Ok, so some times I come up with a profound observation/idea only to find that it has an established history/community. This is kindof like that, but moreover a note on how blogs can be months ahead of print media on hot stories.

Judging/juggling from my halloween era article, I totally beat the local rag The Statesman Journal to a hot ass breaking news bit. I wrote up a press release for the Calving Johnson/Ian Svenonius show I booked for the lovely Coffee House Cafe in town, and sent it off to the mill. I read the article writted in response to it which was like:

The man who is debatably the father of indie rock will perform Wednesday at Coffeehouse Cafe in Salem.

Calvin Johnson, the founder of legendary Olympia, Wash., based music label K Records -- for context, Nirvana's Kurt Cobain had the K Records logo tattooed on his arm -- will perform at 7 p.m.

Johnson's music life started in the late 1970s, when he volunteered to work at independent radio stations, played in bands and organized music and art events.

He founded K in 1982, with the motto "exploding the teenage underground into passionate revolt against the corporate ogre since 1982."

As a producer, he has worked with bands such as Modest Mouse, Built to Spill and The Blow. He also signed other seminal indie/rock/ punk artists such as Fitz of Depression, Kimya Dawson and Old Time Relijun.

His do-it-yourself ethos is credited with helping push indie rock music into the mainstream.

Johnson was a founding member of bands Cool Rays, Beat Happening, The Go Team, Dub Narcotic Sound System and The Halo Benders. As a solo artist, he's known for his deep, resonant voice and stage presence.

On Wednesday, he will perform with Ian Svenonius, who pioneered the genre "Gospel Yeh-Yeh" with his band The Make-Up. Svenonius also is the author of "The Psychic Soviet," a slim pink book in the style of Mao Tse-Tung's little red book.

"The Psychic Soviet," expounds on rock 'n' roll, anarchy and other fun stuff.

Pretty ok article, and it really brought the kids out. More on that later. But the real kicker was that it was on the front page of the Life section, which I usually only glance at on my way to the newest Doonesbury buried in the end pages. But, the CJ article was above the fold, and below the fold...god damn.

'Clown Town': Insane Clown Posse finds fans in Salem

BY MICHELLE THERIAULT
Statesman Journal

March 20, 2007

If you've ever heard of the Insane Clown Posse, chances are you've heard bad things:

The band has been called "The Worst Band in History" by several major magazines.

But when not being panned by the mainstream press, the Detroit, "horrorcore" rap duo has garnered a heap of platinum (four) and gold (11) albums, along with the most devoted fans -- called "juggalos" -- in music today.

"To me, it's a family," said Josh Cole, a 21-year-old juggalo smoking a cigarette at the downtown Salem transit center on a recent afternoon. "It's people that don't really fit in anywhere else, so they started their own group."

If Insane Clown Posse is the world's worst band, how did it become the rap version of the Grateful Dead -- not just music, but a lifestyle too?

'Juggalo love'

"Salem is what we call a 'clown town,'" said Nathan Extra, who does public relations for ICP's record label, Psychopathic Records.

"There are lots of juggalos in Salem," 14-year-old Brandon Stair confirmed.

Juggalos -- or juggalettes, as females are called -- often dress in ICP merchandise that bears icons from the group's complicated "Dark Carnival" mythology. On special occasions, many paint their faces in the "wicked clown" style the rappers perform in -- think KISS with a twist. At concerts, the band does its traditional juggalo baptism: spraying thousands of gallons of a Detroit soda called Faygo on the audience.

Randy Vonk, who works at T-Zone, a novelty and gift store with three Salem locations, said ICP merchandise is snapped up quickly.

"It's a popular thing," he said.

But being a juggalo is about more than wearing a band's merchandise and going to concerts, said Tonya Rapp, a 24-year-old juggalette.

It's about acceptance and a sense of kinship that Insane Clown Posse fans feel for each other.

"Juggalos are priceless, it's all juggalo love."

On society's fringes

Behind the stage makeup and bombastic lyrics, the Insane Clown Posse is Violent J (Joseph Bruce) and Shaggy 2 Dope (Joseph Ulster), two guys who grew up poor and self-conscious in an industrial area of southwest Detroit.

Their childhoods included abuse and poverty, but they developed a fierce and twisted humor to get through it. They even made up a name for themselves: scrubs.

Extra said that although juggalos come from all ethnic, socioeconomic and geographic backgrounds, ICP's core fans tends to be people who find that upbringing familiar.

"Our fan base tends to be people on the fringes, often uneducated," Extra said. "Life hasn't offered them a whole lot."

For many, Insane Clown Posse is an accepting place to belong. In the band's music, the lyrics talk about how it feels not to fit in.

"I'm staring at the clock/I listen for the tock/I got a couple food stamps in my sock/I guess I'm a ghost because everybody walks through me/If I died in class they would probably say they knew me," raps Violent J in a song called "Mr. Johnson's Head."

"You could be the biggest nerd in school and the richy kids won't talk to you," said Rapp, who works as a dog groomer. "It's not like that with juggalos. A juggalo is a juggalo, and there's no one better than the other."

The dark side

The Insane Clown Posse mythology centers around a "psychotic dark carnival" that Violent J said came to him in a dream.

The music is rap metal, loud and aggressive, with lyrics that slide between funny and dark.

A lot of the lyrics are about blood: hatchet men slitting throats, stabbing, punching, decapitating.

There's even a section in the group's official press kit called "Why Are They So Vulgar and Violent?"

Like a horror movie, the flashy violence is all part of the circus act, said Extra.

"They can put on face paint and enact what are more or less fantasies of empowerment," he said.

In several recent cases, however, listeners seem to have taken the lyrics literally.

In Tacoma, Wash., last summer, a group of juggalos dressed as clowns allegedly beat and robbed up to 24 people while chanting "woo woo, juggalo."

Also last year, an 18-year-old self-professed juggalo named Jacob Robida shot at people in a Massachuttses gay bar and later killed his girlfriend and a police officer in Arkansas.

So does the violence and drug content of the group's lyrics inspire crime?

"I hate to make it (that) simple," said Extra. "But I think its true, there's a criminal element that perverts (what being a juggalo is about.)"

Despite the bad reputation, there's no indication in Salem that juggalos are an especially troublemaking group.

Kevin Rau of the Marion County Sheriff's Department said he didn't know of any juggalo crime connection but had heard that they could be a "violent set."

Chuck Sybrandt, assistant director of the Marion County Juvenile Department, said some of the 23 parole officers with whome he works had heard of the band, and a few have supervised parolees who were juggalos, but "it's nothing out of the ordinary," he said.

Mixing the message

Juggalos say the bad press about violence and hard drug abuse is just an example of people twisting the music.

A "true juggalo" wouldn't act violently or abuse hard drugs, Rapp said. The band actually espouses tolerance and peace underneath the bloody lyrics, she said.

Cole agreed. "There's a deeper meaning to what they say," he said.

Controversy aside, Salem juggalos are eagerly awaiting "The Tempest," the album that comes out today.

David Ballantyne, who works at Ranch Records in Salem, said ICP albums have been popular in the past.

People may love to hate the Insane Clown Posse, but the band couldn't care less.

"I wouldn't trade 10 juggalos for 100,000 mainstream fans," Posse member Violent J was quoted as saying.

Juggalos feel the same way.

"You don't have to like us," Stefani Hobbins, 24, said with a shrug.

"Kevin Rau of the Marion County Sheriff's Department said he didn't know of any juggalo crime connection" whoa! official response about endemic juggalo crime!

Can anyone guess what the novelty and gift shop sells other than ICP shirts? (hint, t stands for delta 9...)

Anyhow, the article speaks for itself. Awesome.

The show was so so so so so nice. Brigette was there, mad dudes from Salem were there, mad people I've never seen were there. Ian's book presentation was fucking sweet. So good. CJ spun some awesome records. The La Dee Dah's hit me hard. I just passed around a donation bucket and the kind folks in clown town donated like a huge wad of cash that i didnt count but it was a lot. Then people bought so much merch and got CJ/IFS to sign it! First autographs I've seen in forever. Funny and nice. The two freaks didn't bring turntables for their DJ tour, and neglected to tell me this. SO after a few choruses of "we're fucked, right?" I did the only logical thing. Racial profiling. Looked around for a backpack hiphop white boy with a stiff brimmed hat and asked if they had some decks. Turned out they did. Also turned out that they were really awesome and nice and drove so much to help out. Hats off to you, as it were. A real family jam.

"hey man check out the sweet layout of this paper! you're in good company."
"clown-town?"

No internet at new house.

Brief blog scene from work.

New home is really awesome.

Planted starts. Brigette is here.

Life is fucking amazing.

just spent a couple hours i think in some sewers under salem. with a homie i have been reppin with for a while and three high school students from out of town. the sewer was like 3 feet x 3 feet, a rather hard go for a dvd-esque fellow (metablog syntax). about three inches of water/liquid in it, flowing. we walked/hunched down it for a long time, stopped, throat sang with homie whom i taught a while ago, made songs all together, felt great. then when we finally left the tunnel the cops were waiting there to hassle us. got any guns? real nice and slow there man. anyone still hiding down there? haters. i was wearing my protective Ram garment so i obviously didn't get arrested or anything. pigs let us go by 11 pm. best after-party ever.

Heather and Justice are moving to Portland. Sad, but certainly not final or tragic. They found a swell Buddhist intentional community, which should provide H with more support, ability to launch into awesomeness, and give lil' Justice some more cool friends.

I found a new place to live in Salem. With a neat gentleman, a self-taught permaculturist of sorts, trying to turn his home into a net-zero urban farm on the way-way-way cheap. He's remodeling his house with all salvaged building materials, trying to build some bike-powered appliances, maybe even a micro-hydro setup to dip into the nice creek that abutts the property. Huge remodeling job, raising the walls several feet, dormers, greenhouse. Putting in a multi-bed garden system in the back, along with the newly completed sauna/workroom/office. I like that set up. This will be a great place to return to in Salem. It is also closer to the community garden we recently broke groudn on. All good things.

He's a nice dude. Like 45 or so, a few children, one of whom I know through Bard College + strange network of events. Also, there's going to be an 89 year old dude living there. 89. Awesome. He needs his name to get out there. He worked in the state university library system for a long long time, so he's way smart and very osessive. His life's work is now the creation and filing of these cards he makes. Index cards with pictures, handwritten notes and facts about items he is interested in. And he's designed a filing system for them. He has already made 30,000 cards, still creating.

March! How is it March already? This is supposed to be the month I wait for with so much anticipation for the fun rock bloc of Rory, Jeff, Arielle, and my birthdays. But it just snuck up like a little trin. Raz. Raz Trans. www.raztrans.com.

I just returned Adelpho's car to the Independence Valley, more specifically to Helsing Junction Farm, more specifically to the spot under the maple near the epazote plants and the sage bush. I stopped along the way at friend Adam's place in PDX, checked out an Old Time Relijun Show, and proceeded north. This fucking car is so scary. It's a Daihatsu. Ever head of that make?

Neither had I. This car is the size of a Geo Metro. As of now, it has no headlights, tailights, brakelights, horn, radio, insurance. Being so light, it was knocked around the road like a tiny Japanese car on I-5 or something. It rained the entire trip up, which was awful. The car had a bed of mold growing on the floor, and judging from the perma-fogged up windows, it has fuel for much more growth. Everytime I saw a cop on the road I would nearly plotz. Chant the cop away. Anyhow, it's off my back and mind now. Bikes can't really stress you out. Fuck the law.

Getting up to the farm was crazy. It happened to be a total gathering of the vibes. The band Heliotroupe played a 25th anniversary show at the Eagles Hall in Oly. Many familiars were there. What a trip. As it was a jammtastic show, there were obviously lots of 45 yr old people on lsd and stuff. Good vibe, great Talking Heads cover. Deep food freakout the next day at the farm, alongside some fun greenhouse construction with Rosalio, Alan, and other characters. Characters! Great place. Really hurt to go from there to fluorescent light office in one day.