew I couldn't write the anthropological survey of fan subcultures I had signed on to write, for a multitude of reasons: I didn't have the journalistic skills, I was too painfully self-conscious, and I ran out of money. I was setting myself up to fail on some level, but I was also setting myself up to writing something unique.
One of the vigorous defenses you present for ICP relates to the “Miracles” video – which is ironically the thing that first made you want to ridicule them. I think a lot of people who watched that came away thinking, “These guys aren’t quantum physicists but they’re talking about having wonder in your life. How can you hate them for that?”
That video introduced ICP to a whole new audience. Sure, people mocked them for it, but J is a savvy businessman and a whole lot of people watching your video over and over again is good business.
"Miracles" brought the group back in a major way. It's been performed at Gatherings I have attended so I don't think they're ashamed of it at all. I think the song provides an interesting look inside the other side of Insane Clown Posse: the ambitious, moralistic, world-building component of their music, business, lifestyle and subculture (and it really is all four things). Besides, they are literally clowns so I think they're pretty comfortable with being laughed at. It helps that ICP is pretty damn funny, and outside "Miracles," most of the abundant laughs to be found in their music is intentional.
ICP’s inner carny tells them that if people are laughing at you, then they're paying attention.
You describe in detail the time when you watched Juggalos attack and degrade Tela Tequila at the Gathering, and it is uncomfortable to read. At any point, were you close to turning around and going home?
No, because Cave-In-Rock is about seven hours from Chicago and many more hours from just about anything. So even if we had decided to turn around and go home, it would have taken us a very long time. Also, shit gets so weird so quickly at The Gathering that the Tequila thing almost seemed maybe abnormal, but also not that crazy in a relative way.
What was your peak moment at a Phish show?
Getting to watch backstage at Super Ball in 2011 was also almost overwhelmingly amazing. The Phish show in Chicago after I proposed to my wife is tough to beat from a nostalgia perspective.
ICP?
Their climactic performance at my second and third Gatherings were fucking amazing. They really are incredible entertainers and I liked that both performances climaxed with fireworks just like Super Ball back in 2011. I've also experienced some amazing stand-up comedy at The Gathering: Bobcat Goldthwait delivered a set for the ages.
Fans often use Phish music gateway to other music, like the artists they cover or collaborate with. Have you come to any new music by way of Phish since becoming a fan?
It works the opposite for me: I've come to see some of the music Phish covers as Phish songs. I recently borrowed a friend's hard drive and ripped a bunch of music and was delighted to see "Boogie On Reggae Woman", which I've seen Phish perform so often that I've come to think of it as a Phish song. When I saw it I thought, "Sweet! Stevie Wonder doing Phish!"
It's pretty backwards but I've come to associate every song and band they cover with Phish, particularly The Talking Heads and Rolling Stones.
See you on the road this summer?
God willing. If I had my druthers I would follow Phish extensively, but I have a new job I'm crazy about for a website that launches in about a month (it's called The Dissolve, and it's the new film site over at Pitchfork), so I have to be judicious in my Phish attendance.
You Don't Know Me But You Don't Like Me is available in e-book and paperback formats.
Comments
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Phish.net
The Mockingbird Foundation
@bertoletdown said: Hilarious -- I have a friend who falls under both categories, the poor bastard.
Regarding ICP, it is indeed important to recognize concerns like these for what they are -- misunderstandings or prejudices. When the assumption you're trying to interpret relates to violence, however, it's just a tougher pill to swallow (as opposed to, for example, drug use, personal beliefs, values etc.).
All the more reason to satisfy my curiosity by learning more about it. It looks like I'll have to swing by my bookstore this week and grab a copy of the book. Thanks for sharing the interview!
Some movies are incredibly violent and abhorrent too. We (hopefully) don't jump to the conclusion that the people making them are actually championing such ideas.
This is part of my more general idea about how strange it is that rappers aren't allowed to inhabit characters in their music... Being a popular rapper is almost like a twisted form of method acting. Most of the time you're maintaining the facade that you are the character you rap as..But surely the guard is let down at certain times.
It's what makes Rick Ross in particular such a fascinating figure. He was just a middling fat rapper with a good voice. Then people found out he had worked in the prison system, and it was like all his coke dealer bonafides went up in smoke. Everyone assumed that he'd just disappear after that. Instead it freed him to take his boasts to truly herculean levels. There wasn't any expectation of being anchored to reality anymore (Although he does give pinpoint details like very few other rappers).
If Ross had come out on his own and gone "Hey guys. As you can tell by the fact that I stole a drug dealer's name. I'm not a real drug dealer. But like Scorcese or De Palma I want to tell these kind of stories. Hopefully nobody minds the fact that they're fictional" people would have immediately given up on him. That suspension of disbelief is a huge part of what makes gangster rap feel so visceral.
But then he had that "Put molly in her drink, she ain't even know it, took her home and enjoyed that, she ain't even know it" - people lost. their. fucking. minds. Is it an abhorrent thought? Clearly. But is it SO far out of line with Ross's persona? A character that is tight with the Medellin cartel, who imports cocaine and murders people in the streets on a daily basis?
Here's where I'm bound to catch some shit.
I understand. Rape effects millions of people. Survivors and their family members. But so does drug abuse. So does drug war related shootouts in the streets. I'm not at all suggesting that people should be organizing to protest music.. but maybe the rape line got hammered down because they have such well organized advocacy groups?
It's hard to imagine being Len Bias' mother and seeing 'crack rap' become this huge thing. Or the mother of any of the countless people who have died in the many battles of the drug war. But it gets back to my point.. Rick Ross's character is an evil person. He might rape somebody. He might gut a baby to leave a message. So might Scarface. Or Benny Blanco or Frank White.
Some rappers have had insanely criminal pasts. But they aren't living up to their lyrics. Saying that they're all liars and actors isn't trying to diminish the wild shit they might have been through. But it's true.
With ICP, the face paint and the overarching world-building narrative throws the gauntlet down right away. Like Deltron 3030 or Dr. Octagon or the Leak Brothers, this is a fully admitted fictional pursuit. But since it's rap- where there's this weird idea of an authenticity contest meaning anything. People see these terrible lyrics and think that ICP must be promoting these activities.
Sorry this is so scatterbrained. I really want to sit down and arrange my thoughts on gangster rap. A music I love more than any other.
I've almost finished with "You Don't Know Me But You Don't Like Me" and find the author's descriptions of Phish and its community seeking ecstatic transcendance in the music -- coming from a former skeptic and critic who decided to immerse himself in the culture and actually listen to the music -- was dead on and that the author "gets it".
I knew very little about ICP and its music and community except for the stereotypic knee jerk derision they provide among many, but after reading Rabin's book came away with a much more sympathetic and positive take on the band. Their gatherings aren't so different than Phish festivals, where "outsiders" to white-bread culture find community among like-minded people.
As to violence in the lyrics, this passage from late in the book is instructive:
.
I didn't learn much I didn't know about Phish fandom, but came away from Rabin's book with a much better understanding of where ICP and Juggalos are coming from and the similarities with our cultural fringe being greater than our differences. I highly recommend Rabin's book. A good, quick summer read.
“You find Phish. It changes your life and rewires your circuitry, you grow up and do the college, job, marriage thing but you still go to shows now and then because it’s part of your history, it’s part of your past, it’s part of who you are.”