Billy Goodman Show

[widespread1]

Is anybody familiar with the old Billy Goodman Show out of Las Vegas?

[widespread1]

Photo of Billy Goodman from Adam Muskiewicz’s 2007 documentary, The Truth About Elvis.

William L. Goodman, 67, an internationally known radio and television personality, who was the host of the Coast to Coast radio program before Art Bell became the host, has died. Goodman passed away on February 10, 2009, at the Philip Hulitar Hospice Center surrounded by his family. He was the husband of Judith M. (Iuliano) Goodman and the son of the late Anne V. (Gabriele) Goodman.

He also leaves two children, Wanda Clark and her husband Michael of Warwick and Billy Jaymes and his wife Sandra of Providence, three grandchildren, Joshua, Stacey, and Samantha, and two step-grandchildren, Kevin and Kayla.

His early broadcast was called The Billy Goodman Happening.

[widespread1]

The Billy Goodman Happening

To follow is an excerpt from a piece I wrote back in the early-90’s for Crash Collusion magazine called “UFO’s, LSD and Me”, this well before the current deluge of UFO, conspiracy and paranormal podcasts that have assaulted the cyber airwaves … Amazing how media has changed with the advent of the internet! â€" A.G.

I have a knack for tuning into strange things, whether they be arcane periodicals, off the wall TV shows, or bizarre radio broadcasts from The Planet Bonkers. Often, in the dead of night, I’ll run through the dial of my GE Super Radio and see what I can find to blow my mind. One interesting fanatic I came across was this Christian fundamentalist radio talk show host, Bob Larson, who’s written several books on Satanism in Rock Music, Demonic Possession, and other interesting subjects along these lines.

One day Larson was interviewing some French guy who claimed to be an alien as well as the second coming of Christ. What Rev. Larson does is get these fringe wackos on his show and then tries to expose them for what they are: messengers of Satan trying to corrupt the minds of the young â€" and not so young â€" to pave the way for Groovy Captain Lucifer and The End Times. Needless to say, this makes for some interesting listening.

Another radio program I came across was The Billy Goodman Happening, which was broadcast out of Las Vegas. Billy Goodman is one of those DJ’s who has been around the broadcasting block a few times, and had earlier in his career (using the moniker of Dickie Goodman) made a record about a Martian coming to Earth, where the announcer (played by Billy) asked this Martian questions, and the Martian answered with snippets taken from various rock n’ roll songs popular at the time. Anyway, Billy came on the air one night early on in the infancy of the show â€" at a time when he didn’t where it was going, or what direction it would take in the future â€" and got the whole ball rolling in a fringe topics direction by discussing the death, or supposed death, of Elvis. From there the show exploded with not only Elvis weirdos calling in and babbling on the air about their own personal visitations with the King; but as well with a whole slew of assorted paranoid listeners and subsequent guests ranting on such other such varied topics as UFO’s and alien abductions, Alternative 3, ghosts and haunted houses, weird sciences and perpetual motion machines, Tesla and his inventions, hidden cancer cures, weather modification wars, not to mention the usual CFR and Trilateralist conspiracy mongers (with too much spare time on their hands) calling in to expose the aims and motives of those behind “The New World Order’s One World Government Computerized Currency Take-Over!”

Billy Goodman

Billy Goodman

Around this time is when a lot of UFO sightings started to be reported near Las Vegas, in the Groom Lake area, which is part of Area 51, a top-secret military testing facility in Nevada. A lot of weird shit has been seen there the last couple of years and there has even been some pretty good videos taken of these strange luminous balls doing incredible maneuvers at unbelievable speeds in the skies over Area 51.

Billy In The Presence Of An Alien

Billy In The Presence Of An Alien

During this period, a fellow named Robert Lazar crawled out of the woodwork claiming to have worked at Area 51, and had seen an alien saucer. Mr. Lazar turned out to be a pretty incredible â€" and at the same time credible â€" witness. Although the government tried to discredit him, they weren’t completely successful in their efforts. The government claimed that Lazar had never worked at Area 51, or for the U.S. Government â€" at any level â€" ever. But Mr. Lazar was able to produce evidence that, in fact, he had worked as a scientist/physicist on secret government projects in the past.

A prize winning documentary aired at around this time, in’89. It was produced by a Vegas TV station centering on the UFO sightings in Area 51, in addition to Mr. Lazar’s highly controversial claims.

For awhile Lazar became a somewhat frequent guest on The Billy Goodman Happening, detailing what he had seen â€" and had participated in â€" at Area 51. But when Lazar started to get threatened by certain segments of our Government, he kind of clammed up and pulled himself out of the media spotlight. Also, Billy Goodman at this time started getting some regular guests who were on the fringes of wacko-ness, or who were just plan “cracked”, and I think Lazar probably didn’t want to associate himself with these individuals, who became regulars on The Happening, such as Bill Cooper and Virgil Armstrong, among others.

Bill Cooper claimed, among other things, that the U.S. Government since the late forties has had a secret pact with the aliens, and that these very same aliens participated in the assassination of JFK. Also, that there are alien space stations on the moon and Mars, and that these space stations are funded by the distribution of drugs to our country. Virgil Armstrong believes â€" or says he believes â€" that the Earth, the moon and all the other planets in our solar system are hollow. But that’s not all; they’re spaceships, too. Gravity is also a farce, he says. And oxygen is everywhere! Why, we’d have no more trouble breathing on the surface of Jupiter than we’d have on our own Mother Earth! (And yes, he has evidence to support these claims!) Apparently, Mr. Armstrong is involved in some sort of desert saucer cult in Arizona, and I believe has set himself up as its all-knowing guru.

I recently acquired a tape of the conspiracy researcher John Judge, giving his view on UFO’s and such characters as Bill Cooper and Virgil Armstrong. According to Judge, Cooper and Armstrong fall in to the same camp; they are both ex-military intelligence people â€" which means that they are still affiliated with the intelligence community â€" and are involved in duplicity with our government in perpetuating the myth that UFOs are piloted by beings not of this earth. What they accomplish by perpetuating this myth is to take attention away from the real operators of these strange vessels, who are earth people; and in most cases U.S. Government employees. There are records that show that near the end of WW2, the Nazi’s were at that time developing flying saucers, and it is these very same saucers that the US Army confiscated from the Nazi’s and have ever since been using to buzz around the skies and terrorize the general populace. Now, what these ex-military-intelligence-guys-turned-phony-saucer-cult-gurus do, according to Judge, is predict a date when the saucer people will land â€" this, of course, after he’s had a vision detailing their imminent arrival. (All of this being pre-arranged in advance with his saucer contacts inside the Government.) Then he gets his disciples together, has them lick some Sonoran desert toads and tada, the vessel appears and blows their little minds, and the guru is the next best thing to God. Or maybe he is God.

Originally, The Bill Goodman Happening was on from 10:00 PM to 1:00 AM, Monday thru Friday, but the more controversial the show became, the later the hours got. It was a low budget affair, so Billy had to â€" in a lot of cases â€" answer the phones and do everything himself, production-wise. As he continued on in his plight to reveal the secrets surrounding the UFOs in Area 51 and other such controversial matters, Billy began receiving harassing type phone calls, which seemed to be more than your simple I-don’t-have-a-life-type phone call pranks. These phone calls were threatening in nature and seemed designed to drive Billy off the air. Evidently â€" though the show seemed to be gaining in popularity â€" the powers that be at the station, KVEG, must’ve started getting a little nervous, and decided to move Billy’s time spot to 12:00 AM â€" 3:00 AM, then eventually 3:00 AM â€" 5:00 AM. Due to my work schedule, I was unable to listen to Billy for a few months after this third time change. When I did try to tune in again, he was gone, driven off the air, I’m sure, by government agent provocateurs.