The special guest for the opening ceremony on Thursday night was
Bone Thugs N Harmony. It was supposed to be a secret, but pretty much everybody knew well in advance. It didn't matter though because it was awesome to get to see such an iconic group perform live.
Friday night's lineup was
Wolfpac,
Jumpsteady,
Anybody Killa,
DJ Swamp and
Dark Lotus. The crowd was extremely disrespectful to
DJ Swamp and spent most of his set throwing shit at him, which is a damn shame because he's a talented dude and he was putting on a great show. I got to meet him over the weekend and he was a hell of a nice guy, and he certainly deserved a hell of a lot better treatment than he got.
Dark Lotus was awesome as always, but it would have been a lot more awesome if the positive energy that we had for them was going for the whole night.
Saturday started off with
Zug Izland. Next up was
Blaze Ya Dead Homie followed by
Esham. All three sets were great and went off without a hitch. Things took a turn for the worse when
Kurupt took the stage. The crowd were just flat out brutal to that dude. I don't know if they're just dead set on booing whoever performs before the headliner, of if they were annoyed that
Kurupt kept randomly shouting out Cleveland. Whatever the reason, the way he was treated was completely uncalled for. He threw a mic into the crowd and stormed off stage just a few songs into his set, and quite frankly, I don't blame him a bit. They're going to need to figure this shit out because it feels like they're just picking out special guest performers to give the
Bubba Sparxxx treatment just for the sake of doing it and it's flat out lame. Naturally the crowd was back to having fun when
Twiztid closed out the night and they had a hell of a set, but If I'm being honest, I went to sleep on Saturday night feeling pretty ashamed to be associated with a lot of the people standing next to me in the pit.
Sunday night went a lot smoother.
Tech N9ne led off the night and
Vanilla Ice was next. Both are
Juggalo favorites, so there was no issues expected, but next up was
Ol' Dirty Bastard and there was some tension in the air. He's a rapper who is not a member of
Psychopathic Records, he's had mainstream success, and he was going on right before
ICP... all of the elements that have led to some pretty shitty crowd behavior. They gave
ODB a glowing introduction before he took the stage. I don't remember exactly what was said, but the subtext here was clear... they were pleading with the crowd to show some respect. Look, I don't know a damn thing about rap or hip hop, but I know that
ODB is a legend and that we were lucky to see him perform. Thankfully, their words did not fall on deaf ears and
ODB got through his full set with the crowd showing him the respect that he deserves. Last but not least, the
Insane Clown Posse closed out the show on Sunday night with an incredible set.
Don't take what I'm about to say the wrong way, but I think this is going to be my last
Gathering for a while. I first got into
ICP in 1997 from their work in pro wrestling with
ECW,
WCW and
WWF. A few friends and I got to meet
Violent J four years ago at the
Comfort Inn in
Hazleton. He was a hell of a nice guy and spent an hour and a half chilling with us in the lobby at 2:00 am talking about life, music, movies, and an idea that he and
Shaggy were working on for an event that became the annual
Gathering Of The Juggalos. I've made a lot of friends at the shows and have had a hell of a lot of fun, but money is tight these days and the drama between different factions of
Juggalos has been getting on my nerves. I started coming to these events to escape that kind of bullshit, not to see it played out with
Faygo and clown paint. I may end up changing my mind, but for right now, I think I'm going to need to back away from this scene for a little while and focus on other aspects of life.
