Art Bell has died.

[DaveM]

I decided to go onto YouTube and listen to the interviews Art did with Father Malachi Martin from 1997 to 1999. Father Martin was involved in conducting exorcisms for the Catholic church. Bell managed to ask insightful questions to Father Martin's lifetime of experiences. It was quite enlightening.

I also turned on Coast to Coast AM to see if they had anything meaningful to say about Art's death. I must say I haven't listened to this program in over ten years. The host was someone named Connie Willis. I never heard of her before. I could only listen for maybe thirty minutes.

I understand why this program has taken nosedive in the ratings. There are endless commercials (more than I remember) and Ms. Willis was constantly repeating herself. It sounded so very amateurish. All she would say was that George Noory was putting together a tribute show to Art Bell. God help us!

 

[SheaOlmsford]

Wow that was a lot of history. You sound like a super fan. Thanks for that run down on Bell’s show.

I was lucky enough to catch a few shows here in Wisconsin back in the late 90s. A local station would play maybe an hour or two at the most. By the time I got on the internet in like 2001-02 I looked into downloading his archive but it was behind a paywall. Being a poor student at the time I could not justify the expense. I think it was even listening through realplayer only lol. I wonder if you could post your 10 cds of his shows on YouTube these days. Probably some copyright issues though.

Sorry, but it would be illegal. Coast to Coast goes after anyone who does so. Sometimes shows are on YOUTUBE but they are eventually closed down and the originator banned. Whoever owns these shows is merciless.

 

[SheaOlmsford]

I decided to go onto YouTube and listen to the interviews Art did with Father Malachi Martin from 1997 to 1999. Father Martin was involved in conducting exorcisms for the Catholic church. Bell managed to ask insightful questions to Father Martin's lifetime of experiences. It was quite enlightening.

I also turned on Coast to Coast AM to see if they had anything meaningful to say about Art's death. I must say I haven't listened to this program in over ten years. The host was someone named Connie Willis. I never heard of her before. I could only listen for maybe thirty minutes.

I understand why this program has taken nosedive in the ratings. There are endless commercials (more than I remember) and Ms. Willis was constantly repeating herself. It sounded so very amateurish. All she would say was that George Noory was putting together a tribute show to Art Bell. God help us!

George Noory couldn't put together a 2 piece paper airplane. He has a staff that does all the work for him and he just shows up at curtain time.

 

[SheaOlmsford]

Back in 2013-14 the Art Bell fans over at BellGab compiled an archive of all the shows that they could get hold of (The Ultimate Art Bell Collection) and uploaded it to the torrent network. It's over 50GB of shows. The magnet link and instructions are in Post #395 on this page:
Final Torrent

There are some real gems in there. But there's a lot of rubbish too of course - Sean David Morton and Ed Dames and way too much Richard Hoagland. A lot of people take swipes at Art Bell for the shysters and such that he had on the show, and that's a fair criticism (creeps like "Dr. Jonathan Reed" should never have been given a platform to defraud people, imo). But he broadcast 4-5hrs/day, 5-6 days/week, for years: that's a gargantuan expanse of airtime to fill up, and I don't see how he could've come up with enough legit researchers to fill all of that airtime.

Shows like the Dr. Barry Taff interviews, and Gordon Cooper telling his Edwards AFB ufo story, and Peter Davenport's ufo report updates, and his excellent interviews with serious world-renowned scientists and soforth - those make up for the "psychic predictions" and the Y2K stuff etc., in my book anyway.

And I disagree with SheaOlmsford on this point: Art was an even more talented broadcaster than Long John Nebel, imo, and his legacy will endure even longer. I doubt that it's possible to overstate the positive influence that he had on the field of ufology - he almost single-handedly mainstreamed the entire subject and gave so many bright minds in this field a mic to talk about their work to millions of interested listeners.

I suggest you go to a shopping mall or Home Depot and ask 100 people who Long John Nebel was. I suggest you will get blank stares. Unless you are a geek into this stuff, no one will know. Just remember that teens today have no idea who the Beatles were.

 

[ethel]

Just finished listening to the After The Paracast tribute - nicely done both - some interesting insights contained therein.

I did smile when Don described Art as the 'consummate showman' as that's pretty much what I'd called him earlier in this thread prior to hearing the show.

Great minds think alike, eh?

 

[Christopher O'Brien]

Article HERE:

By Christopher O'Brien

The news last week of legendary late night radio broadcaster Art Bell’s passing generated a deluge of social media posts that mourned his death, extolled his virtues as a groundbreaking broadcaster and acknowledged his role as a fringe subject pioneer. There’s no denying the impact of Bell’s presence on late night talk radio that helped fuel public acceptance of UFOs and so called ‘paranormal’ subjects in the 1990s. Almost single-handedly, Bell transformed fringe subject radio ‘entertainment’ with his resonant voice, even keeled demeanor and a constant colorful parade of guests who addressed everything, anything, paranormal, ufological, conspiratorial—and much more....

...Covering controversial fringe subject matter comes with journalistic responsibility and this is where the fabled Bell saga becomes problematic.

Skeptics of all things ‘paranormal’ at the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CICOP) have cynically suggested that you can literally trace back “every woo-woo claim, urban myth, and conspiracy theory of the 21st century to its appearance on Coast to Coast AM.” On the surface, this sounds like a gross exaggeration but when you track many of these memes back to their origins and ascertain where they were first propagated, in many cases, you’ll find the naysayers are surprisingly correct. The list of tall-tale tellers, self-proclaimed ‘experts,’ conspiracy nuts, hoaxers, charlatans, snake oil salesmen, time-traveling alarmists, reptoid rape victims, intelligence agency disinformation specialists (and other ‘spooky types’) etc., is endless and many of these memes are alive and well and doing fine today. It is important to note that most, if not all of these above mentioned questionable guests, were given the same treatment, respect and gravitas by Bell as the many serious researchers, real astronauts, cutting edge scientists, respected investigators, scholarly academics and real life witnesses who also graced the program. This evenhanded approach combined w/ Bell’s manner did make for entertaining, sensational late night talk radio, but his style did little, if anything, to help separate the proverbial ‘wheat from the chaff.’ The rapidly growing, gullible Coast to Coast AM listening audience newly addicted to the X-Files television series and that poster in Mulders office: “I Want to Believe”were never properly educated on how to discern between fact and fiction and Art Bell’s credulous style of entertainment, while an advertiser’s and sociologist’s dream, became a real-life researcher’s nightmare...
FULL ARTICLE HERE

 

[Decker]

Excellent article Chris, outstanding.

Decker

 

[fastwalker]

Chris, thanks for the great article. I spent many a grave yard shift listening to Coast to Coast, I can not count the times I listened in disbelief of what I was hearing but it made the hours fly by; for the grave yard worker Art Bell was a god send. Adieu Art...

 

[Thomas R Morrison]

I suggest you go to a shopping mall or Home Depot and ask 100 people who Long John Nebel was. I suggest you will get blank stares. Unless you are a geek into this stuff, no one will know. Just remember that teens today have no idea who the Beatles were.

The public at large isn't really a meaningful yardstick, imo - by that measuring standard Kanya West beats Erwin Schrödinger by a landslide.

I tend to make my comments here within the context of this particular subculture, the ufology community. From that perspective, Art Bell is probably the leading figure in many of the top metrics: his show greatly grew our ranks and informed millions of people on ufological and paranormal topics of all kinds, and gave a huge platform to many of the top minds in the field. While also giving us rare opportunities to hear from some top scientific minds for hours on end, and giving people a chance to tell some excellent ghost stories and stuff.

On the other hand I share most of Chris’ well-expressed reservations about Art Bell’s oeuvre; by taking an impartial and primarily theatrical stance about everything on his show, he gave genuine con artists like Sean David Morton and “Dr. Jonathan Reed” a platform to defraud the credulous among our ranks of their hard-earned money – and that does smack of outright complicity. I think that most of us could sift the wheat from the chaff for ourselves just fine, but clearly many people are not gifted with the skill of discernment, which poses a legitimate moral quandary.

Shea, in closing I’ll say this: if the people of the younger generation who have an interest in ufos and such don't know about Art Bell or Long John Nebel, and if they don't know about the best work in the ufology field in general, then it's up to us to teach them. I've been working on a project with a 19 year-old artist for the last few days, and I've been playing a kind of tribute of the best Art Bell shows for her, and she's really enjoying it. I’m not playing any of the dreck like Ed Dames or Richard Hoagland – just the good stuff like Stanton Friedman and Peter Davenport and Dr. Barry Taff, and the Ghost-to-Ghost shows. So I think that, like so many things in life, we can take the best of Art Bell’s work and pass it forward to the next generation, and leave the rest in the dustbin of history where it belongs.

 

[wwkirk]

I thought Coast to Coast AM did a decent tribute to Art.
The Gralien Report was not bad either.

 

[SheaOlmsford]

Article HERE:

By Christopher O'Brien

The news last week of legendary late night radio broadcaster Art Bell’s passing generated a deluge of social media posts that mourned his death, extolled his virtues as a groundbreaking broadcaster and acknowledged his role as a fringe subject pioneer. There’s no denying the impact of Bell’s presence on late night talk radio that helped fuel public acceptance of UFOs and so called ‘paranormal’ subjects in the 1990s. Almost single-handedly, Bell transformed fringe subject radio ‘entertainment’ with his resonant voice, even keeled demeanor and a constant colorful parade of guests who addressed everything, anything, paranormal, ufological, conspiratorial—and much more....

...Covering controversial fringe subject matter comes with journalistic responsibility and this is where the fabled Bell saga becomes problematic.

Skeptics of all things ‘paranormal’ at the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CICOP) have cynically suggested that you can literally trace back “every woo-woo claim, urban myth, and conspiracy theory of the 21st century to its appearance on Coast to Coast AM.” On the surface, this sounds like a gross exaggeration but when you track many of these memes back to their origins and ascertain where they were first propagated, in many cases, you’ll find the naysayers are surprisingly correct. The list of tall-tale tellers, self-proclaimed ‘experts,’ conspiracy nuts, hoaxers, charlatans, snake oil salesmen, time-traveling alarmists, reptoid rape victims, intelligence agency disinformation specialists (and other ‘spooky types’) etc., is endless and many of these memes are alive and well and doing fine today. It is important to note that most, if not all of these above mentioned questionable guests, were given the same treatment, respect and gravitas by Bell as the many serious researchers, real astronauts, cutting edge scientists, respected investigators, scholarly academics and real life witnesses who also graced the program. This evenhanded approach combined w/ Bell’s manner did make for entertaining, sensational late night talk radio, but his style did little, if anything, to help separate the proverbial ‘wheat from the chaff.’ The rapidly growing, gullible Coast to Coast AM listening audience newly addicted to the X-Files television series and that poster in Mulders office: “I Want to Believe”were never properly educated on how to discern between fact and fiction and Art Bell’s credulous style of entertainment, while an advertiser’s and sociologist’s dream, became a real-life researcher’s nightmare...
FULL ARTICLE HERE

Great Article, Chris. Regarding your reference to Linda Moulton Howe, I just watched a YOUTUBE video of her giving a presentation about whether our universe is a simulation or hologram projected from another universe. Fascinating topic. But I laughed at her proof from her named experts in science as Tom DeLong, Corey Goode and David Wilcock. Oh my!

 

[Tobias Kundera]

I remember listening to coast to coast on AM radio 20+ years ago when I was younger. The mystery and wonder, and showmanship of it all, still makes me smile. Over the years I grew to roll my eyes at Art Bell but I have to admit, he opened a lot of people up, including me, to considering new and different possibilities to things.
Life's wheel turns so quickly. We often seem to never have enough time in life.