It is late 1978. I am halfway through my eighth year. My father, taking another step in his spiraling downfall, became involved with a fringe Pentecostal church on the lower west side of Cleveland. He would provide acoustic guitar accompaniment to sermons and hymns during services, and right hand man the preacher throughout the week. I always wondered what the old man got out of the efforts.
I call him ‘old man’, but at the time my father was 27.
It was at these services that I learned the band KISS stood for ‘kids in the service of satan’. Heavy stuff. I also learned that human beings could twist their bodies, their languages, and their minds in a heated celebration of their God. To the left, on any given Sunday, were weeping old women that smelled of licorice. Old men in the back, hooting and hollering their agreements. To the right, younger men and women rolling around on the floor – clawing at themselves, while speaking in tongues.
I was eight.
One Sunday I came in early and noticed stacks upon stacks of Time Magazines littering the first row of pews. This Time Magazine…
The sermon that day, as it often tended, warned of the upcoming Christian decimation that was going to take place prior to THE RAPTURE (always capitalized). This terrible incident at Jonestown, the preacher raged, was proof of God’s plan in action. “If the People’s Temple could be destroyed, so shall us all”.
It was at this point a small part of my soul disintegrated.
My father just stood there, playing his guitar. I have been suspicious of musicians and the fervent ever since.
Two years later, and thanks to some fringe radio program, the old man got his hands on a copy of the infamous ‘Jonestown death tape’. His obsession with the subject was reaching fever pitch. Thinking I was asleep, he would play those recordings late into the nights. Play > Stop > Rewind > Play > Stop > Rewind.
I’d just lay there, trying my best not to cry.
These are the voices you are about to hear: Jim Jones – Maria Katsaris – Jim McElvane – Jim Jones. These are the voices that orchestrated and justified the deaths of 918 people. These were the voices of evil.
It isn’t just the anti-Christs we need to worry about. It is the fervent that blindly follow that are of much greater concern.
Publicly Executed (40 Minutes)
Written: Eric Baker / Bradford Manelski Drums: Brad Manelski Synthesizers: Bärkər Conceptualized, Sculpted, Engineered, and Produced: Bärkər Recorded at Cyclops’ Lair, Middleburg Heights, OH. How Golden Is Your Calf? – Mayfly Records © All Rights (P)Reserved, 2024