Clyde Lewis

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Clyde Lewis (born Louis Clyde Holder, 22 February 1964, Murray, Utah) is a talk radio personality and actor. He is the creator and host of Ground Zero, a talk radio show dealing with paranormal and parapolitical topics.

His writings have been featured in UFO Magazine and Chris Fleming's Unknown Magazine[1], and he has appeared on Sightings and Strange Universe.

He has appeared in the movies Nightfall (1988), which he co-wrote with director Kevin Delullo; Cage in Box Elder (2000); and Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger Part IV (2000), in which he provided the voice of the Toxic Avenger.

Contents

[edit] Radio career

1982: KBBX, a gospel station in Bountiful, Utah, as a producer and engineer.

1985–1989: K-LITE 93 FM in Salt Lake City, Utah, as producer for the John and Dan Show,

1989–1991: Short stints at KZHT, KMGR, and KJQN, also in Salt Lake City.

1992: Hiatus from broadcast radio, during which he taught classes at the American School of Broadcasting and also published a horror fanzine called B-Lame, which he continued through 1994.

1993–1995: Returned to the former K-LITE, which had become Z-93, where he resumed producing the John and Dan Show. He created his own show, In The Pink, where he synchronized Pink Floyd music with sound effects and movie soundtracks.

1995–1997: KCNR, Salt Lake City, where he was a CNN regional correspondent, reported for Metro News, co-hosted the show Drive-By Radio with Rick Emerson, and began Ground Zero, the show he is best known for.

1997–1999: KBER, Salt Lake City, continuing Ground Zero.

1999–2001: Moved to Portland, Oregon to produce the Rick Emerson Show during its year-and-a-half syndication. Ground Zero became syndicated March 12, 2000 on the NBG Network until 2001. Its flagship station was Portland's KXL.

2001–2005: KOTK, Portland, Oregon, continuing Ground Zero. KOTK became Max 910 in 2004, and changed its format in 2005, removing Ground Zero from terrestrial radio.

2005–present: Lewis has continued Ground Zero in the form of a weekly presentation called Ground Zero Lounge at a Portland nightclub, Dante's, which is recorded and broadcast over the Internet.

[edit] Ground Zero Radio

Ground Zero is a show whose scope includes paranormal, political, and entertainment topics.

The show began in 1995 as KULT Radio at KCNR. One week later, under pressure from those who disliked the name, he changed it to Ground Zero. Two weeks after that came the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, after which he was pressured to change the name again, but refused.[citation needed] The AM talk station programed the show on Sundays before two nationally-syndicated paranormal radio shows—Art Bell's Dreamland and Michael Corbin's Paranet Continuum.[2]

When the show moved to KBER, it became the top-rated show in its time slot in Salt Lake City.

Lewis was investigated by the FBI after his remark during the broadcast on March 25, 1997, a night marked by a full moon, that “This would be a great night for some cult to commit suicide.”[citation needed] That same night, 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult committed suicide at Rancho Santa Fe in California. Lewis had no connection with the cult; his remark had been a grisly coincidence.

Lewis moved to Portland, Oregon at the behest of Rick Emerson, his former co-host on Drive-By Radio, to produce Emerson's new syndicated show; his last KBER broadcast was May 16, 1999.[3] Ground Zero was subsequently picked up by the NBG Radio Network.

The show lost its syndication in June 2001, after Lewis claimed on the air that the pending execution of Timothy McVeigh would result in a terrorist attack on United States soil, an eventuality that could, he suggested, be averted by keeping McVeigh alive long enough to extract information from him about existing terrorist cells in the country. Advertisers pulled their support, and NBG dropped Ground Zero after a contract dispute. Lewis wrote about the broadcast and the subsequent September 11, 2001 attacks in his essay "America's 911".

Ground Zero moved to Portland's KOTK. His producer from 2001–2002 was a former NASA contractor, Daniel Cascaddan. Other producers included Aaron Duran, with whom Lewis created the spinoff show News at Ground Zero, contributed to by Sadie Gregg.

MAX 910 went off the air due to a format change in 2005, ending Ground Zero's broadcasts on terrestrial radio.

Some of the guests who have been interviewed on Ground Zero:

[edit] Dark Side of the Rainbow

While hosting his show "In the Pink", Lewis was among the first to begin synchronizing Pink Floyd's album Dark Side of the Moon with the movie The Wizard of Oz, creating what is now known as Dark Side of the Rainbow.[4]

[edit] Don’t! Buy! Thai!

In Ground Zero's early years, Lewis was involved with the Don't! Buy! Thai! campaign. The campaign was a boycott of Thai goods and services. It was headed by Andrew Vachss, a child protection advocate, and its goal was to bring about stricter laws in Thailand concerning prostitution of children. An opponent of the boycott, Sean Parlaman, repeatedly accused Vacchs, Lewis and others of self-aggrandizement, defamation of the Thai people, and of being pedophiles themselves. He harassed them with emails, public Internet posts and phone calls. The attacks prompted Lewis to write "Sean Parlaman: The Truth About a Liar", in which he provides details of the accusations, as well as rebuttals by organizations for which Parlaman fraudulently claimed to be a spokesman. The question of the credibility of Parlaman's attacks became academic when he died in a fourteen-story fall from his Thailand condominium, a death suspected to be a suicide in reaction to charges brought against him for sexual assault on minors.[5]

[edit] The Toxic Avenger

Clyde Lewis voices the title character, the Toxic Avenger, and his nemesis, the "Noxious Offender", in "Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger Part IV". Lloyd Kaufman of Troma Entertainment chose Lewis from a nationwide talent hunt after the voices of the costumed actors cast as Toxie in the second and third movies were received badly by audiences. "We decided to go back to what worked in the first place," he said, "[and] found the perfect match in Salt Lake City radio personality Clyde Lewis."[6] Lewis continues to support Troma Entertainment by making appearances at their promotions in Portland, Oregon, and at the TromaDance Film Festival in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah.

[edit] Klingon Karaoke

In 2002, Ground Zero began airing advertisements for a Portland bar, Bodacious Classics. In February of that year, the bar's owner, Ralph McKee, began holding Sci-Fi Night on Thursdays.[7][8] Lewis, McKee and Jim Colvill created "Klingon Karaoke", in which Colvill dressed in a Star Trek-inspired Klingon costume and performed well-known songs, such as "Bad to the Bone", "Born to Be Wild", and "My Way", translated into the Klingon language. Patrons often arrived dressed in costumes themselves. In 2003, Vancouver, Washington members of the Star Wars fan group, the 501st Legion, began to attend, dressing as stormtroopers, and one of them, styled The Singing Stormtrooper, sang cover songs as well. The heavy metal band Stovokor, who also dress as Klingons, performed on occasion.

Lewis and Dr. Larry Johns, who ran the Portland Alien Museum, began a Tuesday night discussion group at Bodacious Classics in 2003, Ground Zero Live.[9] It would eventually become Ground Zero Lounge, the show he currently hosts at Dante's.

[edit] Other involvements

Clyde Lewis currently hosts a weekly discussion event, Ground Zero Lounge, held at a local nightclub, Dante's. The spoken word show features Ground Zero's traditional topics as well as current news about the paranormal and politics, and audience members are free to take the microphone and respond. iDEOcast, an online radio network, offers podcasts of Ground Zero Lounge.

iDEOcast also features Ground Zero Live, a live weekly webcast, and Ground Zero Continuum, which consists of special-topic word/music productions.

In 2005, footage was shot at Ground Zero Lounge for the purpose of featuring Lewis in the Conspiracy Theories episode of Penn and Teller's show, Bullshit!

In December 2005, the Idaho Observer published Lewis's essay, "The Harm Principle"[10]

He has appeared as a recurring commentator on cable television on two shows: Mad as Hell TV, hosted by Courtney Scott, and Outside the Box, hosted by Alex Ansary, both aired by Portland Community Media.

Lewis was recently the subject of a documentary, "The Day Called X", about the Portland, Oregon, portion of his career. The documentary premiered at Willamette Week's Longbaugh Film Festival in Portland on March 31, 2007.

The Southern California band, Sons of Nothing, wrote a song called "Mr. Serious" about Clyde Lewis, included on their 2006 album, Clarity.

A role-playing game for the d20 system, Alien Invasion, has been developed by Michael Tresca. The gamemaster's sourcebook, written by Tresca, features Clyde Lewis, Aaron Duran, and Sadie Gregg as non-player characters belonging to the organization "Ground Zero Radio". Lewis wrote the introduction to the book.

Rolling Stone mentioned Lewis in an article about off-the-wall conspiracies, citing his theory that Prince William of Wales is the Antichrist.[11]


In November of 2007, Lewis underwent surgery to have a malignant tumor removed from the anterior side of his kidney. The surgery went as planned, and Lewis recovered fully. In December at a Ground Zero Lounge Clyde had stated that the doctors found two more tumors on his right kidney. On January 2nd, 2008 Clyde underwent surgery again. He is now recovering from this longer more complicated surgery.[citation needed]

[edit] References

  1. ^ "Dead Air", Unknown Magazine, Vol 1, #4 "Ghosts Issue", Fall-Winter 1999
  2. ^ Arave, Lynn. "KSL 1160 is named finalist for crystal radio awards", Deseret News, 1996-03-15. 
  3. ^ Arave, Lynn. "‘K-Talk’ now available on the Web — Ground Zero Ends?", Deseret News, 1999-05-15. 
  4. ^ Frost, Bill; “Dark Side of the Rainbow: In the Pink with Dorothy at Ground Zero”, Weekly Wire, 21 July 1997.
  5. ^ anonymous; “Foreign resident falls to his death from 15th floor of condo”, Pattaya Mail, 29 November 2002
  6. ^ Kaufman, Lloyd, Make Your Own Damn Movie!: Secrets of a Renegade Director. Los Angeles: LA Weekly Books, 2003, ISBN 0-3122-8864-6, page 244.
  7. ^ "Set your phasers on fun" Portland Tribune, May 24th, 2002
  8. ^ Jigar Mehta, http://journalism.berkeley.edu/ngno/stories/001404.html "With a Song in Their Heart, Klingon Wannabees Star in Portland Bar"], North Gate News Online(UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism), October 31, 2003.
  9. ^ "Galactic Citizen addresses local issues'", Positively Entertainment and Dining, Volume 27, Number 9, September 23, 2003
  10. ^ "The Harm Principle: FEMA Unmasked", The Idaho Observer, Clyde Lewis, December 2005
  11. ^ "The Truth Is Now Out There", Rolling Stone, September 8, 2005, p. 59.

[edit] External links