Photo by Paula Court

Here we are, snapped by the great Paula Court!
From left: Neal Medlyn, Casey Bartolucci, Bridie Coughlan, Carmine Covelli, Farris Craddock, Michelle Dean, Ben Demarest, Larry Krone, Shawn McLaughlin

We sold out all of our performances and most of the added matinee and lots of great things were written about the show:

Observer.com’s Gallerist!

Culture Spy!

Dossier Journal!

Uncollapse!

I’ll also be doing an extended excerpt of the tent sequence at CalArts on Feb. 23rd and we’re looking into touring possibilities, so if you or someone you know would like us to bring the show to a town near you, let me know! Or just post something below in the comments!

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By Bridie Coughlan:
“When we first started talking about Juggalos at rehearsal, I wondered where women fit in to this seemingly caveman culture. Neal estimated that almost half of the Gathering attendees were Juggalettes and that surprised me. What could attract women to a festival celebrating music that is overtly objectifying and violent towards them? I’m trying to break it down as someone who is female and loves hip hop in general despite it’s misogynistic overtones. It occurred to me that I especially get into lyrics about “bitches and hoes.” I guess part of me thinks it’s funny in an ironic way, but another part of me gets this weird sense of empowerment from degrading my gender that I had never thought about. Perhaps it’s a way of taking it back. I started to understand a bit about the attraction of being a Juggalette in a Juggalo world. Maybe it feels like you’re in on the joke and if you prove that it doesn’t bother you or even that you embrace it, you don’t have to be one of those “bitches” they’re talking about.

One thing that fascinates me about the Juggalettes that I’ve seen in American Juggalo and various pictures is that they seem to be so comfortable with nudity. Obviously the best way to attract male attention is to “Show your tits!” — and they do. Yes, I know that a lot of them are on a lot of drugs and I guess that contributes to their loss of inhibition. But they have a sense of casual comfort in their nudity that you don’t see when it’s just a drunk girl getting naked at a party. It’s not as insecure. Despite the content of their music, they don’t seem to feel objectified. They seem empowered. I’m a woman who, like most, will go to painstaking lengths to ensure that every bodily imperfection is carefully hidden away. Because of that, when I see a Juggalette in all her glory, it inspires me. I want to start a slow clap for her. Juggalettes don’t wear Spanx. They just “don’t give a fuck!”

The book Self-Made Man by Norah Vincent is about a woman who lives as a man for a year and ends up participating in one of Robert Bly’s men’s movement retreats, which is paralleled to the Gathering in our show. Bly encourages men to drag up their “Wild Man” inside as a way to self-actualization and freedom. While the idea of “men’s liberation” might make a feminist cringe, her observations show how intense the pressure can be to be a well-rounded man in a post-feminist society. One of Vincent’s fellow retreat attendees says, “It is women who are paying the highest price for men’s dysfunction.” Maybe the Jugalettes are in on that. We want our men to be both masculine and sensitive. Maybe they realize that they’ve found a group of men who are working out their shit through crude masculine energy, therefore being set free emotionally (according to Bly’s philosophy). In the documentary American Juggalo, one Juggalo talks about how ICP changed him, that he grew up well because of this culture. “I can cook like a mother fucker. I want to find a skinny ass little bitch and make her fat and we can loose weight together and we’ll bond.” How sweet is that? One Juggalette says of her male counterparts, “They’re a special breed. I just love ‘em, so carefree and free spirited and don’t give a fuck.” Maybe the Juggalo is the perfect man?”

By Michelle Dean:

“So, I was watching Inside “Deep Throat” – a documentary about the notorious flick.  The documentary talked about how the Nixon administration came after the porn industry, even charging the actors with crimes.  Then it went on to state that the feminist movement was even more detrimental to the industry, as women picketed adult film theatres and made media appearances to exclaim the damaging effects of pornographic movies due to their degrading nature, more specifically that they were/are degrading to women.  And my gut reaction to this was, “Aw, man.  Party poopers….”

Then that made me feel guilty, like I was somehow a traitor to my gender for not aligning to the idea.

Then THAT made me angry.  Well…at least frustrated.  The idea that I have to evaluate everything I might want to do/say/watch against a criterion:  might this somehow be disadvantageous to some cause somewhere on the planet?  Who can live under that pressure???? A week later, Neal asked if I had any thoughts about ICP, Juggalos/Juggalettes, etc, from a female perspective.  So I re-watched American Juggalo to refresh my reactions and see what spurred me.   And I was jealous of the women in the documentary…..because THEY didn’t seem distraught about the potential social implications of their presence at the Gathering!!

So, I’ve decided.  I refuse to carry the weight of this any further.  Here’s how I’ve made peace with it all:

1.       Laws set aside, and accepted, for the purposes of this blog, who is the authority on what is damaging to females?  A whole S&M industry exists because there are people—male and female—who enjoy a number of activities that I, personally, would find VERY degrading.  I believe that there isn’t necessarily a list of items and actions that are demeaning.  I believe there is a spectrum from benign to irreparable.  And where one’s tolerance level falls along that spectrum differs by person.

2.       The cause/effect linkage between __X__ factor and the state of the female existence isn’t as clear as it would need to be to warrant weighing every single decision about what to buy/wear/say against a non-existent list (see item 1).

3.       Separate but equal has never worked.  Bridging differences only comes from exposure, and (potentially) conflict, which leads to changed perspectives. 

4.       All things social (ills, movements, norms, taboos) begin and end in the hearts and minds of individuals.  This is where change happens.

5.       How incredibly paternalistic for anyone to assume that the females at the Gathering aren’t smart or cognizant enough to remove themselves from a situation that is damaging to them!!  Setting aside the influence of drugs and peer pressure on individual behavior, can we not trust these women to make a determination about whether or not they LIKE the music, the men, the experience??  The assumption that they can’t….that’s offensive!

Ergo….I will continue to evaluate what to do/say/watch/wear/attend based upon a criterion:  “do I wanna?” I’m going to trust that I am, and others are, where they want to be and doing what they want to do.  And when faced with a situation/song/group that doesn’t feel right, then I/we will disengage as appropriate.  I’m going to turn on my inner Juggalo and “just don’t give a fuck” every once in a while.”

MTV HIVE!!!!

ARTFORUM!!!

PITCHFORK!

Oh No They Didn’t!

The Village Voice!

Consequence of Sound!

Flavorwire!

Paste Magazine!

True Juggalo Family!!

Bust Magazine!

Gallerist’s “9 Things to Do”!

NEAL MEDLYN’S WEIRD DUDE ENERGY

You guys should check out this great blog!

When I first talked to the Kitchen about doing this show, I talked to Matthew Lyons about my interest in men, together, feeling feelings and creating communities. He told me about this blog Weird Dude Energy, which, in addition to being a regular source of inspiration, was almost the name of this show.

I decided against it, for various reasons, but I decided in its honor to regale you with my own Weird Dude Energy stories:

ME AND FARRIS IN A HOTEL ROOM, IN A FIELD, IN A CAR

This one co-worker of ours used to like to watch Full Metal Jacket and laugh and laugh. We did not know this and went to his shitty, rent by the month, hotel in order to buy drugs. He then popped in his Full Metal Jacket tape and started cracking up.

Farris and I never went back there again.

We had several such misadventures during this period:

This guy nicknamed Stick who wanted us to hang out with him and his uzi and wait “for these guys who were gonna come over and start some shit.”

We also got into some kind of weird feud with this guy who, although we were feuding with him, we’d still go get high with him. We would key his truck, then we’d go ride out into the woods.

Anyway, one night after the keying, he drove us really far out into the middle of nowhere, then left the road and drove into the middle of some deep dark nowhere field.

He got out of the cab of his truck, climbed in the back with us, took a flash polaroid and said he wanted something to remember us by.

I have never been so convinced I was going to die.

ME AND CHRIS AND MIKE IN THE CAR, FEELING THINGS

My friend Chris, with whom I won that rap contest I told you about, at one point was in my Chevette with me and we were driving around on some oil top roads, talking. “I Can’t Make You Love Me” came on the radio and we went silent and quietly sang it to ourselves.

Later, my friend Mike and I used to play noise music once a week at a coffee shop in Nacogdoches, Texas. Not sure why the owner allowed us to do this, but he did, as long as we went last each night. He would do horrible sounding things with a record player and I would attack my ‘prepared’ guitar.

Then, once on the ride home, “Landslide” came on and we too stopped talking and sang along. Very quietly.

THE LEGACY OF IT’S LIKE WE’RE INFILTRATORS

photo by Ada Calhoun for the Austin Chronicle in 2000

I started performing while living briefly in Austin, Texas. Back in 2000, when I made a new show every week and performed them in hotel rooms, in a public park gazebo, on the sidewalk, and in various art galleries and coffee shop poetry open mics, I did a show called It’s Like We’re Infiltrators. The show was kind of a glorious disaster. There were 6 of us and only two people in the audience: one a guy who had seen my posters around Austin (a xerox of my drivers license and the show info) and who convinced his begrudging roommate to come see what kind of person puts up posters like that. The roommate turned out to be a reporter for the Austin Chronicle who wrote a lengthy profile of me (the only one ever, so far) and who subsequently I dated and married and currently live with.

But back to the disaster. We did the show only one time at the aforementioned gazebo park in Austin. We had some desk lamps, music equipment and other such stuff. My friend Danny played improvised noise, our friend Trevor wandered about and pretended to type on his Mac desktop (which he brought at his own behest. I don’t know why he brought it. But I liked it) My friend Michelle’s son drew pictures. Michelle, Farris and I took turns doing various activities and then read from a hundred or so pages of instant message conversations between Michelle and I that I had printed out. Instant messaging was very new then, see, as we’re talking about the year 2000. Afterward, we went to see bratmobile play at Red Eyed Fly.

I bring all this up because I can’t stop thinking about that show while working on Wicked Clown Love (Feb. 2-4, 2012 at the Kitchen! Be there mutha facko!)

On the one hand, I love and want that total abandon of that show. To an extent that I haven’t had in my work in a while, I want to just assemble a bunch of things, get some people to sit and watch, set all the elements spinning and see what happens.

I am doing that to a certain extent with this show, but it’s also just a part of what I want to make and how I work now that I’m exerting a lot more control over the proceedings than I did with It’s Like We’re Infiltrators.

Which could mean that I’m more conservative now or something. That I’m less fucking crazy. That I care more. Or it could be that exerting some sort of control nowadays lets me do bigger things, let’s me work more things in and focus those things and do more.

Who knows which it is. I don’t actually care on some level. I see people get bogged down and lost and academic so much nowadays. I try to practice intuitive trust in my work and in what i think and want and not analyze it too much. Not to be some sort of punk, but just because I don’t want to be overcome by artistic neurosis. I have plenty of artistic neuroses, but I feel like it’s a spiritual/artistic practice to embrace Swagger, Trust, and Time Limits to get at something beyond what the fuck I worry about, what people will think, what I will think.

I can do my late night crying and jealousy and whining over who gets bigger commissions than me, who’s hotter than me, boo hoo, etc. But I want it to happen in the privacy of my own bathtub. To get my work done I need to believe and feel: There’s very little time. I’m the Best. Let’s go out there and fucking kill this shit.

So I guess that’s why I think about It’s Like We’re Infiltrators a lot now. Those elements, that willingness is something I always want, especially in Wicked Clown Love. Even if I do things with more rigor now, I still just want to go out and fucking do that shit.

HARRIET MARTINEAU

Speaking of sampling, I have a bachelor’s degree from Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas in Sociology. (I also have enough credits to have gotten a degree in anthropology/archaeology and Spanish, but, you know, I had to pick one).

My favorite sociological theorist was

Harriet Martineau!

Harriet Martineau, who didn’t so much “invent” her own branch of sociological theory as re-interpret, organize, translate and spin the theories of others. This is not a knock. I mean come on, who do Auguste Comte or for that matter Weber, Durkheim, and Marx and them think they are kidding? Those theories are observations, not inventions, so her observations of those observations, especially given that she spun them are her own. But you know how people get in this ongoing semantic and cultural argument over authenticity, originality, copyright and theft…

Point is, aside from really making me understand and get all fired up about the fallacies of Original Thought, Genius and Structural thinking, Harriet Martineau also reconnected me with the idea of sampling and re-constituting and appropriation and all that (which I discussed more a while ago.)

I love how Harriet Martineau’s work puts the lie to all that individual, original person, working alone in the wilderness and Coming Up With Their Big Idea All By Themselves stuff.

Nowadays, I believe in geniuses again, cuz I’ve known a bunch, but I still don’t think that shit happens in a vacuum of Authentic Individuality. Beyonce stole from Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, I stole from Beyonce, we’re all stealing from Michael Jackson, who stole from James Brown, who stole from church, who stole from… etc etc etc.

We’re all criminals and we’re all making brand new shit.

NEAL MEDLYN’S RAP MEMORIES THRU THE YEARS

Besides the sampling aspect, which I already discussed here, hip hop itself had a huge impact on me, so it’s been great to re-think all of that as I work on this show.

Here’s some things that working on this show has made me think about:

How I got picked up at a church lock-in by these teens who were going to drop me off at the bowling alley. I sat in the back seat while the one guy in the front seat, who, even though it was nighttime, was wearing what I call Mazzio’s Pizza sunglasses*. He and his other hyped up friend, the driver, were blasting Licensed to Ill by Beastie Boys. I had never heard anything like that and I immediately thought it was the craziest fucking thing I’d ever heard.

I met a kid at a high school football game who was charging a quarter to rap LL Cool J’s I Need Love. I believed this to be a great business plan. I learned I Need Love and Paul Revere and charged people a quarter to hear me rap them on the school bus.

I secretly bought, from KMart, I think, a tape called Monsters of Rap (or something) and Rebel Without a Pause by Public Enemy was the last song on there. I could not believe how fucking cool it was that they had that same scraping noise repeat over and over for the whole song. My friend Kirk freaked out he hated that sound so much which made me burst out laughing and sealed my budding love for P.E. and probably effected the entire course of my artistic life. I feel like I try to put something like that scraping noise in everything I do. Figuratively, I mean.

Later, I became a huge Public Enemy fan. I had the Malcolm X shirt like several other kids at my school. There was a brief walk-out at my school when the principal banned them. I got into XClan and various other black nationalist hip hop groups. I asked a Nation of Islam guy I saw on a visit to Austin for one of his newspapers. He seemed puzzled. This began a long personal history of me identifying with things and people and movements that I am not “supposed” to belong to or be inspired by.

My friend Chris and I started a hard core rap group. I loved Chris for lots of reasons, one of them being how he kept trying to convince someone we knew that it was OK for him to steal her hair pick because Chris was black. Also, his brother Adjie once ripped the Cadillac symbol off the principal’s car and wore it to school. He was promptly caught by the principal and, I think, expelled. Adjie also told Kenneth Cecil he’d punch him in his fucking ear if Kenneth didn’t shut up. I thought this was a figure of speech but Kenneth kept at it and Adjie punched him in his ear. For real. This made me laugh.

Anyway, Chris and I had a rap group. We wrote a song about drugs and won a D-FY-IT (drug free youth in texas) rap contest with the song. We wore military fatigues and had dancers behind us doing S1W style shit. I made the music for the song and there were all these alarms and gun sounds and snare drums. I threw my mike down at the end of the song. We won $500.

In the Sam Goody in the Tyler, Texas mall, they had an issue of Word Up (I think) with NWA on the cover. They seemed like the scariest, most hardcore people imaginable and I wanted that energy. Eazy E had one lens of his Mazzio’s style sunglasses popped out. Which isn’t even cool, really, but it just seemed so punk and so crazy, like “don’t fuck with me, i’m the kind of person who doesn’t even give a fuck that my sunglasses are busted, i will stone cold wear them to this photo shoot. go fuck yourself.”

I felt the same way about the cover of that Geto Boys album where, it seems, they decided to shoot their album cover while Bushwick Bill was in the hospital after he got shot. That is fucking CRAZY.

So, for all these reasons, I didn’t really listen to a band that played live instruments until the early 90s.

NOTES –

* Mazzio’s was a pizza chain I loved as a kid and they had a bunch of video games and also they gave out these faux RayBan sunglasses that were popular in the 80s, perhaps because of Miami Vice. I loved Miami Vice and I dressed like Don Johnson every day in the 4th or 5th grade. I always had a pair of Mazzio’s sunglasses clipped in my shirt. I never put them on, they just hung there for looks.

ICP AS A HIP HOP CARGO CULT

Besides the sampling aspect, which I already discussed here, hip hop itself had a huge impact on me, so it’s been great to re-think all of that as I work on this show.

In regards to ICP, one of the things that’s been so interesting is how Insane Clown Posse’s version of hip hop is almost like those cargo cults.

The US military, as part of WWII, set themselves up a variety of islands in the South Pacific that had previously had little or no contact with Americans. Some of these places developed what are called cargo cults, where what they understood of America based on these encounters became a sort of religion of America in its third-hand derivation. Mike Daisey did a brilliant show a few years ago that touched on cargo cults at the Public Theater.

ICP’s version of rap is kind of like a hip hop cargo cult to me. Rap exploded out into world culture and these guys in Detroit took it in and partially because of who they are and partially as a function of being separate from the official conversation of hip hop,  it became this other thing. Instead of rapping about Hennessy, they rap about Faygo, instead of being gang members in South Central Los Angeles (although they toyed with that early on), they’re wicked clowns, instead of tales from the coke game in Brooklyn, they have an elaborate Dungeons & Dragons style mythology called the Dark Carnival where every album is a new facet of the over arching mythology.

It’s fascinating, I think, to see how ICP reinforces and departs from the more official versions of rap.

SAMPLING CHANGED MY WHOLE FUCKING LIFE

My Michael Jackson Thriller record on my Fisher Price record player, and watching him on Motown 25 fucking demolish everyone with his talent (while lipsyncing!!!!) made me want to be a performer.

Sampling in hip hop established what I would do as a performer.

Sampling blew my fucking mind.

I distinctly remember sitting in my room as a kid, listening to songs with samples and drum machines and being all:

Wait, hold up. These people take songs you already knew, play bits of them in some new arrangement with a drum machine beat?? And they don’t have a band! They just have a guy with a record player playing that song! And he’s owning up to it because he’s moving the record back and forth! And that scratching noise is so fucking awesome! And it’s noise, it’s not even music! And it’s like a fuck you to “actual” recorded instruments! It’s the fucking future!!

AND I know that song that’s sampled! So it’s like they’re doing all this stuff over a song I already know, making it something else entirely but still reflecting the sampled work! It’s not even necessarily always a comment on the “original” song! It’s a new song! One that speaks through, within and without the other song!!

I followed the court cases over sampling, believing in my heart that the American legal system would find a way to say sampling is OK. After all, it’s the most American thing I can think of.

We killed or put away the authentic inhabitants of this land and since then have built an entire culture of stealing and appropriating and sampling. My white southern preacher using cadences of African American church services, themselves mashed up African and European and American Protestant religious acts, and all those things sampled and sexualized and secularized and re-invented by James Brown, et al, and then now a guy with two turntables looping, sampling, and scraping a needle across ALL OF THAT while someone else rapped about some other thing, all folding up together into a New and Novel Artistic Experience.

So anyway, after all these years, with plenty of time spent playing and experiencing punk music and its ethos; years spent delving into and exploring the strategies of experimental music; the past decade or more making performance art and moving about in contemporary performance and art; ALL those things are processed through and in reference, to me, to sampling, hip hop and America.

So there’s that.

Last night he grabbed a cup of coffee while I grabbed a beer (time differences, see) and we got down to business!