{"id":34358,"date":"2013-07-28T21:48:13","date_gmt":"2013-07-28T21:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alternativejonestown.com\/?page_id=34358"},"modified":"2026-02-26T14:49:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T22:49:09","slug":"artnotes","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=34358","title":{"rendered":"Arts and popular culture notes (2012)"},"content":{"rendered":"

In addition to the stories by artists, composers and filmmakers in this section of the jonestown report<\/em>, we learned of these other developments within the past year:<\/p>\n

\"08-01-JTradio\"<\/a><\/a>Jonestown in Art <\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\u2022 A painting entitled \u201cJonestown Radio\u201d was one of the top ten sold at an auction in 2010, according to Daily Art Fixx<\/a>, a British arts website. Painted by 47-year-old Briton Ged Quinn, the 6\u2019x8\u2019 oil on canvas was sold at Sotheby\u2019s for $289,000. It depicts a lawn chair evoking Jim Jones\u2019 \u201cthrone\u201d in Jonestown next to two tables littered with cups, pitchers, and pharmaceuticals, but the setting is more idyllic, reminiscent of 18th century European art styles.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Jonestown in Literature <\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\u2022 Escaping Jonestown<\/em>, a short book written for young adults by 19-year-old Juliea Christine, was published online<\/a> in July 2012.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Don\u2019t Let Kids Drink the Kool-Aid<\/em>, a book by Marybeth Hicks on the state of education in the 21st century, continued to be promoted by a number of conservative blogs in early 2012. As Phyllis Schafly, founder and president of the Eagle Forum wrote in January, \u201c[Hicks] says that the culture wars are over and parents lost. An entire generation of young socialists has come of age, and few parents have even noticed. Marybeth Hicks tries to remedy this ignorance by telling parents what they are missing as their kids grow up amid the never-ending onslaught of liberal indoctrination that takes place in the public schools and in the media.\u201d (Editor’s note<\/strong>: The Eagle Forum website blog on which the posting appeared is now defunct.) <\/p>\n

\u2022 The blog<\/a> for \u201cDebut YA [Young Adult] Dystopian Writers” opens with Lenore Appelhans\u2019 <\/em>observation that \u201cin life and in literature, one person\u2019s dystopia is another person\u2019s utopia,\u201d citing Jonestown \u2013 and specifically \u201ca propaganda film \u2026 starring a smiling guy proclaiming that Jonestown was a utopia\u201d \u2013 as her illustration. \u201cAnd he was not the only one at the isolated Jones compound who thought that.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a>Jonestown in Drama <\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\u2022 A play which had a run in New Orleans in October 2011 was not specifically about Jonestown, but \u2013 in the mind of at least one reviewer<\/a> \u2013\u00a0evoked images of the ill-fated community. \u201cWhat does Jonestown have to do with The Future is a Fancyland Place<\/em>, recently on the boards at the AllWays Lounge?,\u201d wrote Dalt Wonk. \u201cNothing in terms of revolutionary suicide, but everything in the sense that truth can be stranger than fiction. Even this fiction.\u2026 [With] 27 scenes, each given a Biblical name such as \u2018The Promised Land,\u2019 \u2018A Pillar of Salt\u2019 and \u2018Theology,\u2019 the play deals with eschatology and science run amok\u2026 [with] a Jonestown-like malevolent surrealism.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"08-01-PT<\/a>
Temple Beautiful<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

<\/a>Jonestown in Music <\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

A number of musical artists and groups have incorporated the icons \u2013 and even the very name \u2013 of Jonestown into their own images in recent months. Among recent discoveries:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Chuck Prophet, former guitarist for Green on Red, has produced a solo album called Temple Beautiful, which one review<\/a> described as Prophet\u2019s \u201cown lyrical love letter to his adopted home town of San Francisco \u2013 albeit a love letter daubed in the blood from Halloween homicides, the assassination of Harvey Milk and the seedy underbelly of the city, following the heyday of the Haight-Ashbury hippie revolution.\u201d As illustration, as a second review<\/a> notes, the CD \u2013 and title track \u2013 is \u201cfrom the name of a punk club that opened on the site of the Rev. Jim Jones’s Peoples Temple, following its members’ mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 Ghosts of Guyana, a rock band out of South Dakota, released its second album, Astral Projections<\/em>, in July 2012. Although lead singer Matt Lias said in one interview<\/a> that the reference to Jonestown in the band name \u201cwas all sort of a joke,\u201d he added that this whole album is themed around weird stuff. One of our songs is about mind control programs by the government.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u2022 Joecephus and The George Jonestown Massacre \u2013 a Memphis band that the critic for Ringmaster Review<\/a> describes as bridging the country music genre with punk, rock and metal \u2013 released its second album Arockalypse Now<\/em> in July 2012. <\/p>\n

\u2022 The Peoples Temple \u2013 a self-described Rock \/ R&B \/ Soul \/ Sixties \/ Surf \/ Garage \/ Punk band from Lansing, Michigan \u2013 released a video \u201cAxeman\u201d<\/a> from its second CD in July 2012.<\/p>\n

\"08-01-ghosts<\/a>
Ghosts of Guyana<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u2022 A different band with a similar name \u2013 Peoples Temple of America \u2013 released nine songs online<\/a> in April 2012.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The music video Bloodless<\/a>, which the hardcore punk rock group Jonestown issued on YouTube in February 2012, includes a storyline that ends with a distraught boyfriend stepping into a closet with a hangman\u2019s noose awaiting him.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Hardcore punk group mypethandgrenade released a track called Jonestown Kool-Aid<\/a> in January 2012. Warning<\/span>: The lyrics are graphic and explicit.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The music video Jonestown Calling<\/a> by neo-acid rock group Pinball Wizard and the Acid Kings includes a montage of images from Jonestown \u2013 mostly from the day of the tragedy \u2013 and memorial services at Evergreen Cemetery.<\/p>\n

\u2022 While the rap CD I Am the West<\/em> by Ice Cube was released two years ago, the official video of the lead track Drink the Kool-Aid<\/a> \u2013 with several references to blacks \u201cstep[ping] up to the altar\u201d to drink the \u201choly water from the holy father\u201d \u2013 wasn\u2019t released until late 2011. Warning<\/span>: The lyrics are graphic and explicit.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The track “We Kill Kids”<\/a> \u2013 released in December 2011 by hardcore punk group Jonestown \u201978 \u2013 opens and closes with snippets from the so-called \u201cDeath Tape.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 The self-described thrash metal group Jonestown released several tracks in November 2011, including “Stand Up”<\/a>, “Killing Streak”<\/a>, \u201cDeath Tape<\/a>\u201d, and \u201cBurning Black Gold<\/a>.\u201d The lyrics for all these songs evoke images of Jonestown, and \u201cDeath Tape\u201d includes an extended portion from the tape that gives it its title.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The electronica group EC50 also includes an extended portion from the \u201cDeath Tape\u201d in \u201cJonestown Kool Aid mix,\u201d a sample of which may be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In addition to the stories by artists, composers and filmmakers in this section of the jonestown report, we learned of these other developments within the past year: Jonestown in Art \u2022 A painting entitled \u201cJonestown Radio\u201d was one of the top ten sold at an auction in 2010, according to Daily Art Fixx, a British […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":34357,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-34358","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/34358","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=34358"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/34358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134118,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/34358\/revisions\/134118"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/34357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}