stuff

[hogge@p.cs.uiuc.edu (John Hogge)]

>[from Bill Hsu]
>New EP by Plan 9 is decent (I picked it up cheap so I'm not complaining.)
>This opium song on side 2 is good and comes close to the psychedelic haze
>of their 10-min. version of Frustration. There's some fake '50s stuff
>(is it a cover?) that I didn't care for.

Ah, Bill is becoming a psych-head like yours truely.  I just happened to
listen to "Keep your cool and read the Rules" by Plan 9 the other night, and
along with their new EP, have a fairly fresh view of their releases.
First, "Keep Your Cool..." has about the coolest cartoon-like album cover
I've ever encountered.  It's a good album, similar to the EP in that the
style is more in the direction of early progressive/later psychedelic than
the standard psychedelic pop stuff everyone else does (which Plan 9 also
does in fairly boring fashion on their album "Dealing With The Dead").
Plan 9's self titled first LP is also good, but has a mixture of styles
from long psych jams to mindless psych pop.  It has a better variety of
vocal work than any of the other releases.

Plan 9 isn't my favorite psych band, their main problems being:
  -vocalist is boring
  -They are too serious about their music, giving it a restrained, controlled
   feel (even on non-mellow material) which is probably the opposite of what 
   most psych heads want.  They never cut loose and get wild.
There are good elements too; I'd rank the albums as follows:
  "Keep Your Cool"
  "Plan 9"
  "Anytime..."
  "Dealing With the Dead"

However, The Fuzztones rule.
--John