The Jim Jones ‘death tape’

Be warned: this is the grimmest thing I’ve ever posted on this blog. But I must do it because it’s an extraordinary audio artifact... a stunning piece of history.

Six months from now will be the 30th anniversary of the Jonestown Massacre – the mass suicide (and murder) of more than 900 members of the Jim Jones cult in Guyana, South America.

The Jonestown tragedy added an ironically playful phrase – “drink the Kool-Aid” – to our American vernacular.

Perhaps we all should remember the horrible source of that phrase.

James Warren Jones founded an interracial church in Indiana in the 1950s... a church soon dedicated to his vision of utopian socialism. Jones called it the Peoples Temple.

The church moved to California in 1965. It grew in prominence during the 1970s in San Francisco, where the Peoples Temple attracted many poor black followers.

In 1977, Jim Jones encouraged his disciples to move with him to “Jonestown,” a settlement built in the jungles of Guyana.

U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan, an outspoken critic of religious cults, traveled to Jonestown to investigate claims of human-rights abuses there.

A small group of Peoples Temple defectors asked to be taken back to America, and they left Jonestown with Congressman Ryan.

But at an airstrip, Jim Jones’s armed guards opened fire on the congressman’s group, killing Leo Ryan and several others. At the same time, Jim Jones was urging his loyal followers to commit an act of “revolutionary suicide” and to “take the potion” – a mixture of grape drink and cyanide.

The FBI later recovered audiotapes that Jim Jones recorded while orchestrating the mass suicide.

A 42-minute package of these recordings is for sale online – under the title “The Jonestown Death Tapes” – at iTunes, eMusic and Amazon. A free version (slightly longer) is downloadable from the Internet Archive, where it can also be streamed.

I’m streaming a 15½-minute edit on my Vox blog.

You will not hear people dying. It’s more extraordinary than that. You’ll hear Jones running the ultimate mind-control game on his believers.

After making his case for mass suicide, Jim Jones yields the floor for “any dissenting opinion.” That is when a black woman, 60-year-old Christine Miller (pictured left), calmly and courageously argues for life.

“Not that I’m afraid to die, by no means,” she says. “But I look at our babies, and I think they deserve to live.”

The back-and-forth between Jim Jones and Christine Miller is bone-chilling and heartbreaking.

Eventually Christine was shouted down by other temple members. You’ll hear several of them speak in favor of Jones’s plan. They sound grateful to give up their lives at his command.

On the full version, grown black folks lovingly refer to Jim Jones – this psychotic white man – as “father” and “dad.”

I end my edit at the point where the poison is starting to be consumed.

Click here to listen... if you think you can handle it.

A free Foxy Brown download

Here’s one for the hip-hop heads... if you’re out there.

The notorious Foxy Brown has a new CD coming out on Tuesday called “Brooklyn’s Don Diva.”

Click here to hear “We Don’t Surrender” on my Vox blog. If you want it as a FREE MP3, follow this link to Download.com.

Playlist: Happy Mother’s Day

1. “Sadie” – The Spinners

2. “Mama Used to Say” – Junior

3. “Cosmic Slop” – Funkadelic

4. “I’ll Always Love My Mama” – The Intruders

This date in Beatles history: 1965

On May 10, 1965 – a Monday night – the Beatles gathered at Abbey Road to record a couple of songs. Both songs had been written and previously recorded by Larry Williams, an American R&B singer.

John Lennon was a big Larry Williams fan, and John sang lead on both tracks – “Dizzy Miss Lizzy” and “Bad Boy.” These tunes were recorded especially for the U.S. market. One month later, they appeared on the Capitol LP “Beatles VI.”

“Dizzy Miss Lizzy” and “Bad Boy” were the only Beatles tracks to be released in America before being released in Europe.

I’m streaming the Larry Williams originals on my Vox blog. Click here to hear “Dizzy Miss Lizzy.” Click here for “Bad Boy.”

Larry Williams is an interesting story. In 1957, Art Rupe, the owner of Specialty Records, lost his biggest hitmaker – Little Richard – to the ministry.

With the help of promotions man Sonny Bono, Rupe focused on making Larry Williams a star to take Little Richard’s place.

Williams had major hits with “Short Fat Fannie” and “Bony Moronie,” but his career soon petered out. Then he was arrested for selling drugs in 1959.

In 1980 Williams died of a gunshot wound to the head. It was ruled a suicide.

A free Heavy download

Here’s some throwbacky funk out of England (where you know they loves the old-school U.S. black music).

The band is called The Heavy. The FREE MP3 is “Coleen.” It’s got a grimy groove and you can dance to it.

Click here to hear “Coleen” on my Vox blog.

If you want it, follow this link to Download.com.

The Heavy is in the midst of a North American getting-to-know-you tour right now. They were just in L.A. this week, and I was clueless. The band hits Toronto and Montreal this weekend and New York City next week.

They’re promoting the new CD “Great Vengeance and Furious Fire.” Good for them.

Weng Weng!

I’d never heard of Weng Weng – the Filipino dwarf movie star – until Lolo linked to this vid in a comment.

Turns out Weng Weng is a bona fide Internet meme. Unfortunately, he’s now too dead to care. Here is the YouTube video that brought Weng Weng a new kind of fame:

Playlist: 1988

Since Mike Gonzales ’nem got me all nostalgic, let me spin some good ol’ juicy 1988 funk on my Vox audio stash...

1. “Paradise” – Sade

2. “Jam-All” – Jamaaladeen Tacuma

3. “Sponji Reggae” – 24-7 Spyz

4. “Run’s House” – Run-D.M.C.

5. “Scarlet Pussy” – Prince

Party like it’s 1988

This afternoon on Jersey City’s WFMU, there’ll be a three-hour celebration of the year 1988.

Included in the discussion will be culture bloggers Michael Gonzales, Donnell Alexander and Invisible Woman... each of whom has blogged about 1988 today. (Cool!)

The show is Billy Jam’s “Put the Needle on the Record.” Go to the WFMU website if you wanna live-stream it.

I don’t recall ’88 as a great year culturally. The R&B charts were dominated by names like Keith Sweat, Al B. Sure!, Johnny Kemp and Cheryl Pepsii Riley. The passage of time has not been good to these people... or their music.

But 1988 was the year all the major record companies started investing heavily in hip-hop artists. Record executives finally were convinced that rap music wasn’t a passing fancy. This investment brought forth the Golden Age of Hip-Hop.

Living Colour also exploded on the scene in 1988, creating a flurry of interest in “black rock.” (Remember 24-7 Spyz?)

Personally, I remember ’88 fondly because that summer I traveled to Minneapolis – at the Washington Times’s expense – to do a story on the music scene there. From all over the Midwest, young Negroes with talent had moved to Minneapolis hoping to be discovered.

Everything seemed possible then.

UPDATE (05/09/08): I caught the first hour and the final half-hour of this show. It was kinda cool. Very hip-hop-centered.

But there was no Invisible Woman and no Donnell Alexander, and that disappointed me.

I’m a connoisseur of talk radio, and Billy Jam’s show is amateurish by the standards I’m used to. I don’t know if he considers that part of the hip-hop aesthetic or what. But I left behind that college-radio vibe when I graduated from college.

On the positive tip, guest callers Bill Adler and Lisa Cortes were entertaining and informative on the subject of hip-hop’s glory days.

One from column A, two from column B

Let’s finish Hooray for Asians Day with some laughs. Below are video clips of three Asian-American standup comics, courtesy of Comedy Central.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Henry Cho, Sheng Wang and KT Tatara. (And ignore that message on the top one about “This video is no longer available.” It’s there.)

Sumo time

Good thing it’s Hooray for Asians Day. I wanted to show this clip from Al Jazeera English, but I didn’t have a reason to... apart from my mild fascination with Japan and its culture.

(I am really digging Al Jazeera’s cultural coverage, insofar as the U.S. media hardly gives a squat about the rest of the world.)

So here is a 12-minute report on the state of sumo, Japan’s national sport. Who knew it was bouncing back from a scandal... a fatal case of traditional bullying?

A free Cyril Pahinui download

Not wanting to ignore the “PI” dimension of APIA Month – Pacific Islanders – I point you to a FREE MP3 from Cyril Pahinui, a Grammy-winning master of kiho’alu (or Hawaiian slack-key guitar music).

Cyril’s father, Gabby Pahinui, was a very influential slack-key guitarist and a leading figure of the Hawaiian cultural renaissance of the 1970s.

To hear Cyril Pahinui’s rendition of “Meleana E” – a song believed to be more than 100 years old – click here. He plays it on a 12-string guitar.

To download “Meleana E,” follow this link to Download.com. The track is from Cyril’s 2007 album “He’eia.”

Wanna watch ‘Johnny Sokko’?

For kids who grew up in the ’60s – like me – Japanese TV was a part of our daily diet. “Marine Boy,” “Astro Boy,” “Gigantor,” “Kimba the White Lion” and, of course, “Speed Racer.”

I was especially fond of the monster shows – “Ultraman” and “Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot.”

Imagine my delight to discover that the Hulu website has complete episodes of “Johnny Sokko” streaming online for free. Them things used to be super-hard to find, believe me.

At the bottom of this homepage, I’ve embedded an episode you can watch right here, right now (“The Challenge of the Two-Headed Monster”). And you know what? Dramatically, the show really holds up. ;^)

I invite you to celebrate Hooray for Asians Day by scrolling down and checking it out.

Hooray for Asians Day!

Until I stopped by Racialicious yesterday, I didn’t know that May is “Asian and Pacific Islander/American Heritage Month” (APIA Month for short). So I tip my hat to Carmen Van Kerckhove, one of my favorite biracial Asian-American anti-racist bloggers.

This post from Tuesday features an embedded video with celebrity Asian-Americans such as Sandra Oh, Lisa Ling, Kal Penn and George Takei... talking about that Asian pride.

Y’all know I likes to celebrate America in all of its mind-boggling multicultiversity, so I am down with APIA Month.

But here’s the thing: I didn’t post everything I had planned to post for Black History Month. And Women’s History Month (March) totally slipped away from me; I wanted to hit you with some Eleanor Roosevelt and some Margaret Mead like pa-POW!

This time, I will devote an entire day’s postings to Asian-related themes... and be done with it. (And since APIA Month covers the Chinese and Japanese, Koreans, Indians, Thais, Vietnamese, Filipinos, Hawaiians and Samoans... that’s a lot of ground to cover.)

Check out my upper right-hand corner, for instance. I got a video clip of jazz artist Kazumi Watanabe rocking a Spanish guitar on Piazzolla’s famous “Libertango.”

It’s a different look for the Tokyo-born Watanabe. I know him for his fiery electrified fusion work back in the 1980s.

Anyway... that’s how I’m rolling today. Because I hereby proclaim this to be “Hooray for Asians Day” here in the House of Love!

Stick around, Short Round...

‘Marvin Gaye: What’s Going On’ on PBS tonight

I wish I could’ve given y’all more advance notice. But this documentary is starting in a few minutes on East Coast PBS stations.

I’ll be watching at 9 p.m. Pacific Time.

UPDATE (05/07/08): Wow... this is a very good documentary. A wrenching emotional story, well told.

It was written, produced and directed by Samuel Pollard, who has spent years editing the feature films and documentaries of Spike Lee.

Check your local listings to be sure, but according to IMDb.com, “Marvin Gaye: What’s Going On” will be rebroadcast late tomorrow night... 12:30 a.m. Friday, actually.

As a side note, the film is narrated by Jesse L. Martin, who is supposed to star in a Hollywood movie about the last years of Gaye’s life.

A free Stanley Jordan download

Jazz guitarist Stanley Jordan has a new album out called “State of Nature.”

I don’t know what you think of his signature two-handed tapping technique. It sure is impressive to look at... but I’m not crazy about the sound it produces.

If you happen to be a fan, I’ve got a FREE MP3 for you off the new album. To hear Jordan do “Mozart’s Piano Concerto #12,” click here.

To download the track, click the song title below.

“Mozart’s Piano Concerto #21” (MP3)
More on this album

Wednesday 45 Flashback: ‘It’s All in the Game’

One of my favorite songs of all time is “It’s All in the Game.”

It has been sung by Nat King Cole, Johnny Mathis, Sammy Davis, Jr., Louis Armstrong and the Four Tops. And also by Andy Williams, Robert Goulet, Van Morrison, Glen Campbell and Elton John.

That’s the mark of a great song.

The man who had the biggest hit with it is far lesser known. His name was Tommy Edwards, and his 1958 recording of “It’s All in the Game” was a No. 1 smash.

That platter is spinning below, courtesy of a YouTuber known as bucksheespins.

The song has an interesting history. For nearly 40 years, it didn’t have words. The music – titled “Melody in A Major” – was composed in 1912 by Charles Dawes, a banker and music hobbyist who later became vice president of the United States!

Dawes wrote the melody in 3/4 time. If you’d like to hear how it originally sounded, follow this link to Amazon.com, scroll down to Disc 5, Track 13, and stream a piece of the 1920s recording by violinist Fritz Kreisler.

In 1951, hit songwriter Carl Sigman added lyrics and a new title. (He also changed it to 4/4 time.) The rest is pop-music history.

One of my favorite versions of “It’s All in the Game” is a live instrumental performance by pianist Keith Jarrett. Click here to hear it on my Vox blog.

The day after

The world seems a little bit different today. Because Barack Obama – just when he seemed his weakest, and Hillary Clinton seemed her strongest – Barack got his groove back, he got his mojo working, and now this thing seems over.

Contrary to what MSNBC reported last night about Sen. Clinton canceling her public appearances for today, she is in West Virginia right now. She just wrapped up a press conference. “I feel really good coming off our victory in Indiana,” she said.

Her spin mechanics are still out there spinning. “There is no reason for her to get out,” Terry McAuliffe told NBC’s Andrea Mitchell a short while ago. “She could win the popular vote... big wins in West Virginia, Puerto Rico...”

But the truth is in their eyes. The strength is gone.

Now that Hillary Clinton has sunk $11.4 million of her own money in this campaign, maybe she’s just going through the motions... hoping to make that money back.

Live-blogging the N.C. and Indiana primaries

Got my carcass parked in front of MSNBC for the big night.

The polls are still open in North Carolina and Indiana. But Chris Matthews just speculated: “I still think it’s a possible double- header for Barack Obama.” And he interrogated Pat Buchanan and Rachel Maddow about what might happen if Obama does win both.

The conventional wisdom is that Obama will win N.C. and Hillary Clinton will win Indiana. If it goes any other way, shit’s gonna get crazy tonight. ...

3:08 p.m. (Pacific Time) – Do Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann not like each other? Chris isn’t bothering to laugh politely at Keith’s quasi-witty remarks. ...

5:25 p.m. – Looks like Obama has won North Carolina big time. But the Indiana race hasn’t yet been called by NBC. Evidently, though, Obama will lose there.

So far I haven’t heard anybody on MSNBC mention what I think is the story: that Jeremiah Wright cost Barack Obama the state of Indiana.

Eleven days ago, Obama was ahead of Hillary in Indiana 41 percent to 38 percent, with the rest undecided, according to an Indianapolis Star poll. And then Rev. Wright strutted into the spotlight, dominating the political discussion for days.

On CNN last Monday, David Gergen predicted that the Rev. Wright shenanigans could turn Indiana against Obama. Sure enough, that looks to be the case.

Think about that. If not for Jeremiah Wright, this race could’ve been over tonight. ...

6:00 p.m. – CBS has projected Hillary Clinton the winner in Indiana. But NBC political director Chuck Todd still refuses to make a call... because, he says, some big black districts haven’t reported their numbers.

Todd says it’s still “plausible” that Obama could eke out a win in Indiana. We shall see. ...

6:55 p.m. – Barack Obama looked to have his confidence back during his victory speech in North Carolina. But I think he went a little too far when he said, “I... am... Iron Man!”

7:45 p.m. – Hillary’s talking right now in Indiana. I know her campaign is hard-up for cash, but I think it’s uncool the way she literally begs for money during a victory speech. This isn’t the first time she’s done it. ...

8:42 p.m. – A measure of how bad this night turned out for the Hillary campaign could be seen on CNN a few minutes ago.

High-level Clintonista Lanny Davis just unloaded a sputtering, stammering, sour-pussed tirade, accusing CNN analyst Bill Schneider of putting a pro-Obama spin on tonight’s vote counts. And he bitched out commentator David Gergen for calling him (Lanny) “bitter” (because they couldn’t get new elections in Florida and Michigan).

Gergen came back and said, almost with a smirk, that he has not seen tonight “the gracious Lanny Davis that I know so well.”

Lanny Davis was defensive, unpleasant, he was personalizing shit. I mean, daggone... attacking CNN on CNN? Is that any way to celebrate a win in Indiana? (Oh, by the way... Indiana is still too close to call, according to CNN and MSNBC.)

If Lanny Davis reflects the mood of his candidate, Hillary must be pretty pissed off tonight. Real interesting to watch, because of what it revealed. ...

9:20 p.m. – Holy shit! Hillary Clinton has cancelled all her public events for tomorrow. Could this thing be over?

Tim Russert sure thinks so. On MSNBC, he just made that sports analogy about, “When do you tell a ballplayer it’s time to hang up the glove? This is their life, they don’t want to do it...”

What a strange night this has been. Before the polls closed, Clintonista Terry McAuliffe was beaming with joy... saying it looked like Hillary might carry Indiana by a 5- to 8-point margin.

Now, the pundits are damn-near calling the whole thing over. Just because Indiana is still too close to call.

I must say, it’s pretty remarkable that Obama has bounced back after the worst week of his political life. ...

9:25 p.m. – Pat Buchanan on the Clinton campaign: “This is the night the music died.”

10:16 p.m. – With 99 percent of the vote in, Hillary Clinton has squeaked out a victory in Indiana, 51 percent to Obama’s 49 percent.

As Chuck Todd just pointed out, here’s the big picture: Barack Obama now leads Clinton by 160 pledged delegates and 700,000 actual votes. Even if you threw the disputed Michigan and Florida results into the mix, Obama would still be ahead by both measures.

Time to call Barack Obama “the Comeback Kid” and move on to new business. I’m done. Good night, y’all.

Obama inna reggae stylee

You know what? If this U.S. presidency thing doesn’t work out, Barack Obama might consider running for prime minister of Jamaica. (Hat-tip: Kellybelle.)

The return of Penn Jillette’s Hillary-bashing joke

Three months ago, I blogged about comedian Penn Jillette’s crude joke bashing Hillary Clinton... and how Vegas audiences allegedly loved loved loved it.

Well, this morning the incorrigible Mr. Jillette told that joke on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” And he so offended hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski that they not only chided him directly... they apologized to America afterwards.

The Huffington Post has the video clips.

The clip is funny to me because I can’t stand Mika Brzezinski. Anything that ruins her morning is okay with me.

By the way, I’ll be live-blogging tonight as the election results come in from North Carolina and Indiana, in case you want to talk about the presidential race. Looks like it might be bad news for Barack Obama.

I’m telling you, it’s not good for him to be finishing weak while Hillary finishes strong.