Insane Clown Posse – Forgotten Freshness – Review

Insane Clown Posse

Forgotten Freshness (Island)
by Ryk McIntyre

Just like a 24-hour Three Stooges marathon, this double-CD isn’t likely to attract any new converts, but as long as it supplies phat beats and shit-eatin’ grins on the faces of the faithful… then fuck you. Made up of previously-unreleased, re-mixed, or otherwise unavailable stuff, Forgotten Freshness succeeds on its own excesses. I just can’t help it, the dumb humor makes me laugh. Somehow I mainlined right to the essence of this unique Larry/Curly/Moe meets Tales from the Crypt meets Kiss meets gangsta rap meets H.P. Lovecraft’s Chthulu themed duo from the first time I heard The Great Milenko, the album that got them kicked off their label (Hollywood, owned by Disney), and taken off the shelves a mere six hours after its release. What I recognized in ICP (Insane Clown Posse) was an attempt at a total package/experience, and a goofball one at that.

This is illuminated with this collection of “previously unreleased material.” The first track, “Hey Vato,” (which eventually became “WagonWagon” on the Ringmaster release) had nowhere to go but up to rewrite, and while “Willy Bubba” didn’t make the cut for Ringmaster, “Chicken Huntin’ (SlaughterHouse Mix)” did. And the headhunta’z remix of “Hokus Pokus” is a prime example of how a dance remix can completely fuck-up the original, leaching it of the qualities that made it unique in the first-place. In this case, it trades the dynamics and spooky, carnival pipe-organ effect for a faceless Euro-dance beat. Apparently, someone thought the lyrics were just incidental. The selling points for this collection are that it collects impossible-to-find tracks from the Shagg-2-Dope solo efforts (not the best stuff, but a lotta juice for you completists), songs available only on cassette to anyone who’d come to an ICP gig in face-makeup (match that, Kiss Army!) such as “Mr. Rotten Treats” and “Dead Pumpkin Halloween,” and “Halloween on Military Street” (all of them musts for your next Halloween cassette compilation), and the collaborations they did with Myzery (“Witching Hour”), Project Born (“Graveyard”), and Twiztid (the hilariously short-notice improvisation “85 Bucks An Hour”). Also check out the original cop-cappin’ version of “Piggy Pie (Old School)” featuring God-slayin’ guitar courtesy of Steve (Sex Pistols) Jones, and the final cut, the truly disturbing “Mental Warp.” Brrrrh. And if none of this motivates your sorry ass to buy, bootleg, or steal a copy of this, you must get it for “Santa Claus is A Fat Bitch,” a song dangerously close to relevant and topical that must’ve scared ICP’s pale white asses even sillier, while they were doubled-over, laughing. It is, absolutely, the funniest song about Christmas ever. Ever. “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” my ass!