the crackshack fall 1995

Now lest anyone think I was so painfully naive about raving that I didn't see the dark-side, let me tell you about the Crack Shack. Of course, I had started out raving at Kris Clark's idyllic utopian Portland, Maine raves. When I first travelled to Massachusetts to Yellow which was Primary's second major party I witnessed Frankie Bones' topless silicone implanted girlfriend deep-throat a snake. I wonder if Eve got it on with the snake when Adam wasn't around. Anyway, by the Fall of 1995 I had been invited by Joey Ventura to do Smart Bar at a party he was doing in New Haven, Ct. called Farenheit. He was actually partnering with Adam Warped who had thrown Paradise with Sugarbear and Laura which was in Wallingford, Ct. and was an absolutely amazing party featuring DJ Dan's first East Coast appearance. Apparently, Joe had convinced Adam to partner with him for reasons that were largely financial. Joe really wasn't a bad guy, but he certainly wasn't like the ravers and promoters I had known before. He actually seemed to know nothing of Kris Clark and convinced me to promote for him in Maine. So I fired up my own info line and he actually shortened Excellent Drinks on his flyer to Excellent which became my promotional name. Some kids eventually started actually calling me Excellent as a nickname which I found fairly amusing. And don't get me wrong, I had a blast at Farenheit. It was just different. It was also the first of five events at the Crack Shack that fall.

The Crack Shack was right off of I-95 in New Haven, around back behind some buildings in a loading dock type area. It had 3 rooms and a back yard of sorts. It was kind of small but man Joe did some numbers in there. One big advantage I had was Joe set me up in a tiny little side room off the main dance floor and the water was out in the back yard and noone could find it. So I set up and I raged. I was working all by myself and I was right out straight and sold out early with lots of cash in my pockets.  By the time the party was over there were those little cello baggies everywhere. When the lights came up I was trying to stress to Joe the importance of sweeping up the evidence and he smirked at me and told me it was nothing to worry about as he paid some older guys driving caddies and lincolns.

Basically, that is why Kris Clark stopped throwing parties. When Steve Gagnon and I threw our series of parties shortly after that we prided ourselves on keeping the old-school spirit alive.  I wound up at the Crack Shack week after week for a while. Now perhaps it was immoral for me to do business in such an environment but I was selling vitamin drinks not drugs. And a couple of parties there were actually pretty good.

The next one was Joe's party Meltdown which was pretty much a replay of Farenheit. It was fun, I made alot of money. The week after that Rob and The Swing Kids lost their space and wound up moving their party Pure to the Shack. I didn't even work that party but by now was promoting for my Solstice Party Extract. The line-up was superior with Dale Charles, Eric Davenport, and Dante. I remember smoking a joint with Eric Davenport before his set and sitting on a couch listening to his set on the monitors and he at one point twisted my mind into a pretzel. Dante played really, really late and I think that about noon I was smoking a bowl with someone when the police came in and told us it was time to leave. Then it was a party called Pangea which was totally cheesy and attended almost completely by weird cracked-out Connecticut kids. We went because it was my friend Scott the Redneck's birthday and Dutch was spinning. Scott really liked Dutch's older house sets and now Dutch played trance but we planted ourselves by the tables and he really blew it up. Lastly, it was Sugarbear's New Years Eve party for which Excellent Drinks was prominently featured on the Flyer. Sugarbear actually hated that space and only held his party there because everything else fell through. It was way way too crowded which was of course good for me. I made out at the Smart Bar, but it was alot of work and the party really wasn't that fun.

If there were anymore parties at the Crack Shack, I didn't go to them. I did do a couple of more of Joe's parties the last of which was the pathetic party The Bomb. I was regularly booked in Connecticut in those days and really the scene down there was pretty degenerate. Every time we threw a party in Maine someone in Connecticut threw one against us and we always kicked their asses. From what I understand the scene in Maine eventually got as bad as the one in Connecticut. The Oddysey 2000/Metropolis where Steve and I threw Deep '96 and Michele and I threw Extra Extra eventually became its own version of the Crack Shack and led to Chief Chitwood cracking down hard. Not exactly what I had in mind when I climbed out of that apple tree and started Excellent Drinks.