Fifty years ago tonight on November 2, 1957 - and coincidentally about an hour after the Russians launched Sputnik 2 carrying the first passenger ever lifted into orbit, Laika the dog - one of the best known and well documented cases of UFO close encounters took place on the outskirts of Levelland, Texas, population 10,000.

Patrolman A. J. Fowler, on duty that night, received the first call at about 11pm and would receive another 14 different calls over the next two and a half hours. Among the witnesses were Levelland's sheriff and the town's fire chief who confirmed they too observed something pass across the highway in front of them. Most of the reports depicted the object as a brightly lit torpedo or cigar-shaped flat-bottomed object, eyewitnesses pretty consistently described the UFO as a glowing, pulsating bluish-green. The first call came from Pedro Saucedo, traveling with a co-worker named Joe Salaz. While driving down Route 116, about 4 miles west of Levelland, an object suddenly rose into the air from a nearby field. Saucedo estimated that it was 200 feet in length, and soon was flying at speeds around 800 miles per hour. While passing over their truck there was a sound of “thunder” and a “rush of wind.” The truck rocked from the blast, and both passengers felt “a lot of heat." As the object flew over the truck, the headlights went out and the engine stalled, but as the UFO vanished into the distance the engine restarted easily and the lights worked normally. In total, there were at least seven separate UFO incidents that night reporting either a car or a truck becoming disabled, but recovering each time the UFO departed.  

I stumbled upon these two LPs a few years ago, upon dropping the needle I was instantly taken by the period piece quality to the service on the 1st.  Transistor organ, call and response hymnals, talk of vibrations and colors...Who were these people??  Ann Davies cuts an interesting figure on the 1st LP- a somewhat androgynous and harsh looking leader of an esoteric group that was at one time based in my then neighborhood of Highland Park...I'd have to look into it...

                                                                                                                                                                                

AMOEBITE PROFILE: HEIDI

AMOEBLOG: What exactly is your job at the Amoeba Music Hollywood store? How long have you worked there and how did you end up working at Amoeba?

HEIDI: I've had a lot of different jobs at Amoeba but these days I'm mostly in rock vinyl and black metal. I was hired at Amoeba three years ago through my friend Inez.
 
AMOEBLOG: What makes working at Amoeba unique compared to other jobs you've had?

HEIDI: Working at Amoeba is a truly unique environment. It is refreshing to work with so many people who are as nerdy as I am about music. It's also satisfying to work for Amoeba Music as a company because they truly take care of their employees. It feels very much like a family.
 
AMOEBLOG: What are the Top 3 Items in the past week or so that you've noticed people are seeking out at the Hollywood Amoeba Music?

HEIDI: Dethklok The Dethalbum, Ulver Shadows of the Sun, Bruce Springsteen Magic on vinyl (new studio recording from the Boss with the E Street Band and featuring 11 new Springsteen songs -- all produced by Brendan O'Brien).

AMOEBLOG: I know you that you are a real fan of good metal music. In terms of that genre, how, in your opinion, is the scene in LA these days for bands and for clubs?

HEIDI: To be honest, I don't go out much, but I love to see that there's a rise in the number of youngsters reviving the thrash scene here in Los Angeles. I need to make more of an effort to check it out. If you want to see a good heavy show, go see High On Fire. They aren't LA natives but they play here quite a bit. But a couple of local bands well worth mentioning are Strong Arm Down, who are a great heavy live band... check em' out!! And then there is another LA band I recommend called An Endless Contortionist, who are super noisy fun!!

When the giant inflatable green-and-purple Frankenstein arises from the center of the store to welcome all visitors, you know it's... Halloween at Amoeba L.A.!!!

The store looked spooky for weeks... cobwebs, bats and pumpkins everywhere, skeletons dancing... even a skeleton with a handlebar moustache over the info counter!  Hmmm... also an old-timey gentleman skeleton in a top hat lounging above the opera CDs in the Jazz Room.  A spectre from beyond the tomb hung over our eerie Halloween section, filled with spooky sound effects, every compilation ever made with "Dead Man's Party" by Oingo Boingo on it, and some Jennifer Lopez movies.  Creepy!

Halloween dawned bright and sunny (as it sometimes does in L.A.) but we kept it appropriate in the store with some Cramps blasting on the stereo and candy bowls everywhere for trick-or-treaters.   Many folks arrived in costume... I was particularly startled by a co-worker dressed as Richard D. James a.k.a the Aphex Twin!  Pretty scary... and a really good cardboard robot (the Bot-O-Tron) and a girl with her head in a milk carton that said "Missing", and many more... Minnie Mouse, a mime, an evil clown, a melancholy bumblebee even!

At 3 we kicked the party off with our Halloween DJ, DJ Heebie Jeebies (real name Mike Dehlin, frontman for local psychobilly outfit The Goddamn Gallows).  He kept it real (scary) with lots of good old evil tunes from "She's My Witch" by the Sonics to "Run To the Hills" by Iron Maiden, interspersed with amazing horror movie trailers (the one for the transgender "Dr. Jeckyll and Sister Hyde" was my favorite!).  Around 5 the excitement was building... it was almost time for our annual Halloween costume contest!

As the many spooky contestants gathered round the stage, I donned my giant silver head with the monocle and purple moustache (no catchy name for this costume... I called it the Old Time Space Gentleman, others thought it looked like Mr. Peanut or the Monopoly Man, but all in aluminum foil).  Like Ed McMahon to Johnny Carson, I introduced our host and handed off the mike -- it was our old friend Lance Rock!

Merde.

Alfred Jarry had a profound, incalculable effect on most every art and literary movement of the 20th century movements influencing Dadaism, Surrealism, Futurism, Expressionism, Cubism, and especially the Theatre of the Absurd. You can start with Marcel Duchamp and Andre Breton and keep right on swerving through the better names of the century; poets Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Tristan Tzara, artists like Picasso, entertainers such as The Marx Brothers, the Goons, Spike Jones, the Bonzo Dog Band, Monty Python, even Mad magazine.

Playwrights Eugene Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Edward Albee all owe much to Jarry, as do other literary greats like Jean Genet, Antonin Artaud, Douglas Adams, Robert Anton Wilson, Boris Vian, George Perec, and J.G. Ballard. In fact, I swear even George Bush and his entire administration have been heavily influenced by the absurdities of Alfred Jarry and his masterpiece, Ubu Roi featuring the bloated, thick and stupid future king, Pere Ubu.

Well, One hundred years ago today Alfred Jarry died of alcoholism and tuberculosis in Paris at the age of thirty-four. Every aspect of his life was a performance of self. More than just writing about Ubu, he lived as Ubu. He blew through a small fortune he inherited from his parents, served in the military, developed a taste for absinthe, and took to wandering around Paris inebriated; alcohol, he said, was his “holy water.” He costumed himself in black biking gear, often in a long hooded cape carrying a green umbrella and two pistols. He also assumed many of the characteristics he wrote for his fictional Pere Ubu: talking in a high falsetto, adopting a mechanical / monotone speaking style, enunciating every single syllable with no inflection or nuance, and Jarry always spoke of himself in the royal "we.”