This week, we've got a little bit longer episode of Listen to Looch. I had the chance to talk to local legend, the voice, the man, the story, Curt Almsted — Curtiss A. He had an experience 49 years ago, and it's the anniversary of this experience. I'd never heard this story, so I had Curt come in and tell me about it.

Did he see a UFO? Was it something else? Whatever it was, the experience seems to have inspired Curtiss A's new song, "Unidentifiable," which you can listen to above. The track features Curtiss A on vocals guitar, drums and tambourine; Gregg Inhofer on keys; and Brynn Arens (who also produced the track, recorded at Ambient Sound Studios in St. Paul) on bass and guitar.

The video above is edited for time; Curtiss A's full story, as told to me, is transcribed below.

Meanwhile, my question for you is: Have you ever had an experience you can't quite explain? Let me know in the Comments section.

MARY LUCIA: Hey guys, it's Looch, and today I'm joined by the man, the voice, the legend, Curt Almsted. Thanks for coming by. We have you in here this week because it's an anniversary of sorts — 49 years. Something happened. You had an experience, and I do not know what it is, so you're going to tell me what happened 49 years ago.

CURTISS A: People talk about the alien abduction. I don't know for sure if I was abducted, but I was detained. I have the abduction scoop, which you can see right there. You can touch it if you want.

This is called an abduction scoop? Fill me in.

Either aliens or some branch of the military, perhaps, called the Space Force has decided to terrorize parts of the populace. Are they some sort of intergalactic scientists or is it more like Biblical? I don't know. All I know is I had this experience, and with three other guys. We played a gig. I'm quite old. This is in 1969, so next year will be a half century, but the reason I decided to do this thing now is I want letters of apology from everybody that thought I was crazy because this year — actually at the end of last year, in October — there were these rumblings. People send messages to my girlfriend, Ginny, and I'm going like that because she's sitting over there. Unfortunately for her, she's got to relay it go me, and people that know me know that I have an interest in this stuff, and there's this guy, Luis Elizondo, and if you Google him up, you'll know what I'm talking about. He's been the head of the Pentagon's hitherto unknown UFO flying saucer investigation unit, which they said didn't exist, since 1969, just a couple months after this happened. I have some other friends too, that stuff happened to, so it wasn't that I had never heard of this. I had heard about the Betty and Barney thing, and this happened, funnily enough, about a month before the Invaders premiered. You could look it up, but I'm pretty sure it was on ABC and it came out in that fall season I'm pretty sure. I remember Midnight Special [sings "down by the river"] — Neil Young impression. Evidently he shot his baby. Not really something — anyway we were coming back. It was a band called Whirl House, we stopped. We had played in I think it was Houghton (Mich.), but it might've been Marquette. What's the dif? You come down almost straight [from Michigan into Wisconsin]. We came into Neillsville (Wis.) and I was thirsty and there was the Nehi bottling plant, so you can look all this stuff up. The Nehi bottling plant had a nickel machine, so we went there, but we didn't get there because as we were stopped, headed down the little back road — it wasn't right on the highway — there was no freeway there then. The closest one I think was 94, and that was like 30 miles south — Black River Falls — you go by there — every time you go by there the army, the army, whatever. I don't know what they're doing, but something underground. Randy Berdahl was the drummer, and he was awake, and I had recently been in a car accident so I was awake because you don't sleep when you're in a car after a traumatic experience. But the other two guys were asleep in the back. It was Rick Clark and James Solberg, and James is relatively well known as a member of Luther Allison's Grammy Award-winning blues combo a little later on in the '70s. At this point he was still playing with me, or I with him, and Randy and I — when you get to a crossroad stop sign, whatever it is — when you get to one of those things you stop and you look both ways to make sure nothing's going to hit you. So when we looked to the left it was overcast, but right at that moment the sun rose, and so between the clouds and the earth — what's it called?

The horizon?

Thank you. In between there's a sliver, and when the sun came up it was one of those kind of magnificent kind of deals, but also hard to look at. You're not supposed to look at it, so we both turned away, and as we did we noticed that over to the west, as the sun rises in the east, over to the west there was a glint, and there was a really pronounced [makes a flash noise]

Like a flash of light or like a beam?

Flash. And we both noticed it and looked at each other and looked back, and the way I describe it is there were the size of an inflated dime. If you took a dime — looked at it — the sun's over there. So I didn't know how big they were and I didn't know how far away it was. Once I noticed what I was looking at, which was five of these inflated dimes floating in the air — because just for a moment, the sun is still there. It doesn't go vroom. It takes a little bit. So in those few seconds they were completely illuminated and it was like what the — I think they say WTF nowadays?

The kids are saying WTF, yes.

I don't think we said anything because we were so shocked. I just remember sort of this look. And looked back, and then there's this phrase that's used. It's probably a cliché now called missing time. And the way I experienced it was that as soon as my brain, my consciousness, realized what it was actually seeing, there's like a connection and they go [snaps his fingers], and the whole thing, even though I was still conscious, turned into like a photograph, like a 2-D. I wasn't looking at 3-D anymore, I was looking at 2-D. But it was like the stoppage of time or something. It just was like something you'd see on The Twilight Zone. I resisted it because I'm like that, and I shook it off, but after I shook it off they weren't there anymore, and the sun had gone up past the clouds, and instead what I saw was five deflated footballs, but they looked black because it was the beginning of dawn, whatever that's called. I guess it's called dawn — daybreak. So they were bigger and closer and the same thing happened — 2-D. Shook it off again. This time when I opened my eyes one of them was right on top of us. I was too busy absorbing this, trying — I remember mashing my head against — just — and it really frightened me.

You were feeling fearful. Did it feel —?

Wonderment. Surprise. Wonderment. Fear. When things stop, when things are — go to 2-D, go to a photo, like in, say, a movie or something, or when there's no music in the soundtrack, it's just — and I started thinking, "Can I breathe?" And I tried to breathe and I couldn't breathe, and all of a sudden everything went black and I just went [makes whistling noise]. Then the next thing, all four of us were standing outside the car, all the car doors were open, we had a U-Haul trailer as well — U-Haul, not Ryder — these are the jokes — we're standing there and — let me stand up. I was on the end and the other guys were in a straight line, and Rick Clark was next to me, and then Solberg, and then Randy. So they took the two guys in the back seat and stuck them in the middle. And we could more our eyes. And I know this because I was moving my eyes, but I couldn't move anything else. We were immobile, paralyzed, whatever you call it. Couldn't move. And these things were above us, less than 50 feet above us, and I believe they were approximately 50 feet across. They could've been even larger. It was hard to judge because we were right under it. They were still in V formation. The one furthest away, and this would be approximately a football field away — a football field is 300-some feet — and these things — there's five of them, and if they're 50-60 feet across, that's that. Except they have space between them. There's no noise. Just like this, and we're conscious, and all of us, I know because we talked about it, were wondering WTF. We've all seen movies, but to actually be in one — and let me also say that there was this stuff at the time, lysergic acid, the LSD, I'll just say we weren't on it. We were poor. We didn't have any of the other goodies that many kids were trying starting in 1969. Look it up. But we didn't have any of that. I didn't even drink beer. I didn't smoke cigarettes. All I loved was rock and roll and girls. Basically I would just fall in love. I wasn't even a swinger. I was a relatively normal person. My hair was about this length. That's about the only thing that's — we're standing there and they move first. The one furthest away is above a steeple. I've gone back there since and was told that that church burned down, but there had been a church there, and when I went back there and it wasn't there, I go there goes my story. It's true. And it was above the steeple, and they pivoted 90 degrees, and then they started to ascend at a 45-degree angle. And we're all looking at this, and we're all seeing it, and it's still cloudy, so they ascend into the clouds. And then the clouds turn deep pink, and the thing about that is — the ending of the story is not there. That was a Sunday morning. We had played Friday and Saturday up in Houghton or Marquette.

Yeah. That was good.

It was a traumatic experience. And you will ask me — I should give you a chance. It's your show. Did you see what they look like?

Yeah. When you say "they" I think people have a tendency to put their own feelings of "they" —

What it is. And I don't even know. And that's why I think I mentioned that I don't know if it's extraterrestrials or a government guy. And just lately they announced the Space Force, but it's been a thing since they discovered alien technology. Or that's the story they want you to believe. You just don't know. I've read all the books, and there are some military guys who wrote books back then who said that it was aliens. And then since then all kinds of stuff has been extrapolated. I believe it was because of the Roswell thing that the CIA was put together. They wanted a thing to control the earth. I'm not one of these guys like Trump that says Russia's not so bad because we did it too. Anybody that does it is bad. Stop doing it.

When you had — how do I say it? When you came to, all four of you, what was the discussion?

We couldn't speak. And here's the discussion. I believe that we were hypnotized somehow, that our minds were controlled, and they said, "You're not going to speak about this for 55 minutes." So we were on the north side of town where the Nehi bottling plant was. I don't know if it's still there. And so we had to drive through town. We were about five miles out of town, almost like seven miles. 50 miles an hour. It was a few minutes. It took 15 minutes to get home — 10 minutes, whatever, and as we were driving out of town, south, Rick turns to me and goes, "Weird." That's it. That's all that was said. And the other guys, I remember James seemed pretty intense, but he always seems intense. So when you have a thing like that, I was scared as scared can be. But there's a certain camaraderie when you're with your friends. I don't think it matters if it's boys or girls, if you're with some people and you get to share an experience somehow, you get to cut it up, I only have to worry about a quarter of what happened. I don't think I was anally probed, but I don't know. The thing is, two days later, on Tuesday evening, two of the guys left. They went to Thorp, which is where they were from, to visit mom and dad and maybe have some comfort food. And then it left Rick and I there alone without a car, and weird stuff started to happen. I remember we went in — we were thirsty and the water was a pump and it tasted real irony or whatever. And then we were tired and we slept for a long time. And then we awoke Monday, and same thing. The only thing he could say was "weird" for a whole day. Then on Tuesday we phoned a friend and said we were hungry and could he take us to the A&W. And he goes, "Sure, but I have to wait until after dinner," because he was a high school kid. And you can check with — there's a guy that's actually a witness to this, kind of sort of, because he was in the car that came. It was Brian Drake, who's with April Fools, and Clay Williams, a really good local guitarist. They have a band. And he is from Neillsville. And he was friends with this guy, John somebody — let the innocent remain untethered — anyway, he showed up and it was about 7:00, and Brian was there too, and Rick and I were chomping at the bit to get away from there because we were getting a weird vibe, man. Like I felt like a bug under a microscope, and they pulled in and they were facing east. I had to pee. Instead of going to the outhouse I just went over by the culvert. It was under the driveway. We were guys. Teenagers will do that. As I'm urinating, all of a sudden I felt dizzy, kind of faint; felt like I was going to fall forward, so I start to back up, and I looked over to the west and I saw what I thought was a tree on fire. It was a farm about a quarter mile away — abandoned. It had windbreaks. I could see after just a moment that it was one of these flying saucers. But it wasn't shining silver anymore. And the other thing — it wasn't silver. A bunch of people have described it as the flip side of aluminum foil, and I must say that that's kind of the way it looks. The one side, the top, is more aluminum foil-y than the bottom. The bottom is like the other side. Maybe Reynolds has got an intergalactic thing going. I don't know. Where the heck was I?

You were urinating and you saw the tree on fire, but it was actually the matte side of Reynolds Wrap.

Only it was throbbing. So it was that, but then it would go vroom vroom, but that isn't the sound that I heard. That was the sound that was in my head every time it did that, and I actually talked to a guy from NASA. I can't tell you his name. I know that sounds weird, but he told me that was because of the coronal discharge, so look it up, little scientist kids. [makes vroom noise], and it was affecting me physically, and I can't take my eyes off it. It's pretty darn whatever. Then it turns red. It gets 30-40 feet above the tree. It was less above the tree than it was wide. If it turned it would hit the tree, if it would've tilted. And it's above it and it goes foom foom foom, and like maybe it was an old Model T UFO, whatever, [makes grunting noise] instead of instantaneous, but then it goes red. It's just sitting there, red. And you could've, I suppose, if you were sort of blind, imagine that that was the sun, but the sun was over there. It was daylight savings time. It was at about 4:00 or 5:00 over here. It was over here. It was yellow. This was here and it was real shiny red, more shiny red than a fire engine. And then it turned white, white heat, white light, whatever, it was like looking at a welding torch. And then, like it was shot from a slingshot, whatever, fired from — just straight up. And I followed it. And it was cloudless and it was still blue, regular blue, sky blue. By the time — if you were to count one-1,000 — by the time that second was done it had passed through the atmosphere, and the reason I know that is it was so bright, it didn't stop being bright until it escaped gravity.

Right.

And when it went through, I saw something that I've never heard described, so I feel darn sort of lucky to have seen this. It was something you'd see in a movie, like a special effect. The illumination was so bright that when it went through the last vestiges of atmosphere, I could see space. It illuminated — the hole was big enough where it turned into — there was nothing for the [make sh noise] to reflect off, so instead of it being like a brilliant shimmering, it just turned into a dot, and the sky, instead of being black, was so illuminated by this thing that it was like dark, dark deep purple.

You could see stars?

Yes, I saw stars through it. And I couldn't tell you what they were, nor how many. It wasn't necessarily star-studded, but kind of. It seemed like at least a dozen, and it was — I don't think I even saw an inch, but the other thing was like a pinpoint. And by "an inch" I don't mean an inch up there, but an inch the same way that the inflated dimes — so that was twice in one week, and then all kinds of weird junk started to happen. And I have other odd things that have happened, and I've spoken actually to many--

[END OF AUDIO PART 1. BEGINNING OF AUDIO PART 2]

— and that's what they call "missing time."

I got to say, this story is extraordinary, and my final question is, having had that experience, which is unique to you and yet you shared it with — other people have had experiences similar. Do you think you gained anything from it, like kind of a magic power?

Oh god, no. Well, maybe, because sometimes I'll — I've experienced some odd stuff.

Do you think you would not have experienced that odd stuff had this particular thing not happened?

It's so hard to — there was an incident when I was a child. There was a couple of them, where it's kind of unexplained where little Curt went. Weirdly, on the night that The Flintstones premiered, I think September 30, 1960, I had an astral experience. I was tired. I was waiting for my aunt to come home. I was looking up at the sky, and she came home and I was asleep and she awakened me and said, "Come on up and sleep on the couch." So I did. And then all of a sudden I awoke and walked over to the door, but instead of opening the door I just went right through it and I felt like I was Green Lantern, and I thought it was a dream. But I'm pretty sure it was an astral thing. That's not helping anything with the whole crazy deal, but astral is a deal. It's like the Buddhists do it and whatever. Just because I didn't tell you a bunch of stuff —

Transcendental meditation — it can transport a person — mind, body —

That's what they say, and I still don't know if there's any Western proof, but I don't necessarily require Western proof, because Western proof has lied to us. So I'm a big conspiracy guy. And right now there's all this stuff happening. Now let me tell you, Space Force has been with us for at least 50 years, which would make what happened to me question as to who or what did it. I've heard — just get on the Internet, although that might be a bad thing nowadays. There's so much fake stuff, but I was going to say before, Paul Hillier [Editor's note: Almsted is likely referring to Rick Hillier, Canada's Chief of the Defence Staff from 2005 to 2008] was Canada's minister of defense in the past, and evidently he knew about the truth of UFOs and aliens. Now, was he fed the truth, or is it the truth truth. It's so hard. Like in The X Files they go "the truth is out there". Hope so. Hope somebody finds it someday.

Curt, it's an incredible story, and the only thing I'm worried for you is that in telling this story you're going to get a lot of people coming up to you saying, "Let me tell you my story," and you're going to be able to weed out who might be —

I've already had a lot of people, and when I actually used to go to some MUFON [Mutual UFO Network] meetings, and there was a guy there — I don't want to say his name — he was office of naval intelligence, which is a very powerful organization, so they've — when I say "they", I don't even want to say the deep state stuff. Here's my joke. I've been railing against the deep state for 60 years, but now that we have Donald Trump I'm so thankful they exist. It's a joke and it's awful, but it's true, and I think a whole bunch of people — you here them on the news every night going "geez, I hope this guy can rein them in or whatever." I think it's well known now that America is ruled by a crazy person, I think. I know you guys are supposedly — they say you're left wing, but I think you're fair and balanced, to use a phrase. I like whatever you guys are putting out, for the most part. Whatever. I'll just shut up there. I don't want to say anything more that's stupid. But, you know, so I wrote a song, and I think at some point they're probably going to play it, and then I also have another one there that the producer, who is Brynn Arens, famously from Flip, he's evidently — in the biz he's a well-known Mr. Fixit, and he plays and puts in guitar and does magic stuff, sprinkles magic dust on stuff, so I have a couple things that are new, and we're working on more. Is it going to be an album? I don't know. Do albums even exist anymore? And Peter Jespersen said he wanted to — that would not be Jerks of Fate, but Bryn said that he wanted to record Jerks live.

That'd be cool.

So we'll have to figure out where. And I'm appearing at I think the Electric Fetus maybe the Day of the Dead for Al Beaulieu's book from the Minnesota Historical Society.

November 1.

No, the 2nd I think is Day of the Dead. The 1st is All Souls Day, and then I think they have the pious day and then hell raising night. And so that should be good, and I'm hoping it's Jerks — not to say anything bad about Dark Click. And I play with the Scoot at the Schooner the first Wednesday of every month, and Chrissie Dunlap said, "The way you remember that is when you hear the air raid siren at 1:00, think of it as the Curt Alert."

Transcript by Rick Carlson.

Related Story

Curtiss A on a life in Minnesota music: 'I didn't get any money, but I get to be a legend', Local Current blog, May 4, 2018

External Links

Curtiss A, First Avenue biography page

Ambient Sound Recording Studio, St. Paul, Minn.