{"id":30247,"date":"2013-07-25T15:43:45","date_gmt":"2013-07-25T15:43:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alternativejonestown.com\/?page_id=30247"},"modified":"2026-02-14T17:19:45","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T01:19:45","slug":"farrell","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=30247","title":{"rendered":"Jim Jones: Live From Guyana, 1978"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"08-14b-01-front_cover\"<\/a>(Matthew Thomas Farrell<\/strong> is a regular contributor to <\/em>the jonestown report. His complete collection of articles for this site may be found here<\/a>. He may be reached at saint@extremezone.com<\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n

\"08-14b-02-back_of_CD\"<\/p>\n

I got my copy of He\u2019s Able<\/i> from eBay in the summer of 2000. It arrived with a flyer catalogue with other sundry items for sale, such as the Pam Anderson\/Tommy Lee sex tape, and video footage from the Columbine High School security cameras showing Harris and Klebold on their fatal spree.<\/p>\n

I was half-expecting a home-burned\u00a0CD-R, but surprisingly this was somewhat professionally produced product. Somewhat<\/i>. Things like the cheap graphics and miscut insert \u2013 you can see the margin where scissors didn\u2019t quite<\/i> follow the crop line \u2013 all but scream<\/i> \u201cindie label!\u201d<\/p>\n

The CD is titled \u201cJim Jones: Live From Guyana, 1978\u201d with a subtitle \u201cThe Last Speech & Songs by the Peoples Temple.\u201d There is no track listing on the back, only two apparent descriptions: \u201cJim Jones: His Final Speech Live in Guyana, South America November 18, 1978\u201d and \u201cThe Peoples Temple Cho<\/p>\n

\"08-14b-04-the_real_thing\"<\/p>\n

rus Performing Songs during their final service on 11\/17\/78.\u201d In one corner are the words, \u201cMichael Hunt Publishing \u00a92000 All Rights Reserved\u201d and in the other, a box that would normally hold a UPC bar code. Tellingly, the box is empty. The CD itself has a grainy reproduction of a picture \u2013 I suspect of a structure at Jonestown \u2013 and says only \u201cMHP \u00a92000 All Rights Reserved.\u201d<\/p>\n

The cover butterflies out into a six-panel foldout with text, quotes and pictures on each side, including an anonymous to Jim Jones letter and the picture of Jones from his spider monkey-selling days (complete with the waggish caption, \u201cA young Jimmy Jones bones up on mind control techniques\u201d which often accompanies it.) All the pictures have the pixilated blur typical of computer novices who haven\u2019t quite<\/i> grasped how to properly convert a .bmp to a .gif.<\/p>\n

\"08-14b-03-inside_jewel_box\"<\/p>\n

Surprisingly, there are several pieces of information about the makers of this offering:<\/p>\n

\n

Michael Hunt Publishing \u00a92000
\nWWW.mikehuntsonfire.com
\n888-303-KILL
\nP.O. Box 6366 Chicago, Il 60680
\nCD Mastering: Chicago Music Service
\nCD Design: A.E. Bugbee<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cMichael Hunt Publishing\u201d is the brainchild of Shane Bugbee (\u201cMike Hunt\u201d being a homophone for \u201cmy cunt\u201d) and A.E. Bugbee is almost certainly his wife Amy. The two of them have developed a cottage industry around serial killer memorabilia and artifacts. Sadly, their knowledge isn\u2019t as firm when it comes to self-destructive sects, as demonstrated by the egregious error of misidentifying what is obviously a studio recording of He\u2019s Able<\/i> as a live recording from Jonestown. Granted, there was some music played for Rep. Ryan\u2019s benefit the night before he died \u2013 snippets of which survive on the NBC video tape of Ryan\u2019s tour \u2013 but this blatantly isn\u2019t it.<\/p>\n

The CD is 74:11 long and has 12 tracks. As expected, the last track is the White Night of November 18 \u2013 with a curious exception I\u2019ll mention in a minute. I have not compared the quality of this recording against vinyl originals of He\u2019s Able<\/i>, so I can\u2019t say how it stacks up in terms of quality. It certainly seems serviceable. Likewise I haven\u2019t checked it against other copies of the final White Night, though I did listen to it while reading the transcript available on the Alternative Considerations website<\/a>, and it seemed to be faithful to it.<\/p>\n

That said, this CD is different from other versions of He\u2019s Able<\/i> for two reasons.<\/p>\n

First, it is actually incomplete. The song \u201cSimple Song of Freedom\u201d is missing, with the playlist jumping from \u201cBecause of Him\u201d to \u201cBlack Baby.\u201d Why it was omitted is a mystery: a CD can hold up to 80 minutes, and since \u201cSimple Song of Freedom\u201d is only 4:15 long there is certainly enough room to fit it on.<\/p>\n

Second, the track of the final White Night opens with part of a Jones address to the Jonestown community recorded before November 18. It is informally known as the \u201cWar Whoop Sermon\u201d as Jones exhorts to his followers to call out to their enemies in the jungle. This addition to the death tape is 2:18 long and much of it can be found on the NPR program \u201cFather Cares<\/a>\u201d (38:15-39:59.) Curiously, the version on my CD sounds slightly cleaner than the one on NPR, and a few parts are slightly different at the beginning. I suspect (but cannot prove) that this is studio trickery on behalf of the CD\u2019s compiler, likely editing in a sound loop from elsewhere in the segment.<\/p>\n

The website and 888 number listed in the CD are no longer associated with Michael Hunt Publishing, but I was able to track down Shane Bigbee on his MySpace page. I wrote him with questions about this CD, but as of this printing he has not replied.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Matthew Thomas Farrell is a regular contributor to the jonestown report. His complete collection of articles for this site may be found here. He may be reached at saint@extremezone.com.) I got my copy of He\u2019s Able from eBay in the summer of 2000. It arrived with a flyer catalogue with other sundry items for sale, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":30363,"menu_order":18,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-30247","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30247","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=30247"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133803,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30247\/revisions\/133803"}],"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=30247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}