{"id":30209,"date":"2013-07-25T15:43:38","date_gmt":"2013-07-25T15:43:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alternativejonestown.com\/?page_id=30209"},"modified":"2018-11-09T15:52:47","modified_gmt":"2018-11-09T23:52:47","slug":"bkevin","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=30209","title":{"rendered":"Taking the Needle Off He’s Able<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

My essay about the Peoples Temple record album He\u2019s Able <\/i>was published this summer by Colorado Review<\/i>, an excellent literary journal put out by Colorado State University. About four-and-a-half years had passed from the day that I first heard songs from the record (at a Minneapolis production of Leigh Fondakowski\u2019s play The People\u2019s Temple<\/i>) to the day the article appeared on newsstands. During that time, I quit a good magazine job to become a full-time freelancer. I moved across the country. I got married, got divorced, got a graduate degree, and started planning for yet another cross-country move. Life moves in quick, shorts bursts, like a squid propelling itself through the water, and the spates are separated by indefinite periods of drifting.<\/p>\n

I worked on a number of other projects over those years, but the essay that I called \u201cSongs Primarily in the Key of Life\u201d was a sort of constant companion. I returned to it periodically between assignments \u2014 a bit of research here, a quick revision there. Of course, He\u2019s Able <\/i>became one of my favorite records, and not a month goes by that I don\u2019t give it a spin. (Among other things, it\u2019s a great record to crank up during house cleaning.)<\/p>\n

In addition to discovering some great music, my research for \u201cSongs Primarily\u2026\u201d allowed me to meet and correspond with some kind and fascinating people. I am indebted to interviews and other exchanges with former Temple members like Don Beck, Laura Johnston Kohl, Jack and Cindy Beam, and others. The research introduced me to several other intriguing characters, to whom I owe my gratitude: An abrasive former record mogul living out his golden years in relative obscurity. A talented engineer on whom People Temple left an indelible mark. An enigmatic, polygendered British performance artist. An underground-renowned punk novelist and prankster. Most recently, the editors and fact-checkers at Colorado Review <\/i>have been gathered into the story, and they receive my thanks as well.<\/p>\n

Soon, I\u2019ll be moving on from \u201cSongs Primarily\u2026,\u201d and I will miss it. Next month, I\u2019m participating in a residency near San Francisco. It\u2019ll be my first visit there since early 2007, when I hunkered down for days with the helpful curators at the California Historical Society (they also have my thanks and admiration). I plan to stop by Portals of the Past in Golden Gate Park, the Ionic monument in front of which the Temple choir is posed on the He\u2019s Able<\/i> record cover. Three-and-a-half years ago, the area was undergoing renovation. I had to duck under yellow construction tape in order to read a plaque explaining that the columns are a \u201c\u2026relic of the conflagration of April 18, 1906,\u201d the great San Francisco earthquake. While fires destroyed all of the Nob Hill manor standing behind it, it seems this stately entryway managed to remain whole. The archway looks elegant at its lakeside location, and I like it because it reminds me that occasionally, out of tragedy, beautiful things can emerge.<\/p>\n

(Brian Kevin\u2019s article \u201cSongs Primarily in the Key of Life\u201d appeared in the Summer 2010 issue of <\/i>Colorado Review. The article was also mentioned that year in an article about literary journals in <\/i>The Huffington Post<\/a>. Brian Kevin’s collection of articles for this site appears here<\/a>. He can be reached at brikevin@gmail.com<\/a>.) <\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My essay about the Peoples Temple record album He\u2019s Able was published this summer by Colorado Review, an excellent literary journal put out by Colorado State University. About four-and-a-half years had passed from the day that I first heard songs from the record (at a Minneapolis production of Leigh Fondakowski\u2019s play The People\u2019s Temple) to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":30363,"menu_order":17,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-30209","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30209"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84257,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30209\/revisions\/84257"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}