As a child, I had a strong interest in the history and mythology of UFOs and aliens. Despite the many phobias that can afflict a young kid, I was never afraid of ghosts, bogeymen, or monsters — or even the supposedly very real threat of child predators, kidnappers, and serial killers. Instead, I was fascinated and terrified by the prospect of being abducted by aliens and experimented on. Why this terror developed — leading to many sleepless nights and pleadings with my parents to sleep in their room — is not clear to me. Probably a combination of the countless hours I spent watching syndicated episodes of “Unsolved Mysteries” and my youth reading list, which leaned heavily on science fiction. My appetite for material relating to UFOs was as insatiable as it was damaging to my young psyche; and to this day, although I’m a well-adjusted adult, the prospect of alien abduction still stirs deep emotions.
Usually when we talk about having a personal reaction to a work of art, we mean something positive, as in the sense of pathos it elicits. But when I switched on Douglas Mesner’s Good and Bad UFOs cassette for the first time, I learned that one can have a personal reaction to art that is not entirely pleasant. Good and Bad UFOs is a cut-up tape collage, drawn primarily from a recording of a certified nutjob going on about his experiences with the occult. Though the speaker’s encounters with various representatives of alien intelligence form its central focus, the tape touches on every major occult trend of the last fifty years, from witchcraft to Jesus’ lost years to satanic ritual abuse. Mesner casts this material in sharp relief against a looped sample of a classic soul duet. The result is deeply unsettling, particularly when Mesner employs sparse sound manipulation and edits passages on top of each other to create an otherworldly sound. To me, Good and Bad UFOs represents the dark underbelly of nostalgia, vividly recalling some childhood memories that I’d rather forget.
The B-side of the tape continues in roughly the same vein, but Mesner ditches the soul sample and goes for an atonal backing track that makes the spoken word selections sound even creepier. Individual reactions to this one will will vary deeply. I’m sure that many listeners will find the ludicrous ramblings of a clearly disturbed individual hilarious, or even sad, but to me Good and Bad UFOs is an uncanny triumph that slots nicely on the spectrum of American weirdness — somewhere between “Coast to Coast AM”, Craig Baldwin’s experimental film collage narratives, and my own youthful experience of UFO paranoia. Another truly “out” missive from the fertile hotbed of the current cassette underground.
Doug Mesner, Side A of Good and Bad UFOs (As Above So Below Tapes, 2009)
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Words: Max Burke
Good and Bad UFOS was released in 2009 by As Above So Below Tapes. Purchase the cassette via their MySpace, and be sure to check out the rest of their catalogue, which includes rare releases by Rangers and Sir Plastic Crimewave.
this is sooooo soooo wild on so many levels for me. crazy/thank you!