On the Road Again
Live Reviews:

Insane Clown Posse with Twiztid
November 5, 1999
The Warehouse, Toronto

Insane Clown Posse

Insane Clown Posse concerts ain't about the music, but they sure are interesting.

Take their recent trip to Toronto for example. The show was originally scheduled to take place Wednesday, Nov. 3, but the band canceled the show on the day of because of "scheduling difficulties," instead rescheduling it for Friday Nov. 5. While this wasn't interesting in itself, what was interesting was the number of reportedly lost-looking teenage Juggalos wandering around downtown Toronto on the third, faces painted to mimic their clown heroes, forced to wait around four hours before their parents came back downtown to pick them up and whisk them back to their comfortable suburban homes in Brampton or wherever. Or they went back home to Scarborough and ditched the cab a block away from their apartment building.

At any rate, whether it was because of a lack of media attention (people don't quite seem to hate ICP here the way the American media are so vitriolic over them) or because of the date change, The Warehouse wasn't exactly filled to capacity. Canadians aren't as sold on the whole Limp Bizkit/Kid Rock phenomenon, so it makes sense that the kids wouldn't be as down with the clowns either.

Still, when you first get to the venue of an ICP show you're immediately struck by how bigthey are Ñ an image bolstered by the two immaculately decaled tour buses and a humongous transport truck no doubt brought along for the express purpose of carting across North America jugs of their cult-stage prop, Faygo soda. Small-time bands don't have big shit like that and it immediately causes one to reflect that ICP have sold 500,000 copies of their latest record in the States Ñ and that's only one microdot in their all-out consumer assault on the teenage boy market.

Devious innovation No. 2: The Merch table. For a bunch of middling white rappers with a lame gimmick, you just had to take one quick look at what stuff they had for sale to realize how F'n' brilliant these guys really are. They've got the ICP hockey jerseys ($250 Cdn, oddly, nobody seemed to be buying any), t-shirts, hats, action figures, comic books, posters and dolls. There's also the limited edition, rare CDs which you can only buy AT THE SHOWS which draw the kids. It's pure cross-promotion genius, the fans go to the show not just for the show, but to buy all the stuff they can't get anywhere else. I didn't go to near the table to check all the stuff out real close though, I couldn't, the damn table was swarming with kids throwing their wallets.

Devious innovation No. 3:Twiztid. What happens in America when someone has a good idea? Somebody else copies it. Watching Twiztid up on stage reaffirmed how smart ICP are. ICP are making millions of dollars and you know some dude is gonna copy their gimmick, so who better to rip off their idea than themselves. So ICP start their own label, create their own rip-off band (right down to the one fat guy, one skinny guy look), put out the record, then prop the band up on their own tour and voila, ICP are making money off of their own imitators. Genius.

Then of course there's the music. Face it, white kids are scared of rap. So what better way to sell the hip-hop than frame it terms that white kids won't find culturally incomprehensible. There's no "hoods" in the suburbs, but there sure are a lot of chicks who'd dis a pimply teenage boy, and there are a lot of teenage boys who surely fantasize about becoming superhuman killer clowns from outer space who take no shit from anyone. This is where ICP excel, they push the same buttons that Twisted Sister did in the '80s, except that 15 years on, you have to be waaay more vulgar to get your message across. Basically, the same type of kid who loved Dungeons & Dragonsand Iron Maiden 10 years ago are into Playstation and ICP now.

That said, both ICP and Twiztid are pretty weak live. If not for the fascinating display of catchphrase knowledge that the crowd displayed during every song and ICP's trademark throwing of literally thousands of gallons of Faygo soda onto the loving-it crowd, the show would be completely forgettable.

I like the Insane Clown Posse. Their song they do with Ol' Dirty Bastard is one of the funniest things I've ever heard. They're more entertaining wrestlers than Hulk Hogan. They're almost as smart as David Bowie when it comes to music business. And it's easy to sympathize with them knowing that so many people absolutely hate them. Still, when contemplating the fate of Insane Clown Posse, I can't help but think they're just a market-savvy Green Jelly.