Every year there’s a couple artists that play the Gathering of the Juggalos that you just can’t believe are playing. I have seen everyone from George Clinton to Bobby Brown to three different members of WuTang. This year I was pretty excited to see Bone Thugs N Harmony, Slick Rick and Gwar.

Bone Thugs aren’t really one of my favorite groups or anything but I thought it would be cool to see and it was. Photographically it was pretty impossible to get a decent group shot but not mad I got to see them. Gwar was also really hard to shoot but for a completely different reason. The inside of my hat is still pink from the blood of a decapitated puppet of Barack Obama. Slick Rick was just kinda boring to photograph because he mostly just stands there with mic in his face but honestly it was still fucking amazing. I am a pretty serious Slick Rick fan. Like I get pretty deep with him unfortunately I only got to see about four songs because of other work, but it was still next level for me.

Also great was Tech N9ne who plays every year and this year his some time collaborator Hopsin played too. I really dig both of them so that was fun. They are both really easy to photograph too because they put on a hell of a show and don’t spray any camera destroy substances at the crowd (weird, right?)

Aside from that there wasn’t much I wasnted to shoot. I the performance of Violent J’s Wizard of Oz themed musical “Wizard of the Hood” and that was super weird. I probably should have watched the whole thing but they only let me shoot two songs and I sort of bounced after that. I of course shot ICP but I had a really early fight to catch and I have seen them a bunch of times so I left after I got a few shots. I also shot Psychopathic Records artist Anybody Killa and “West Coast juggalos” Kottonmouth Kings. Oh and this rapper Rittz who I have seen before at the Gathering and is on Tech N9ne’s label.

Aside from that I didn’t really see any other music. None of my clients really wanted any band photos even though I was shooting for both Noisey and Rolling Stone. That being said after I shot Gwar I pitched Noisey on it and they actually published my show review. It’s always weird when people let me write shit, but I appreciate it.

Read my Gwar show review in Noisey here.

So yeah, um, go look at band photos if you want. The Gwar ones are at least somewhat interesting and maybe you will care about them. Honestly if it were up to me I would never have to take or look at a photo of a band ever again, but that’s just me.

Click here to see all my live music photos from the 2016 Gathering Of The Juggalos.

Comments (0)