Plan 9
Dealing With The Dead

Hello, my name is Eric Stumpo, and I am a fan of b-movies, so much so that I named my band after one of the worst films in the history of cinema, but precisely for this reason, one of the most fascinating. Not even we are that pretty: do you know Jerry Garcia with a few extra pounds and a shock of extra hair? Well, I look a lot like him. In a time when new wave aesthetics was important, we leave something to be desired, because our musical ideal is around the '70s when they didn’t care about looks and were focused on playing their instruments.

This is our second album from 1984 after our debut for Voxx by Greg Shaw with a record mainly made of covers and believe me... it’s our best! The songs are all ours and we even play with five guitarists plus Deborah Di Marco on the Farfisa organ because we stretch out the pieces to improvise psychedelic garage to the point of making your head spin and lose track of time. Do you know the Fuzztones of our friend Rudi Protrudi? Our sound, instead, leans towards a less r&b sixties and more acid psychedelia, similar to what my beloved Green On Red did for country. Are we addicts because of this? Well, I know a lot of people who don’t take any stuff and are still out of their minds, so I don’t think it’s necessary to be anyway trippy.

After all, just listen to our record; if you don’t jump out of your seat from the Stooges-like attack of "I Like Girls", it means you're dead and haven't realized it yet. But don’t worry, the fuzz guitar solo halfway through the song will bring you back to life, even though I prefer to deal with the dead (“Dealing with the Dead”). The dawn of the living dead is about to rise and we pay homage with thunder and wails to the ragtag genius of Ed Wood: four guitars intertwine a perverse jingle jangle made of stop and go just like the wobbling gait of a zombie from the swamp to the final sabbath.

But don’t mistake us for necrophiles, we’ll make you dance like the devil with "Can't have you" and then hold you in a deadly cheek to cheek with "White Woman", we'll play pure garage with "I'm Gone" and the most compelling psychedelia you've ever heard with "Step out of time" (those guitar solos are beautiful!), guiding you through a garden of strange lysergic wonders with "B-3-11” and along the sick atmospheres that the Jagger/Richards duo didn’t dare tread with "Beg for Love", stopping at the threshold out of fear of the one who whispered in darkness.

Looking back with a clear mind, maybe we didn’t show up in the places that mattered and stayed away from the music magazine offices, but I swear this is one of the best and most original albums of that psychedelic season!!!