****************************************** Plan 9 party in Shannock, RI as told by Fran Fried
My sports-writing shift was over at midnight, and Danny Ly and my girlfriend at the time, Ann Marie, a fellow reporter, met me at the office. So we were driving out to the middle (literally) of Rhode Island because there was some big blowout going on that Plan 9 was throwing, with a whole shitload of garage and psychedelic bands from the Northeast playing. About an hour-40 later, navigating through the darkness of rural RI, we arrived at the former restaurant that had once been a gas station down the road from the Plan 9 mansion in the middle of a God-knows-where village called Shannock. Where was the beer? Well, we walked in, and the empties were ankle-deep on the floor. Unopened cans? You must be joking. The Brood, our fave all-female garage band from Portland, Maine, was playing, and loudly, in the other room. I saw various Plan 9 and Lyres members in various states of disrepair, along with about a hundred other fanatics. One of the guys I knew in The Cheepskates, who came up from New York to play, looked straight through me. His eyes were pinholes. Trippin' balls. This whole thing was just insane. Good, unclean, mad fun. We stayed 'til about 5, then made it down to Route 1, and back to the ranch by 7, and I can't remember when I woke up. I just knew that, even sober and with no beer in my system, Plan 9 knew how to throw a party.