ICP Bring Back Memories to St. Andrews, Celebrate Christmas at the Shelter

Detroit was the place to be Thursday night as local underground rap group Insane Clown Posse (ICP) took over St. Andrews Hall and The Shelter for the final date of their "Old Sh*t" tour and their annual Big Ballas Christmas party.

The "Old Sh*t" tour began on December 1 in New Orleans and featured a return to the old days for ICP consisting of music only from when they began in the nineties.

The shows paid homage to their old days of playing small clubs with little production and fanfare.

Detroit's St. Andrews Hall was one of the places that the band played regularly as they were building a name for themselves and was where they began to craft the massive underground empire they have today.

On Thursday, the band's fans, known as the Juggalos, packed into the small club ready to enjoy some of their favorite songs and celebrate the holiday season along with many of the band's closest friends and family.

This year ICP and their Psychopathic Records family teamed up with Violent J's girlfriend Sugar Slam for "Sugar Slam's Super Live Toy Drive" which is giving away an exclusive holiday cd, Holiday Heat, to every person who donates a new toy and/or new children's winter outerwear.

The rules are simple - for every donation of a new toy or new winter clothing item worth a minimum of $5.00, Psychopathic Records will give that donator a collector's item CD, Holiday Heat , which is made up of fifteen holiday songs from the Psychopathic Records artists, including Insane Clown Posse, Twiztid and others.

Holiday Heat will only be available to people who donate to "Sugar Slam's Super Live Toy Drive", and even though the tour is over you can still participate.

People can send donations to Sugar Slam's Super Live Toy Drive, P.O. Box 620, Farmington, MI 48332. Please provide your name and address within the package so that the CD may be sent back as quickly as possible.

Throughout the evening at St. Andrews people were lining up to drop their donations off and during the Big Ballas party ICP and Sugar Slam came out on stage to announce that the toy drive had received over 10,000 donations and that the band had to press up more copies of Holiday Heat to keep up with the demand.

The Old Sh*t show at St. Andrews began with a performance from Hatchet House rappers Axe Murder Boyz (AMB) and continued with a performance from their label mates Flint's own Dayton Family.

Dayton Family's music is similar in style to that of Bone Thugs N' Harmony and their melodic rapping style was a nice change of pace from the rest of the evening's horrorcore rap.

Psychopathic Records' Native American rapper ABK went on before ICP and almost stole the show as he kicked out a number of songs off of his impressive fourth album Medicine Bag mixed in with crowd favorites like "Gang Related" and "Guillotine".

Next it was time for ICP's set and it was immediately obvious that this was a different type of concert as there was none of the usual bright lights and flashy set pieces that accompany their shows.

This time around they brought out their old black banner sporting a simple white version of the band's initials and immediately kicked into a set filled with old classics beginning with one of their first singles "Dog Beats".

Songs like "Juggla", "Wagon", "Boogie Woogie Wu" and "Toy Box" sounded great and the original version of their popular song "Chicken Huntin'" was a nice addition.

Of course, this was still a ICP show so there were plenty of clowns, monsters and Faygo.

Their performance of "B*tches" had everyone moving along and "How Many Times" slowed things down a bit and allowed Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope to shine.

Naturally, ICP remembered the holidays as they pulled out their holiday classic "Santa Is A Fat B*tch" complete with dancing Santas.

The band closed their set by inviting the other artists, some of their friends and some of the crowd up on stage to perform "I'm Coming Home" and to help shower the crowd in Faygo.

As the last bottles were thrown, the 18+ crowd started heading downstairs for the Big Ballas Christmas party in The Shelter.

Packed tightly into the small space, the Juggalos enjoyed drinks from the bar and music on stage throughout the evening.

Various band members moved throughout the venue including The Dayton Family who spent a lot of time taking pictures and shaking hands and JCW wrestlers Sabu and Scott Hall who seemed to be enjoying themselves greatly.

Juggalo radio personality Upchuck Tha Clown was broadcasting from the party all evening on Psychopathic's W-F*ck-Off Radio.

ICP's deejay DJ Clay spent awhile spinning some songs off of his new compilation Book of the Wicked followed by a performance from horrorcore rapper V Sinizter.

ICP producer Mike E. Clark also spent quite a bit of time spinning some of his Psychopathic Records remixes including a great mashup of ICP's "Zombie Slide" and the Eurythmics "Sweet Dreams".

Immediately following his set, the entire Psychopathic Records roster hit the stage for their annual "Deadly Medley" which features performances from all of the artists.

This year ICP kicked off things with a performance of "Assassins" followed by Boondox's "Color You Dead".

The Dayton Family took the stage again before Twiztid and Blaze came up to perform a rocking version of "Buss Yo Head Open".

This was followed by ABK performing "Grind To the Flow" and a performance from AMB featuring DJ Clay.

Next, it was time for the cycle to repeat with everyone getting a chance to showcase a second song.

ICP once again started things off with "Let's Go All The Way" followed by Boondox's "Freak B*tch", The Dayton Family's "Flint Town", Twiztid and Blaze's "Triple Threat", another AMB/DJ Clay mix and the highlight of the set, ABK's "Ghost of My Ex" from his still unreleased Possessed album.

The evening ended with ICP starting up their "Juggalo Chant (We Will Never Die Alone)" that allowed the crowd to show their appreciation for a amazing evening.