There’s a sentence in the promotional literature for Roswell’s UFO Museum and Research Center that describes “the government’s mass purchase of child-sized coffins.” Whether you believe in little green men or not, this is terrifying.

The museum’s collection includes the radio switchboard that first received notice of a UFO crash, a crash which the Army immediately covered up even though nobody alerted the Army to the crash in the first place . . . or something like that. The timeline of events for the 1957 incident that put this desert town on the map is baffling and impossible to sift through. According to the believers, that’s exactly how the government wants it be.

On the opposite wall, there are dozens of photographs of crop circles from around the world, many of which look suspiciously like logos for investment firms or pharmaceutical companies.

In Roswell, the McDonalds is shaped like a flying saucer, the Coke machines are decorated with aliens, and the street lamps look like the big-eyed sketches that turn up in supermarket tabloids. Everywhere you turn, you see the dashed hopes of a would-be tourist mecca (of its 45,000 residents, 22% live below the poverty line). No matter how mundane or un-fantastic, every local business manages to work a little green man into its window display. You’ll find him lying on a mattress, riding a bicycle, wielding a power drill, and standing next to a bag of dog food.

Jefferson Starship will be playing at Roswell’s annual UFO Festival on July 3. Check the official city site for details. In the meantime, here are two fifteen-year old minimal tracks from outer-space that continue to improve with age:

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DBX – Flying Saucer
from Ghetto Trax. Accelerate, 1993
A Detroit city classic: raw machine music with a sneaky melody that knocks me over every time.

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Mike Ink – Astral Theorie
from Dadajack. Profan, 1994
Tough and spiky acid techno from a crackling vinyl. One of Mr. Voigt’s finest.