Jim Jones Revue
By Kenney Silvers
(SugarBuzz Nowhere)
SugarBuzz Magazine
IHIGH PRIEST OF SCUZZ: THE JIM JONES REVUE TRAVELS AT YIPPIE WARLOCK VELOCITY!!!
(-By Kenney Silvers)
"Rob Tyner bugged the F.B.I./Was Abbie Hoffman really suicide?" (-Demolition 23)
"American fascism is an extremely polished, and skillful machine..." (-Timothy Leary)
"Don't tell me I'm free, when I'm not!" (-Ian Hunter)
"...And I commit my dream to you! People have the Power!!" (-Patti Smith)
YOU WANNA TALK ABOUT THE REAL JUNK?
Stoner jam bands ain't usually my cuppa Electric Kool-Aid, at all. I might like the MC5, but mostly the tight, tougher songs-more than the noodley bits. 'Mighta really dug a cuppla the catchier Brian Jonestown Massacre songs, too-like "Wasting Away", but they often lost me in the experimental wanking, right? It's cool, if you're an educated jazzbo sophisticate, but I'm a pauper, and I still like pop. I still tend to fall for the 3 minute bursts of vivid melody, with thoughtful lyrics, bright choruses, and all that imaginative improvisation condensed into something stark, and jarringly-innovative, for eight bars, in the middle.
One exception was THEE HYPNOTICS! I Loved Thee Hypnotics. They were cooler than Primal Scream, and they totally smoked the Black Crowes, with explicit blasts of retro-White Panther Party rage, and righteous Freak Power freak-outs from the dandified underground, all in the midst of the fraudulent "Alt" marketing-scam, and all that dreary, corporate-grunge. They were an aural equivalent of Hakim Bey's temporary autonomous zones. You just slapped on some "Justice In Freedom", turned up the volume, locked the doors, and while your black light posters slowly came to life, you've transported to a groovy nudist "Be Here Now" happening in Zap City--MINUS the stiff ticket prices, Hell's Angel's rightwing brutality, fiendish murder-cults, Norbert The Narc cointelpro-entrapment, HUAC persecutions, municipal authorities, or bummer brown acid. All you really needed was some incense, wine, candles, and an old record player, and you could totally drop out of the whole ugly corporate takeover of the early 90's.
I also dug the romantic stance of BLACK MOSES, too-sortof like Syd Barrett's lazy, surrealistic acid-pop, updated with 70's blaxploitation film soundtrack mellow grooves, for still surviving culture-war burn-outs,
like myself. I only saw Thee Hypnotics once-they tore it up at a tiny pub in Cambridge, MA. The Harvard Squares didn't know how to respond to Thee Hypnotic's brand of in-your-face Revolution-Rock. They OPENED with Aerosmith's "Sweet Emotion"-in Boston! The college audience had all been brought-up with all these repressive tenants of affluence, and P.C. elitism, and could only relate to backpack hardcore, or crunchy granola indie-girls. They didn't "get" Thee Hypnotics, aside from a hip few who worked at Newbury Comics, and read the English music-weeklies, they vaguely understood this had something to do with Iggy Pop.
Having said all this, EVEN I was stunned really, absolutely floored by the garish, throbbing purple hallucination that leapt out of my speakers when I first gave the new Jim Jones Revue a casual first listen! It was like Rob Tyner and Screamin Jay Hawkins had both suddenly burst back to technicolored LIFE, abruptly manifesting themselves into my humble, bed-infested bed-sit, kickin' over the coffee table, and puttin' a wise boot through my TV screen, that only gets one channel, anyways...Accompanied through the portal, by Esquerita, Sister Rosa, Ron Asheton, Lux Interior, and Jeffrey Lee Pierce--all jammin' on some old moonshine-crazy Jerry Lee Lewis song!!!!
THIS IS THE SOUND of life-affirming, therapeutic excess, and gospel revelation, in the fun house mirror. Pure, undiluted, totally organic, fucking ferociously real rock'n'roll. It breaks set with all the corporate art-fag music of the Myspace Generation, and really strips it all back down to the primal essence of early rock'n'roll-which was really always the
Love Child of slave-plantation field-hollers, and wild-eyed hillbilly tent-revivals, in the first place. This shit is so heavy, you won't believe it. I had to stop listening to Rose Tattoo and Four Horsemen, cos they get me in too much trouble, y'know? Nowadays, I only listen to quiet and mournful Neil Young songs, in between library books, or while washing the dishes. This album is like the Beasts Of Bourbon! Untamed, joyful, primitive, savage, brazen. Rejuvenating, inspirational, witch-doctor boogiemen, shriekin' about emancipation, liberation, and tambourine-shakin' soul-acceleration! Evangelical, holy-rollin' swamp-things, shootin' psychedelic spooge..."Memo From Turner"-era Mick Jagger, all spruced-up in wild-west stage-coach side-show drag, and medicine-man possessed by the wild, eternal spirit of defiant Indian chiefs. Unbelievable.
This rocks so hard, it's on a totally different frequency from all the nonsense neutered product rock you hear on midwestern radio. If they played this instead of all that awful shit, people would quit their jobs, move, learn to play the saxophone, get busy livin'. You really should hear it, and see how much you can take. Turn some friends on, too. IT IS HEAVY, brothers and sisters. If you ever loved the wild stuff, this'll make you remember!
SCUM LIVES ON.....
"I Don't Live Today-Maybe Tomorrow-I just can't say...." (-Hendrix)
Usually, I rap
about Australia being the Last Stronghold for raw power rock'n'roll-but even old Saint Nick Cave's been recently rehabbed, domesticated, and reduced to warblin' about the "No Pussy Blues". I dunno what it's like in England, but in all these tiny Bible-Towns, we Americans are so bruised and baffled by people we never elected taking office, wars we never shoulda started that have no ending, political dynasties that secretly stay in power forever, tabloid journalism, constant propaganda, giant corporate heists, piss-tests, and minimum wage, that we've basically given up on trying to achieve a just society. It's gotten real "Road Warrior", out here, in the fields. Everybody's been tricked, and lied to, and punished for so long, we're like a bunch of whipped dogs. Everybody I know quit drinkin'. Most of us had no choice.
Almost NO ONE listens to visceral, high energy, rock'n'roll anymore. The poor people listen to commercial country, or glossified gangsta-rap. The richer people all have those I-Pod doo-hickeys in their ears listening to all that insipid trust-fund Nephew-Rock, prescribed to them by similarly well-heeled Spin Magazine 
rich kids. The fact that very little of that shit has any Real Soul At All, ain't no accident. There REALLY IS an Anti-Rock Conspiracy in the U.S.! See-real rock'n'roll makes you want to take action, create, be alive, and The Man ain't havin' that. They want us to all be neutered, passive, frightened, bio-metric time clock-punchers-too scared and self-loathing to demand fair wages. Most of us traded in our fast lives for slow death, today for a tomorrow that never comes. Actively being ALIVE in a death-culture of rightwing imperialist hegemony's become too risky for people who inhabit helpless poverty. There's no room for error at the bottom of the totem pole. When you're fully alive, fully endeavoring, engaged in creation, you make mistakes. One fucks up sometimes, and if you got no space to breathe, or move, you gradually find yourself just barely hanging on to the slippery-slope, worried about losing your footing. Since they made all the McJobs as hard to come by as a higher education used to be, with the endless battery of online temp. agency applications, pre-employment questionnaires, psych-profiles, finger-printing, background checks, stress-tests, computer based learning orientations, paperwork, more background checks, and that's all for MINIMUM WAGE, and you're competing with college grads, there ain't alot of optimism, or positive energy, if you can dig it. Mostly panic and resentment.
They foreclosed on all the family farms, moved the factories overseas, drove all the indies out of operation, so now, besides prisons, all we really manufacture in America is BULLSHIT. As in: New Speak, empty images, photo-shop glamour-shots, spin, misleading lingo, fake music, misinformation, false reality. PHONY BALONEY IS OUR ONLY PRODUCT, HERE! Terror is our national brand. Nobody talks about it, but ask around-do you know anybody who's confident about the future? We're all perpetually on BEIGE ALERT! Ain't 
no purple when she's gone.... Everyone's divided by compromised-credibility and mutual distrust.
The upper-classes become anti-social, and paranoid, too. As both Morrissey and Iggy Pop have both recently lamented, you can't have authentic friendships in the modern world, because of the money. Comfort is obviously another trap, cos anyone who inherits a piece of dogpatch property, or achieves a measure of power somewhere, becomes immediately consumed with protecting their King Of The Mountain status. We've all witnessed first-hand how this obsession with defending one's turf usually rots people from the inside out, at a steady pace. I don't envy those guys, either-they're obviously every bit as alienated, and isolated, as we peasants. I'm sure you know one of those horrible people who can't share space with anyone who they can't abuse. In the rural midwest, if someone has more money than you, you're expected to kiss their ass, hoping to become their employee. If someone has less money than you, it's assumed that you'd want to heap abuse on them. Gene Simmons, and Janice Dickinson types would love it in the sticks-they merchandise these rightwing mega-churches just like KISS, now! 
Jesus gyms, Jesus diets, "Son-Bucks" coffee shops, hip-hop and emo "praise worship", the war-machine just uses and abuses the hillbilly vote, because the greedy religious people who DO CLING BITTERLY TO THEIR GUNS will believe ANYTHING, so long as you tell 'em they're "#1" and promise 'em God's favor, bounty, golden thrones, easy money, and pie in the sky when they die.
Those dumbass sit-com's about hicks, aren't really that far from social reality. The women really are fat, mean, loud, rude, and gluttonous. The men really are jackasses. The only way they get to express themselves is by driving aggressively in their BIG TRUCKS, and after a long day of laying carpet, while listening to Rush Limbaugh HATE RADIO, they all insist on sloppily asserting their manhood by drunkenly brandishing fire-arms, whenever they suspect you might disagree with their views on politics, religion, or immigration. They're all gun-totin' chickenhawks-few of 'em actually join the military, but they all spend a significant portion of their spare-time, fantasizin' about killin'. Alot of 'em hunt, and they all beat their kids, who are just considered property. Forty year olds, playing video-games. Snortin' meth, advocating
racial violence, in the name of their richman's Jesus. I can't make this shit up. The rednecks all try to get my goat, by bragging about the kingdoms they've amassed, but I really ain't got no goat to get. I couldn't afford to feed one. They're crazy people. Screaming, violent, abusive, bloodthirsty, pro-war, status crazy CHRISTIANS.
The DoctorsTM and their pharm-reps are the new dope-pushers. All the narcissistic, consumerist wives got duped and mesmerised by the coercive, and constant barrage of all those manipulative prescription drug commercials you see on Dr. Phil. The ladies of hick America are all glued permanently to their televisions, and theses ad's run constantly for all kindsa made-up ailments, with endless side-effects, and all their medicine cabinets look like Elvis Presleys'. Who knows what kindof effects mixing all those pills are gonna have, but the women you meet shopping in the sticks all have that demonic, mean look in their eye. And the men, the men just mumble racist bullshit to themselves. It's mighty awful to behold, up close, and personal. Did I mention how they make you piss in a cup for every eight dollar an hour fast food job?
The people with insurance are all under the influence of these police-state sanctioned, conscience-dulling, wit-deadening, worker-bee drone drugs. The unscrupulous Psycho-Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex is one of the heaviest political lobbies in America, so we've all 
kinda traded in our drug-of-choice, and gladly substitute it with these over the counters, and willingly piss in cups, and have to sheepishly make excuses and get DoctorsTM notes for our Subway jobs. It's so fucked. Everybody's acquiesced to illegitimate and immoral authority, because the consequences of actually ROCKIN' in the not really so free at all world keep escalating. The bill for having fun is just too steep to pay if you ain't an heiress, or festival going, university brainwashed, showbiz kid. You can drink and drive, do whatever you want-only if you know the secret handshake, if you're a Big Capital party agent. But if you ain't in the country club, and this whole nation's become a country club, you don't get the privileges of membership. Maybe you can still pay-to-play at the Playboy Mansion, if you're a mainstream celebrity, or behind electric gates, in gated communities, if you're related to war machine money mongers, but if you live in THE OTHER AMERICA, the cash-poor one, where you're always just one false move away from disconnection, divorce, arrest, homelessness, etc., you're SADLY FUCKED, and subject to unspeakable abuse if you express any kind of individuality. Nobody wants to be cuffed, truncheoned, and tasered for wearing a funny hat, or walking down the street. They love to catch a poor guy intoxicated; they get to kick his ass all over the place. It really takes it's toll after awhile, 
poverty.
Once-proud, and vibrant, creative spirits got no public spaces left to exercise their most basic human rights in, y'know? Thanks to Bill Clinton's 1996 Telecommunications Act, allowing the public airwaves to fall exclusively into the hands of a tiny power-elite, you got ZERO HOPE of airplay on television, or radio, if you thoroughly rock. If you got something to say, if you're 4-REAL, you're lucky, if you make rent. The desire to communicate with former friends is stifled by misunderstandings, and the fault-line of class. Kingdoms. Success and Failure. Steadily, the creative-instinct gets entombed in the storage-unit, with all the stacks of yellowing Circus magazines, highscool yearbooks, musical equipment waiting to be pawned for utilities, and leather pants you can't fit into, anymore.
Most of my former rocknrollers, the ones who got stuck in smalltown America, live in a disturbing state of emasculated fear, and strait-jacketed desperation, sneaking nervous smokes, and hoping their old ladies don't find out. It's brutal. Everyone's always this close from something terrible happening, in perpetual crisis. Rigorous conformity's become their final solution. It's grim stuff, kids.
"I never believed it could happen to me...." (-Lords Of The New Church)
Indentured servitude to the hair-helmeted, double talkin', marketing-hoax, corporate-rule of openly evil, dominant elites. Ambush drug-screens, and hush-money pay-checks. You know that fat banker cartoon from "Monopoly"? That's the Face Of God to many Americans.
We've all been beaten into submission. Rationalizing sell-outs, doing what they're told....Obligingly ignoring atrocity, injustice, the sad plight of our former friends who didn't make it out on that Last Train....the erosion of freedom. We all keep "HOPING" that Obama's gonna "CHANGE" something...Everyone just babbles on about whatever it is they're programmed to discuss by Big Media blowhards, on the way to the office, each day. Almost everyone I know lives in some kinda captivity. Housebroken indoor cats, who don't even BOTHER staring out the window, no more. Contentedly watching re-runs of "Cops" on Court TV. Our whole lives have become: "How Do You Plead?" ...And don't forget to grovel...!
Nobody's done nothing about that Patriot Act, or all these jive wars, since the new guy came in, have they? It's heartbreaking to see loved ones trapped with no way out. If you didn't go to college and "get bona fide", no one's gonna help you, no one cares, nobody remembers. When you're currently enduring repression at every level, and seeing people you care deeply for suffer, it's challenging to have compassion for people whose only hardship is always wanting more, racing redlights back to the store, complaining....
It's difficult to defy your entire generation's mass exodus from integrity, to watch 'em all selling-out, at once. Lacking the stamina, ingenuity, or spontaneity required to resist all the mindless status-grasping, and deeply inequitable, utterly undemocratic, and malign social order-all their laser-focus materialism, and "frenemy" competitiveness...it's all just use and abuse, shit rolls down-hill, obey or die...a heartless, fuckin' pyramid scheme, and nobody even talks about it. Ain't no rock'n'rollin in this atmosphere. A few upper-class hobbyists playing old Yngwie scales on Sunday hardly qualifies.
THE GREAT AND TERRIBLE JIM JONES REVUE makes it look so easy, though...Mostly cos he's STILL GOT A DICK...and a cloak full of eagles, and he's gonna rip out another page from Hunter S. Thompson's Cookbook, and BALL TONIGHT!!!!! Hallelujah, Brotherman! The Jim Jones Revue Should Headline Burning Man. THIS IS ROCK'N'MOTHERFUCKIN'ROLL!
(-Kenney Silvers)
READ: "UNDERGROUND" by Mark Rudd and "CHALLENGING AUTHORITY" by Frances Fox Piven, and finally, "Takeover! The Return Of THe Imperialist Presidency And The Subversion Of American DEmocracy" by Charlie 
Savage.