You Don't Know Me but You Don't Like Me

June 3, 2013
Rabin, former head writer for The Onion A.V. Club, takes on two disparate, much-lampooned music fandoms in this memoir, accounting for his years recreationally following the jam band Phish and professionally covering "Juggalos", fans of Detroit horrorcore hip-hop act Insane Clown Posse. He becomes a participant in each culture, his appreciation shifting from ironic to earnest, and realizes profound truths about his health, relationships, and career. These communities contain multitudes of troubled lives and drug casualties, but Rabin also encounters truly thoughtful and fascinating people in each fandom. This is less surprising when speaking about Phish's comparatively sophisticated music; the ICP material is the true revelation. Popular imagery of ICP and juggalos is colored by classism, and readers who hope to have their self-superior biases confirmed will be disappointed; a credit to Rabin's evenhandedness. Whether or not you enjoy either act, the story is a universal one about the ways we connect with the music we adore. By making it personal, and by profiling such a broad spectrum of fans, Rabin puts a human face on what would be caricatures. Agent: Daniel Greenberg, Levine Greenberg Literary Agency.

June 1, 2013
The head writer for the Onion A.V. Club goes native with Phishheads and Juggalos. Where many writers might have picked one band to follow on tour and focused on the band itself, Rabin (The Big Rewind: A Memoir Brought to You by Pop Culture, 2009, etc.) thought it would be intriguing to cover two bands from the perspective of their fans. And what better fans to explore than the most reviled and fanatic ones in popular music, those who follow jam band Phish and those in the shadow of Detroit's lumpen Insane Clown Posse? On the face of it, the bands and their fans seem irreconcilably different. Phish, a quartet co-founded and led by guitar god Trey Anastasio at the University of Vermont, appeals largely to middle-class kids with some college education. The duo ICP, brainchild of a ninth-grade dropout named Joseph Bruce who calls himself Violent J, appeals mainly to young, working-class males. But both bands are steeped in their unique mythologies. Along the way, Rabin ran into people who defy the stereotypes--MAs among the Juggalos and straight-edge people among the Phishheads, for example. Each group's tours also create anarchic carnival atmospheres (ICP quite deliberately) that celebrate and create the illusion of unending childhood. But Rabin got more than he bargained for when, midtour with Phish, he had something resembling a nervous breakdown. The steady ingestion of psychotropic drugs, one accouterment both camps had in ready supply, may not have helped his mental state. Rabin's personal misadventures, instigated by a tendency toward manic depression and irritated by paranoia over his beautiful girlfriend's feelings for him, may seem an irrelevant distraction, but many will find that his gonzo approach to journalism makes him a spiritual kin of Hunter S. Thompson and Matt Taibbi. A wild rock 'n' roll ride.

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