The Groove Music Life

At the time of this writing, the 11th Annual Gathering of the Juggalos, a four-day fan convention/concert festival organized by Insane Clown Posse and their long-running independent label Psychopathic Records, is taking place at Cave-In-Rock, Illinois. The festival, whose lineup includes the entire current Psychopathic label roster and a slew of other underground and classic hip-hop acts (past lineup have included everyone from Ice-T and Three 6 Mafia — both of whom have recorded with ICP in the past — to fellow indie travelers like Tech N9ne and Kottonmouth Kings) as well as everything from carnival rides to wrestling shows, has pretty much run under the radar, save for last year when Saturday Night Live saw fit to run a parody of the festival’s online “infomercial” – something that ICP leader Joseph “Violent J” Bruce found “hilarious” and took as “a humongous compliment”.

This year’s festival had many of the usual suspects plus one seeming thumb in the ointment: reality star and would-be recording artist Tila Tequila.

What the fuck? was the reaction I had when I watched this year’s GOTJ infomercial and saw that Ms. Tequila was booked as part of Friday night’s “Ladies Night” second-stage concert lineup, headlined by Lil Kim. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one thinking that, but I let it pass.

According to various reports (including the tacky gossip site TMZ.com), Ms. Tequila took the stage and in her own words (complete with spelling/grammatical errors that TMZ either missed or didn’t bother to correct), claimed “DUDES were throwing HUGE STONE ROCKS in my face, beer bottles that slit my eye open, almost burnt my hair on fire cuz they threw fire crackers on stage, and they even took the sh*t out of the port-0-potty and threw shit and piss at me when I was onstage. These people were trying to kill me.  So then after the last blow to my head with the firecracker they threw at me exploded, my bodygaurd and the other security grabbed me and ran as fast as they could to the shitty trailor.  Since their security SUCKS, the 2 thousand people ran after us, trying to kill me.  They almost got me so they finally reach the trailor, blood all over myself, cant stop bleeding, then all of a sudden, all 2 thousand people surround the trailor and busts the windows!!!  Even the guys INSIDE with me were shaking!  Their hands were shaking cuz they were so scared!  So 3 guys inside the trailor had to grab a table and push it over the broken windows and grabbed all the chairs they could find so hold the people from outside back.  It was scary as hell!”

There is one thing related to the ICP/Psychopathic audience that could be pointed at with regard to their reaction to Ms. Tequila’s presence. One of the contributors to the ICP/Psychopathic fan site Faygoluvers.net suggests that Psychopathic should “stop asking all these has-been mainstream people that we don’t want to see to perform at the Gathering. Save the thousands you pay these people and let’s go back to Underground acts preforming. I’d much rather see a Juggalo band do a 20 minute set than half the people stated to perform this year.” That having been said, it’s probably safe to say that, given that many of the acts booked to perform at GOTJ this year (and in years past) were picked for one good reason or another by Joseph Bruce and his ICP partner, Joseph “Shaggy 2 Dope” Utsler, to be part of the festival. These is also something to be said at having any mainstream acts show up to perform at the Gathering – given that at the 2002 festival, Bubba Sparxxx, notorious for his hit single “Miss New Booty”, got booed off the stage, an incident that gave rise to the term “Bubba Sparxxx Award” (as in, for least welcome performer at a Gathering) entering the Juggalo lexicon.

Other reports, however, have Ms. Tequila taunting the audience – not a very good idea for any performer to do to any audience (unless you’re Iggy Pop circa 1974 and you’re blessed with the intelligence to deliver classic comebacks like “You’re paying $10 and I’m making $10,000, so screw ya.”) and baring her breasts at the crowd, which, according to an eyewitness account given to CNN, pissed the crowd off even more.

It probably doesn’t help that Ms. Tequila has a reputation for exaggerating every incident in her personal life just to keep her name in the spotlight one way or another. At least three times, she has claimed on Twitter and elsewhere to be pregnant… and one of the alleged fathers of her mythical fetuses, says Ms. Tequila, was rapper The Game. who had no trouble denying her claims. She also went on a Twitter spree earlier this year when she bumped her head on a wall and proceeded to exaggerate the extent of her condition.

The incident at GOTJ gave her another excuse to go on a Twitter rant, threatening to sue the organizers and bankrupt ICP and their label. One wonders if she’ll leave out the fact that she tweeted her plan to bring a “TON of cool shit [to] spray at the crowd”.

Wait a second. She was going to bring stuff to “spray at the crowd.”

Um, Ms. Tequila? The last time I checked, the only act that was allowed to spray anything at an Insane Clown Posse audience is Insane Clown Posse themselves… that anything being sprayed would happen to be random varieties of the soft drink brand Faygo:

Simply put, if she did this as promised on Twitter, then an audience of ICP fans certainly got upset at the fact that an F-list internet celebrity with little or no discernible talent at anything (other than being, for lack of a shorter and kinder description, a professional attention whore) was stealing parts of J’s and Shaggy’s onstage shtick.

Also, with regard for her habit of constantly drawing attention to herself, it should be noted that Ms. Tequila herself submitted the story of the incident to TMZ earlier Saturday. All of the wounds she displays in the photos – all taken by her lonesome like the MySpace “celebrity” that she is – appear rather superficial.

When I first heard of the incident early Saturday evening, I joked on Twitter that the incident made me a bigger ICP fan. (I am an ICP fan and this incident did nothing to lessen that, especially since it isn’t their fault – they did want her to perform there and I’m sure J and Shaggy aren’t too happy with the incident either.) Given the nature of firing off the joke/tweet so quickly, I had to apologize and clarify that I wasn’t advocating violence against women at all. My reaction would have been different if it had been someone I actually liked, obviously. But from most of the reactions I’ve seen online about this incident, it’s safe to say that Tila Tequila isn’t exactly gaining a whole lot of sympathy for her plight. Tweeting your every move, no matter how exaggerated or fabricated, will certainly be a good reason why.

My clarification aside, the only other thing I should have to apologize for is that I devoted blog space to this walking mattress cover in the first place!