Nathan Rabin’s memoir feels a little bit half-baked (no pun intended). The progress is disjointed and left me wondering what the point was. While he does detail what it is like to be at Phish and Insane Clown Posse shows, he doesn’t really reflect much on how the two groups relate to each other. Although claiming to not be a fan of either group when setting out on following them to various venues, he does make a turnaround and learns to love the music.

He describes Insane Clown Posse fans as outcasts of society, lower class people who are misunderstood. This seems a bit simplistic to me. He is more generous with Phish fans and does not describe them with such a broad brush, but he does admit that there is a stereotype of loser hippie pothead.

During the progress of the book, Rabin describes having a psychological breakdown. He is working too hard and feeling like he is not getting anything done, including this particular book. He is diagnosed with bipolar disorder at some point – perhaps my experience of this book as being a disjointed effort at storytelling is a reflection of this diagnosis.

Being a fan of Phish, I definitely got more out of his descriptions of experiencing the band perform live. On page 126, he states: “…Most rock ‘n’ roll shows promise a good time. Phish shows offer the possibility, if not the promise, of transcendence. It’s not just the music but rather a strange, hard to quantify combination of music, history, drugs, and nature that combines to make a truly ecstatic Phish show not just a concert but a borderline spiritual experience.”

He also discusses a typical Phish fan on page 135: “He was spinning a familiar narrative: You find Phish. It changes your life and rewires your circuitry, you grow up and do the college, job, marriage thing but you still go to shows now and then because it’s part of your history, it’s part of your past, it’s part of who you are.”

As a memoir, the book is fine. I would have appreciated a more analytical approach, but I suppose that is another book by another author.

Rabin comes right out in the intro and says that if your looking for some kind of anthropological expose on Juggaloes and Phish followers that this is the wrong book. It's a music writer's memoir of his years of fascination and eventual becoming fans of both groups. While I appreciate him shedding light on the more inclusive aspects of both fandoms, some of the scenes of heavy drug use and especially the exhibitionist tendencies of Juggalettes satisfied a bit of my expose expectations, but overall it had a hard time living up to the title. ( )