R.I.P. Scott "Bam Bam" Bigelow 1961 - 2007

Professional wrestling lost one of the best "big men" in it's history this past Friday January 19, 2006 as Scott "Bam Bam" Bigelow was found dead at the age of 45 by his girlfriend. The cause of death was unknown at the time.

I found a nice tribute video to Bam Bam from the folks at Fight Network. It can be viewed immediately below.



"The Beast From The East," Bam Bam Bigelow was known for his massive size and trademark tatooed forehead which bore red and yellow flames which matched his ring attire. Bigelow was also something of a rarity in the world of professional wrestling. A big man who could stand toe to toe in the ring with such equally massive combatants as Andre The Giant and The Undertaker, Bigelow also moved with the same agility of much smaller wrestlers like Rey Mysterio and Sean "X-Pac" Waltman.

Before retiring in 2002, Bam Bam enjoyed a long and successful career. He wrestled in all of the "big three" wrestling promotions -- WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment); WCW (World Championship Wrestling); and ECW (Extreme Championship Wrestling), as well as overseas in places like Japan, where he worked successful programs with other big men like Big Van Vader in such promotions as New Japan Wrestling.

His biggest years however were in the nineties with the then World Wrestling Federation. In Vince McMahon's WWF, he most often worked as a despised wrestling "heel" (the wrestling vernacular for "bad guy"). During his WWF tenure, Bigelow was managed by equally colorful characters like Sir Oliver Humperdink, a short, fat little man with a penchant for big cigars and loud hawaiian shirts; and Luna Vachon, the psychotic female with flamed tattoos which matched Bigelow's own.


Bigelow worked matches with most of the biggest WWF names such as Bret "Hitman" Hart (who praised his wrestling ability as being remarkable for such a big man), The Undertaker, and Hulk Hogan. In these matches, Bigelow would run the ropes with the agility of a man half his size, doing somersaults and flying off of the ropes. Bigelow's arsenal of wrestling moves even included a textbook moonsault, a move popularized by smaller wrestlers of the Lucha Libre discipline, and one which most wrestlers his size would not even dare to attempt.

His most famous match was on April 2, 1995 before a world wide pay-per-view audience at Wrestlemania 11, where he headlined a main event against NFL star Lawrence "LT" Taylor. Largely because of the pro-football connection, the match garnered massive mainstream media coverage. Bigelow, who worked the match playing the heel role he was most accustomed to, lost to "LT".

In another of his more noteworthy matches--this time for ECW--Bigelow created one of the most visually stunning images ever seen on a wrestling TV show, slamming the pint-sized Spike Dudley clear through the ring and onto the floor. The visual effect has since been duplicated many times, but never with quite the same impact.

Bigelow's death at the young age of 45 is the latest of what has been a disturbingly common string of wrestlers to die so young in recent years. Many of these deaths, such as those of Brian Pillman and Rick Rude, are widely believed to be at least partially the result of performance enhancing and pain relieving drugs. Many wrestlers use such drugs to keep up with the demanding schedules and physical punishment their bodies are forced to endure. Recently, World Wrestling Entertainment--far and away the world's biggest wrestling promotion--adopted a "wellness policy" in an effort to prevent such premature death among it's athletes. This policy followed the passing of one of it's biggest stars, Eddie Guerrero about a year ago. The causes of Scott "Bam Bam" Bigelow's death this past Friday remain to be determined.

Scott "Bam Bam" Bigelow, dead at age 45, will be missed by wrestling fans from America to Japan, and throughout the world.

Take Me To A Circus Tent: The Jefferson Airplane Flight Manual

"The object of this book was not to reinvent the wheel, or in this case reinvent the Plane," author Craig Fenton explained to me earlier this week, describing his remarkable new book on the Jefferson Airplane.

"The aim was rather to help the spread the word, and to keep the torch going of one of the greatest bands ever."

Amen Brother.

Make no mistake.


Craig Fenton' s Take Me To A Circus Tent: The Jefferson Airplane Flight Manual is not just any rock book. It is in fact, the final, definitive word on the music of the band which most defined the so-called psychedelic acid-rock "San Francisco" sound of the late sixties (the very sound which would define an entire generation).

The fact is, this may be the most extensive, meticulously researched account of the music of any rock and roll band ever. Period. From a purely historical, and especially from a musical standpoint, Take Me To A Circus Tent delves as deeply into the sixties phenomenon that was the Jefferson Airplane as any rock and roll book ever has.

But let's get one thing straight right up front. This is a book which focuses strictly on the music.

If you are looking for one of those sex, drugs, and rock and roll exposes, you'd best look elsewhere. You are not going to find any tales of band members lying face down in a pool of their own vomit. Nor will you find the sort of acid-fueled sex-orgies which have characterized the written accounts of other rock stars from the sixties, fallen and otherwise.

Not that Craig Fenton didn't have his chance however. In the extensive research that went into this book, Fenton was given what amounted to an all-access pass, resulting in rare footage such as this, a great clip from the Dick Cavett show in 1969 of the Airplane performing "Somebody To Love," with David Crosby sitting in:



There are complete interviews (and opportunities to dish the dirt) with no less than 32 Jefferson Airplane insiders contained within the 543 pages of this book. These include everybody from original members Paul Kantner and Marty Balin (who says that Fenton "knows so much about the Jefferson Airplane family I had to ask him the questions"), to guys who were there like Moby Grape's Jerry Miller and Big Brother And The Holding Company's Peter Albin (who remembers the late JA drummer Spencer Dryden).

These interviews make up the latter half of the book. For the first part, Fenton exhaustively and extensively recounts the complete history of every single song written, recorded or performed by the Jefferson Airplane, as well as it off-shoots such as Hot Tuna and the various Jefferson Starship aggregations.

The result is the sort of scholarly work that could have only come from the pen of a true music obsessive. Craig Fenton is basically an Airplane archivist. From his roots as a fan who discovered the Airplane after hearing "The Ballad Of You Me & Pooneil" on progressive rock station WNEW in the sixties, to his own career in rock radio, he has meticulously documented the evolution --the flight path if you will-- of the Jefferson Airplane.

In Take Me To A Circus Tent, no less than 121 Jefferson Airplane shows are broken down song by song. There are also some 93 photos, many of which have never been seen before. But we are not just talking about photos and setlists here. Fenton breaks down everything from the first and final performances of individual songs; who played what and when; to songs never before officially documented at all.

On page 149 for example, we learn of an incredible show performed in San Bernadino where the songs "Wooden Ships," and "Volunteers" were performed for the very first time. Later, we learn of a show in 1969 at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park days later where "Good Shepherd" is debuted, but sung by Grace Slick, rather than the version sung by Jorma Kaukonen on the Volunteers album.

That's the type of detail we are talking about here.

However, Take me To A Circus Tent is by no means complete. How could it be?
By his own yardstick, Craig Fenton refused to include any information on shows or performances that he could not confirm either through interviews or tapes from his own rather extensive archives.

For example, I had no luck finding my own point of reference to a 1969 show in Honolulu, Hawaii where I had my first exposure to the powers of Jefferson Airplane's live performances myself. As a thirteen year old attending that show at Honolulu's Civic Auditorium, I met the band on a day that also saw one of Hot Tuna's earliest performances opening for JA. Paul Kantner was also busted for marijuana posession that very day in Honolulu near Diamond Head.

Still, this book is about as complete as rock books get.

Word to the wise though. It is also laid out as something of a master thesis. This is definitely a book intended more to be painstakingly analyzed then it is to be read from cover to cover.

Regardless, I would consider Take Me To A Circus Tent: The Jeferson Airplane Flight Manual your personal reference guide to one of the greatest rock bands ever.
As rock and roll books go, this truly is as complete as it gets.




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The Rockologist Gets Real Deep With Uriah Heep



Uriah Heep was one of those bands I discovered completely by accident growing up as a teenager in the seventies.

Like everybody else back then, I had heard "Easy Livin," which up to that point in time had been Heep's one song to receive any airplay on American album rock radio. The song was from Demons And Wizards, an album which was selling well for the band despite getting largely terrible reviews.

"Easy Livin" was itself a pretty decent little workingman's sort of rock tune that sounded good enough sandwiched in between say, "I Just Wanna Make Love To You" by Foghat and "Thirty Days In The Hole" by Humble Pie on the local FM rock station.

Prior to Demons And Wizards, Uriah Heep's records had included one recorded with a symphony orchestra (Salisbury) and another more known for the mirror on it's cover than for the music inside (Look At Yourself). Uriah Heep were also going through band members the way other bands of the day went through cigarette rollling papers.

For Demons And Wizards, founding Heepsters Mick Box (guitar) and principal songwriter Ken Hensley (keyboards) had added drummer Lee Kerslake and bassist extraordinaire Gary Thain to the lineup, which by now also included vocalist David Byron. It was this lineup they finally settled on for the next four albums, which would prove to be both Uriah Heep's commercial and creative peak period.

So anyway, like everybody else back then, I had read the unanimously bad reviews of Uriah Heep's albums.
This was a band that rock critics loved to hate like no other since the universally despised Grand Funk Railroad. In what may well be one of the most scathing album reviews I've ever read, one guy writing about Demons And Wizards didn't even stop with the music. After trashing the album, the critic punctuated his verbal arrows by going after the band's looks, calling them "ugly as muttonchop mongrels."

Ouch!

But that's how it was with Uriah Heep back then. The original "no respect" band, they still managed to eventually sell a buttload of records and develop a reputation for high energy--even if occasionally somewhat sloppy--live shows that made them one of the world's top concert draws by the mid-seventies.

With their history of critical disrespect, combined with a legendary reputaion for excess both on and offstage (one that would eventually claim the lives of two original band members), it's long since been suggested that Uriah Heep were the actual real-life inspiration for the brilliant rock "mockumentary" film This Is Spinal Tap.

Having partied with these guys myself, I don't doubt that rumor for one second. But we'll get back to that in due course.

First, some quick history...

Before breaking through big with the Demons And Wizards album, Uriah Heep basically cut it's musical teeth by touring as a support act behind such mid-level concert acts of the day as Manfred Mann and The James Gang. It was on one such tour, on a bill sandwiched between the headlining Savoy Brown and somebody called Miller Anderson's Headlock that I saw Uriah Heep live for the very first time.

This was one of those concerts that I happened to be at only because I'd secured free tickets through my after-school job as an intern at Seattle's rock station at the time, KOL.

Like most high school internships, I didn't get paid for my duties answering request lines and filing albums in the music library. But I didn't care. For me, getting free tickets to shows; hanging out with legendary Seattle DJs like Burl Barer (who used to call me "little hippie" because of my long hair); and being able to brag to friends that I "worked" at a place like KOL was payment enough.

So as much as I had looked forward to seeing Kim Simmonds and Savoy Brown play "Tell Mama" and the rest of their blues-rock repetoire, Uriah Heep's forty minute opening set just blew me away. The sound was pretty much your classic (as in heavy on the keyboards) sort of Deep Purple influenced heavy metal.

But there was something different about these guys.

The singer was a peacock strutting dandy boy straight out of the Rod Stewart school of glam rock, dressed in outlandish bright red, who prowled the stage like he owned the place. The guitar player meanwhile punctuated the heavy keyboard riffs with shrill leads played while running his axe all up and down the mikestand. The drummer beat the living hell out of his kit like his life depended on being heard above the rest of the din.

And the bass player? Gary Thain was a visual freakshow who I was convinced at the time was the single greatest bassist I had ever seen or heard.


By the time Uriah Heep's forty minute opening set was over, I had all but forgotten the headliner Savoy Brown, and become a born-again Uriah Heep fan. Six months after that opening set at the 3000 seat Paramount Theatre, they would be back headlining the 6000 seat Seattle Center Arena.

Which they sold out by the way.

Uriah Heep would also have a new album under their belts by that time called The Magicians Birthday. Clearly designed as not only a followup, but a companion piece to the breakthrough Demons And Wizards, the album also mined the same sort of dungeons and dragons lyrical territory as it's predecessor did--kind of like Black Sabbath minus all that nasty dark and evil stuff. Both albums also featured artwork by Roger Dean, best known at the time for doing all the cover art for Yes.

The combination for me was irresistable. As a teenager I can remember countless nights listening to both albums and trying to decipher the meaning of the fantasy laden lyrics. There was nothing quite like "getting deep with the Heep." The other thing about the two records was that for all the heavy metal thunder Uriah Heep displayed in concert, there was a refined sort of quality to the albums.

For every blistering rocker like "Easy Livin" or "Traveller In Time," Demons And Wizards also featured songs like "Paradise/The Spell" which featured a gorgeous middle section powered by hawaiian sounding guitar parts and an angelic sounding vocal choir. For The Magicians Birthday's part, the title track was a tour de force which went from a kazoo humming the "Happy Birthday" song to a thunderous duel between Kerslake's drums and Mick Box's distorted, fuzzed-out guitar. Through it all, Gary Thain played some of the most intricate bass parts I had ever heard on a rock and roll album.

So, true story here...

By the time Uriah Heep returned to Seattle for it's first sold out show as a headliner, I was not only well immersed in their records--I was also determined to meet what was by now my favorite band. And guess what? I succeeded.

Earlier that day, my friends and I had staked out the Edgewater Inn in Seattle, which was well known at the time as the hotel of choice among visiting rock bands. Because you can fish out your window there, Seattle's Edgewater over the years has proved an irresistable draw for touring rock bands. You may have heard some of the stories about the place, forever immortalized in songs like Frank Zappa's "The Mudshark."

Perhaps you have heard the one particularly infamous tale involving a mudshark; a groupie; and the group Led Zeppelin.

Anyway, sure enough Uriah Heep showed up like clockwork at about three that afternoon. Lee Kerslake came in first. When me and my friends introduced ourselves, Lee was not only quick to return our greeting, but to invite us back after the show for a post-concert party. For a group of star struck sixteen year old rock fans like us, this was just too incredible for words.

In retrospect, I think Uriah Heep may have been as dumbstruck as we were to find they actually had devoted fans, after the critical drubbing they had become accustomed to for years.

So after a great concert where Uriah Heep proved they'd grown into their newfound status as headliners quite nicely (Thain in particular sounded amazing that night), we went back to the Edgewater. As promised, Lee showed up soon after with some beer and we headed back to the group's room for a long and memorable night of partying with our rock heroes.

Much of that night is a blur more than thirty years later.

What I do remember vividly was that Uriah Heep's "party contingent" consisted of Kerslake, Thain, and David Byron, while Ken Hensley and Mick Box chose to retire to their rooms to sleep. Thain spent most of the night rolling those newspaper sized joints you see in reggae videos.

At various points that night, we were throwing karate stars into the hotel room door; tossing lamps out the window into Puget Sound below; and we even caught a mudshark. I have one very distinct memory of Lee Kerslake sending me to the front desk for a salt shaker in the hopes that adding salt to the bathtub where the shark was being kept would help keep it alive.

The following year Uriah Heep released two records.

The Uriah Heep Live album fulfilled their contract with Mercury Records and basically documents the same tour we saw in a great show from Birmingham, England. This record faithfully captures all of the thunderous power of a Uriah Heep concert. But again, it is Gary Thain's bass playing that really stands out. The mix puts it much more out in front than on most concert recordings, and on songs like "July Morning," he is simply all over the place. Thain plays bass runs here that rival the solos of lead guitarist Mick Box.

Though live footage of Uriah Heep from this period is somewhat rare, I did find a great clip from that period (roughly 1973) from a show in Budokan, Japan. It can be viewed immediately below:



Later that year, Uriah Heep signed with Warner Bros. Records and released it's last great album Sweet Freedom. Although his drinking had reportedly become a problem by this time, David Byron is in fine form on vocals here on songs like "If I Had The Time" and "Stealin," which scored the band it's second bonafide radio hit. Here again, Uriah Heep combine heavier tracks like "Pilgrim," with the more refined sound of the title track and "One Day" (with those choir vocals again!).

The album's followup, Wonderworld was however not nearly as good, and bassist Gary Thain died soon after.

By the time of Return To Fantasy, an album where King Crimson/Roxy Music bassist John Wetton did his best to fill the gaping hole left by Thain's death, the magic was pretty much gone.

David Byron who was by this time a full on alcoholic would later try to front his own band Rough Diamond. Sadly, he too would soon be gone. Kerslake went on to become the original drummer for Ozzy Osbourne's Blizzard Of Ozz. He also had one more modest hit with a new version of Uriah Heep in the much more metallic sounding "comeback" Heep album Abominog.

These days, Box and Kerslake alone remain from the original glory days and actually enjoy a devoted cult sort of following fronting a new version of Uriah Heep.

The Rockologist Gets Hot And Nasty With Black Oak Arkansas

Welcome to "The Rockologist," my new feature column for Blogcritics.

So who or what exactly is "The Rockologist" you may ask?

The Rockologist is the latent music wonk I've nurtured deep within myself ever since about the time I first time saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. Note I said "wonk" and not the more derogatory label of "nerd."

You see because a nerd is a guy who lives with his Mom and never gets laid. A wonk on the other hand is a guy who simply soaks up every bit of knowledge on his particular subject like a sponge. A wonk is the guy who can give you precise dates, places, and names within his area of expertise. Simply put, a wonk is a guy who "wonks the wonk" (or in this case "wonks the rock").

So with "The Rockologist" I am embracing my inner music wonk. Just don't call me Al Gore okay?

What we are going to do here is go into the deepest corridors of what I like to call "rockology." Now you may have noticed that I've written a lot about the reissued recordings of so-called "classic rock" artists this past year. So just to disspell any rumors that may get started, your resident Rockologist here and now denies that he quit listening to new music somewhere around the time Kurt Cobain died.

Quite the opposite. The Rockologist is happy to report that he will be attending a My Morning Jacket concert this Monday night and that the last CD he bought was the latest release by the Decemberists (based on something I read here on Blogcritics I might add).

However, there were an unusually great number of those "remastered" versions of albums by what you would call "classic rock" artists last year. And a significant number of them were really good (the ELO and Cure reissues spring immediately to mind here).

So here's the thing. For those of us who grew up in the classic rock era, what is most frustrating is that the classic rock stations out there continue to feed us a steady diet of Zeppelin, Skynyrd, Floyd, Boston and Styx. All fine bands of course (well except maybe for Boston and Styx), but there are many equally great bands from that period who've largely become forgotten.

That's where "The Rockologist" comes in.

Some of these bands have been resurrected through the efforts of those fine folks putting out all those "Critical Review" DVDs you may have seen at the record store (assuming you live in one of the few towns who still have actual record stores). You know the DVDs I'm talking about. The ones where a bunch of aging rock critics discuss the finer points of somebody like say, T. Rex, Mott The Hoople, or Uriah Heep.

There's nothing quite like "getting deep with the Heep" if you know what I mean. And that will be the subject of a future installment here.

But for now, we are going to talk about Black Oak Arkansas. And in particular, we are going to talk about one Jim Dandy Mangrum.

To set this up, I kindly ask you direct your attention to this video:

Now I ask you, is this some amazing shit or what?

The first thing I've gotta point out is that were it not for Jim Dandy Mangrum could a guy like David Lee Roth ever have existed? With his bare chest, waist length hair, and crotch hugging spandex, Jim Dandy practically created the prototype for Diamond Dave and the rest of the glam-rock bad boys that "taught us how to love" in the eighties.

The second noteworthy thing about BOA however is the freaking band. The three-pronged guitar attack fronting these guys is on the surface pretty much your classic southern rock sort of deal. What set BOA apart however was the rhythm section, and in particular Tommy "Dork" Aldridge's amazing double bass drumming.

Black Oak Arkansas basically had one hit single in the seventies in the blues rave-up "Jim Dandy." Which is a cool enough little tune, but hardly representative of what these guys were actually about. What BOA was actually about--and what made them the hottest concert act on the planet for about five minutes during the seventies--was their incredible live performances.

The first time I saw BOA was at Seattle's Paramount Theatre at the concert recorded for their amazing Raunch And Roll album. Unavailable for years, the CD was finally reissued a few years back (by BOA themselves). It sounds as great now as it did that night I sat in the twelfth row at the Paramount.

Even if the band wasn't so damned good (Aldridge in particular), BOA would be worth the price of admission just for Jim Dandy's hilariously sex-charged stage persona alone. Here you've got this okie-bred southern boy with a washboard of all things stuck between his legs. Better yet though, is the way he growls in a voice that sounds something like Tom Waits gargling on a mixture of Jack Daniels and crystal meth about how he's got a "Hot Rod."

Before the band reissued Raunch And Roll, I was honestly pissed when the only versions of these songs available was on the Atco/Rhino reissued Hot And Nasty: The Best Of Black Oak Arkansas album. The songs were there, but Dandy's hilariously croaked raps were all edited out.

I mean what good is a song like "Hot Rod" without the Jim Dandy setup of feeling good because "you're feeling good because you've got a lot of motor under your wheels"? What good is a song like "Hot And Nasty" when all the great "Nasty" parts about having your "having your sweat running smooth under your skin" were left on the cutting floor?

When stuff like this is delivered by a sexually crazed okie boy like Jim Dandy it's simply priceless on levels too numerous to mention.

And did I mention Tommy Aldridge's amazing double bass drumming?

As an eighteen year old teenager with my own chromosones raging fairly hard, the combination was nothing short of intoxicating. I actualy had one friend back then--a drummer--who to this day (as far as I know) buys a vinyl copy of Raunch And Roll whenever he can find one. The last time I went to his house--for a party about ten years ago--he had something like thirty copies of it in his record collection.

Black Oak Arkansas continue to play gigs today. Mostly at places like like the Buckhorn Tavern or the Indian Casino that books bands on the classic rock curcuit in your neighborhood. They don't have Aldridge anymore. Ozzy Osbourne snatched him up pronto when the two bands shared a bill at the California Jam in 1973. I've no idea who he's playing with these days.

The last time I saw BOA was about three years ago at the classic rock festival they put on every year here in Darrington, Washington. Which is basically where a lot of old hippies and bikers get together on a field in one of our logging communities, drink a lot of beer, and generally raise hell.

BOA shared the bill that day with The Ozark Mountain Daredevils and Brewer and Shipley of "One Toke Over The Line" fame. For Brewer And Shipley, it was part of their "New Tokes For Old Folks" tour.

So Jim Dandy was no longer the "Hot And Nasty" stud he was back in the day. In fact, he's gained something like a thousand pounds, so the spandex is no longer really an option.

But the band, with most of the original guitarists intact, sounded great.

For your own persual of all things Black Oak Arkansas, I recommend you check out Raunch And Roll for starters. There is also a great live segment from England on the DVD Black Oak Arkansas: The First Thirty Years.

Just steer away from that Best Of collection from Atco/Rhino. Black Oak were were never that great in the studio. It's all about the live stuff.

So About Those UFO Sightings In Chicago...

When it comes to coverage by the national news media, UFO's (or Unidentified Flying Objects)--generally speaking at least--are not a story topping the agenda of your more credible news organizations. In fact, when it comes to such stories, the unwritten rule has always seemed to be that such reporting is best left to the supermarket tabloids.

This week however, was one where the mainstream media apparently never got that memo. Because unless I've missed something, three stories topped the mainstream news this week:

Gerald Ford's funeral.

Saddam Hussein's execution.

And the UFO sighted by numerous eyewitnesses at Chicago's O'Hare Airport.

According to the reports, several eyewitnesses including pilots and other credible personnel, watched the UFO hover over the airport before it shot straight up into the air at a very high rate of speed and disapeared into the clouds. If you missed it, you can view an interview with the Chicago Tribune reporter who broke the story here:



So here's a confession.

I've actually followed the subject of UFO's most of my life. I first got interested when as a pre-teen boy I saw something strange myself. Without going into all of the details, I saw what I would call a grey, football shaped object up in the sky while peering out the back window of my parents car during an afternoon drive in the country.

In the years since, I've read most of the literature dealing with UFO's out there. I even briefly wrote the Webwatch column for UFO Magazine recommending the best UFO websites to readers during the nineties UFO "boom years."

So like the roughly one half (or better) of all Americans who believe there actually may be something to all this flying saucer stuff, I've come to a few conclusions. Now before you reach over to cue the X-Files music, please note my hesitance to state what that "something" may actually be.

But I do believe "something" that is not birds or conventional aircraft is flying around out there, and has been for sometime. I also believe that most people probably don't give it a second thought. At least if you believe the surveys concluding that more than half of the population shares the view that UFOs are "Real."

Which is why I find many of the curcuimstances surrounding the Chicago UFO sighting reported this week so inexplicable. According to the Chicago Tribune report, both the airline and the FAA initially denied anybody saw anything. When further digging by the reporter--armed with a Freedom Of Information Act request no less--revealed otherwise, the FAA admitted they had been contacted about the sighting. Which they now dismiss as being due to odd weather conditions at the time.

Perhaps those "conditions" include the perfect "hole in the sky" that some witnesses described the object left after it tore through the cloud cover at O'Hare, and off into space that day.

Speaking of that day, the sighting occured on November 7. So why did the national news media wait until this week to report the story en masse? Incidentally, that kind of lag time is not a first when it comes to the media's timetable in reporting a mass UFO sighting over a major American city.

As I mentioned above, the nineties were kind of a "boom time" for UFOs. Between things like the X-Files on TV, and movies like Independence Day and Men In Black, UFOs and Aliens became as much a part of American Pop Culture in the nineties as Gangsta Rap and Monday Night Wrestling.

The most popular national late night radio show of the time--hosted by Art Bell--was itself devoted almost entirely to the subject of UFOs. Just between you and me--from lunchboxes to TV car ads, those little grey guys seemed to be just about everywhere.



So on March 13, 1997, a spectacular mass UFO sighting took place in the American Southwest. Though it has since come to be known as the "Phoenix Lights" sighting, the strange V-shaped formation of unidentified lights--which stretched across the entire night sky--was seen by hundreds of witnesses across the entire state of Arizona. It was also videotaped by dozens of them.

The videos can still be easily found with a Google search. But to save you the trouble you can check it out here.



The original "Phoenix Lights" event quickly became the buzz of UFOlogy through the Internet and shows like Art Bell. Still, as was the case with the Chicago sighting reported this week, it would not be covered by the mainstream media until several weeks later. The "Phoenix Lights" story eventually devolved into a media circus with city politicians donning alien costumes for the cameras, even as one (now former) councilwoman named Frances Barwood urged officials to conduct a serious investigation into the mass sighting.

The question now, as then, is simply this:

If there really isn't anything to all of this crazy UFO stuff, just why is it that so many folks in powerful positions act so crazy when it comes to the subject? You'd almost swear they were actually hiding something.

Or at the very least, it would seem they'd prefer that you and I didn't know about it.

Now you can go ahead and cue that X-Files music.