[00:00:05] Speaker A: You're listening to casual talk radio, where common sense is still the norm, whether you're a new or a longtime listener. We appreciate you joining us today. Visit
[email protected] and now here's your host, Leister.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: I was thinking back on music for today's episode, and I realized in reflection the topic might be a bit dis disconcerting for some people. So I'll say that up front. If you're sensitive to certain topics, I try not to swear, but I'm talking just topical matter. If you're sensitive to certain topics, you may not want to listen to today's episode, but I'm sharing it because it's for warning purposes. It's to try to warn people, quote, off the ledge, in some cases literally, mostly figuratively, it's to try to help. That's why I'm doing it.
It occurred to me that there's a lack of understanding, or at least I should say people that cannot relate to the plights of certain other people by which I'm saying, and this is where I tell my story from the past. And some, some may res, some may resonate, some may not.
There was a time that myself, others around me that the joke, I put joke in quotes. The joke was if you drove a fancy vehicle, you were pretty much guaranteed to get pulled over by police.
When I was younger, I never got arbitrarily pulled over with the exception of that one sketchy cop that pulled me over off Benson when he knew good and well I didn't run a stop sign because there was no stop sign and he misroaded on the ticket. The judge let him pass on it. I digress.
The only other one I can think of was a tent. The guy pulled me over for tint as I was making a right turn. He, he put me, he pulled me over because of the right turn, but his excuse was the tint. And I straight told him, it's bright, dude. What do you expect?
Other than that, I've never had those kinds of experiences and I've had some pretty fancy cars in my time, but I've never been like, I've had sports car like the Mustang. I've never, I was never pulled over in the Mustang. And if I were ever going to be pulled over in a car, it would have been the Mustang because that's the car that I did the most speeding in to boot. Never has happened to me.
But I realized that some people that seemed to be a pattern seemed to always happen. And I, I understood that the part of the state, California that I lived in, it simply wasn't common. A lot of that happened further up. Compton, Louisiana, you know, Bakersfield, San Bernardino. It didn't happen down south, mostly because the cops are lazy down there and they know that the, you know, they're. They're going after the easy tickets, right? The. The stop sign tickets, the speeding tickets, you know. Now those. Yeah, I've had those. The speeding tickets for sure. Stop sign tickets for sure. Stop light, turn on red. Yes, absolutely had those. Nonsense. But never just the arbitrary ones.
I, I'm a music person. I've always been a music person. My music tastes have evolved year over year.
But it's diverse, it's a variety. There are some country songs I have enjoyed in the past, at least. Jazz I enjoy, old classics I enjoy, you know, 60s, 70s, British invasion, you name it. I just have a diversity of music that I generally enjoy. And it's all about the melody and the singing voice. It's not, it's not even a specific genre that I can point fingers at. Like I used to just. There's something about it has catch me. There was way back when I was able to justify wasting money on Sirius xm. I don't now, haven't for years there was a channel and it would play smooth jazz. They called it Smooth Jazz Station.
And then I would listen to it all the time, driving to work and a specific song would come on at times. And when that song came on, it was nothing like I'd ever heard. You know, I was used to Prince and Michael Jackson and, you know, the Tops attempts. Like I was used to certain sounds.
This guy there was. He was. He was like nothing I had heard before.
Every time I heard, there was always the same song, but it was like nothing I had heard. And when you hear it even now, nobody comes close to the sound that comes out from him.
That's Ephraim Lewis. He's a British singer. I say was a British singer. He passed away in 1994.
I wanted to tell a little bit about what happened because some people have done coverage, but the coverage is a bit incomplete because what happened because it's the 90s, there wasn't a lot to it, but there's other reasons there wasn't a lot to it. Arguably, I would argue this is my opinion, the way that the police handled the situation and the color of his skin probably played a part in why there was minimal coverage at the time about the situation. I can't say that's 100% what happened. I'm going to speculate that's likely what was going on because of the situation that happened.
So we have to go back and I'll tell the full story from my perspective best I can. Again, he was born in England, Staffordshire.
He started. And the irony of his start, his family, his dad, it was just like Joe Jackson with Michael Jackson. His father saw that his kids had some sort of, you know, musical aptitude. His father at the time was heavily or became heavily entrenched in the church and the religion and the strength of religion, as well as some of the tough, you know, fathering that we would see. If you watch the movie the Jacksons, which was a TV special, it gives a great perspective about how Joe Jackson and people said, yes, that's pretty accurate about how it was that this is kind of what they had to grow up with, where they weren't allowed to really have a childhood.
Well, Ephraim's father was the same way. He put them together, his. Him and his brothers into a group called the Tremortones.
Did small club scenes just like the Jacksons.
And Ephraim was the lead singer, just like Michael.
He loses his mother at a very early age. I believe he was. I believe he was what, 12? He wasn't. He wasn't that old. When he lost his mother suddenly and everything crumbled with the family. There was a lot of dissension that happened. Plus some of the. His brothers. His older brothers left home.
Two of them died at a young age. They died in their 20s. The other ones, psych breakdowns.
The theory, and it's only a theory, is that some of what was going on in the household contributed to what happened with the others.
And when the mother passes away, the father quickly gets into a new relationship.
The theory, only theory, because there's no evidence of any of this theory, is that there may have been some abuse going on. Father, two children can't say that there was. I'm saying the theory, based on some of the pushback that we would later hear about from Ephraim as well as the living brothers when they would go and confront their father with things they disagree with. This now hearkens to Sam Cooke. Sam Cook, of course, was killed in a hotel by a hooker. Sam Cook's father went to the same church is the story as Ephraim's father. So now we have Sam. So now the picture, and you'll see why it's significant. Sam Cooke's father allegedly goes to the same church as Ephraim's father. Sam Cook ends Up killed the Jacksons. Of course there wasn't like murder in the Jackson's family, but Michael Jackson might as well have been murdered by a doctor. Let's just be honest here. And then Marvin Gaye and Marvin Gaye's a different situation. But again it's a situation where he's killed at a young age.
The musical talent across this span stands out. We're talking people that were some of the best.
Ephraim was perceived that he was going to be. He never got to realize it because of the age in which he died.
Fast forward now he gets discovered. So he's working regular jobs, part time jobs.
He gets discovered because he wants to be in music still. He gets discovered.
Access Studio in Sheffield. Small producers who were trying to find the new talents out there and present them to the big labels. So they're scouts, they're talent scouts. They're trying to find the next big thing. These still exists.
Lewis then essentially kind of reverse adopts them. Says, okay, I'll work with you and I'll stay with you and I'll go all in this music thing.
They work with him. They produce his first album, Skin. This is a rare album. Now it's difficult to find it. You can find it, but it's difficult to find. It's his first album. It's also his last album because he never got a chance to release the second one. That's part of the story.
The messaging at the time was they presented, they played it for this big producer who loved it and dumped millions and millions into promotion on this. The problem is that this didn't sell. The album did not sell. And the reason the album did not sell from my. If you hear Skin. If you hear Skin and I do recommend that you do. If you hear Skin, it's kind of that new age neo ebony type sound that you know was the world wasn't ready for it at the time.
The closest analogy I can share for somebody that is trying to connect the dots is PM Dawn. PM dawn again, African American has this neo age type music that just. It was so different that it stood out. And at the time it wasn't well received. It just wasn't Sade. Same thing, same kind of genre. Just wasn't really well received at the time. I would argue Erykah Badu initially wasn't well received at the time. This is that that class of musician that Ephraim Lewis fit perfectly into where it was so different.
Nothing like it that the world wasn't ready for it. But then there became appreciation for it much later in time. When you listen back now, especially if you're an adult and you hear the signature sound and it's. There's nothing like it. Even though I can hear, just because I've heard them all, I can hear clear parallels to PM dawn in what I hear of Ephraim Lewis.
But PM dawn, because of what they did, which is they sampled a lot of these artists, they were able to kind of buck the trend a little bit because it was recognizable beats. So all they were able to get past that bias. And then with PM dawn as well, you didn't see the guy, so. So you couldn't tell what it was you were looking at. All you could hear is what came through the audio.
Same thing as Rick Astley. When Rick Astley came out, people heard something different than what they saw of this guy. You think of it now, right, and it's like, okay, this is. This guy is something.
But at the time, it wasn't the same recognition, it wasn't the same receipt, it wasn't the same popularity.
After this tanks, so it doesn't sell commercially the way they want it. The company, which is Electra, says, we've got to. We've got to appeal to more. We got to appeal outside of the, of the. Of the bubble. We've got to go further than what we hear with this. It's not that it's bad, but we can do more because the sales are simply not acceptable. We've got to do more.
Now Ephraim's this small outfit that found Ephraim and presented them to Electra. They didn't want to change the sound. They wanted to keep it the same way that it was.
Unfortunately, the big label won out. This then gives me very strong signals of Mary Wells. Not because of the same record type situation, it's actually in the reverse. With Mary Wells, she hooked up with somebody who convinced her to leave Motown. Motown, after she leaves, she doesn't get significant royalties from her music. She basically gives them up in exchange for being able to leave. That was the worst decision of her career because financially she was never the same. And then when she really needed the money, she couldn't get access to. It goes to the story of artists where there's a kind of a battle between your local, you know, producer, promoter, who's got your back, and the big label company, who all they care about is profits as well. TLC had a similar situation later that they told the story when they went live on the air, they told the story about how you Know, Left eye doing the math. You can sell 10 mini records to be broke. And it's because this, this, this. And they expect you to sell major units. But you're spending so much money on the video, the printing, the touring and everything else that you have to reimburse that. If you're not making major amounts of, you know, sales, you're not going. You're not going to recoup a lot, you're not going to walk away with a lot. Same with New Edition. The whole story about them getting like $5 back to Ephraim. Now Ephraim starts dating. Okay, he meets somebody. He starts dating.
He's having issues in the relationship. He breaks up with his girlfriend.
At this point, he believes he's bisexual. He believes that he is. There's. He's feeling something for somebody else, but he does not acknowledge that he's gay. He just feels like he's bisexual. So he starts a secret relationship in the closet. But publicly, outwardly, he's still courting.
Privately, he's in this situation with somebody that he meets.
They're during this time, he says, this is Ephraim. He says, no, I'm happiest I've ever been and everything's looking up and everything's good and I'm going to keep pushing on this music thing. Now, again, the important point is that he's listening to the record label who's kind of pumping him up, saying, we're gonna. We're gonna take you to the next level. There's something here, but we gotta do more. And we're gonna take it to the next level. And your second CD is gonna go way further than this.
They provided him, as I'm told, in advance. And this is common in the record business as a reason a lot of artists go broke soon is they get advances. So the advance says, well, you're gonna. We expect you're gonna put on an album. We expect it's gonna make this amount of money. And so we're advancing you what you would make later. So now this kid who is on his own after leaving his home now is driving fancy cars. He's in this new relationship that he's happy for. The big label company has made him all sorts of promises. They're going to hook him up with the composer, Glenn Ballard. Glenn Ballard is a composer that's worked with Michael Jackson, Paula Abdul, Natalie Cole, Chaka Khan.
If you listen to the names, we're talking some of the biggest names of the 70s and 80s. More so the 80s, especially when you Think of like Paula Abdul and Chaka Khan. You're talking energy. Michael Jackson, you're talking energy. Natalie Cole, you're talking sound. So you can tell by the names that this person's worked for, what they're trying to do. They're trying to bring more out of Ephraim's delivery. If you listen to Skin, it's a very subdued messaging coming from his songs that is not designed to get people up and dance or not designed to, you know, be a pop star type of thing. It's, it's designed to just be good music. Think of early day Mariah Carey. Early day Mariah Carey was pop, you know, bubble gum type music. It wasn't designed to be the, the slow mellow type of thing. Boys to Men starts with New Jack Swing. Johnny Gill started with New Jack Swing.
New Edition started with, you know, so they started with this, this narrative at that time that you've got to have that energy to appeal on the radio waves, to appeal to a large audience. And they weren't wrong. But you still had other artists that were perfectly fine. Like a Maxwell would come later. Maxwell, he was never that. He was always kind of smooth, mellow music. Jahin, he was always smooth, mellow music. So it didn't, you didn't have to be that kind of bubblegum or New Jack in order to appeal.
And I felt, in my opinion, that the record company gave up too quick. They had something really good with Skin, but they didn't know how to capitalize on it to make it fit for him, write the right songs, to not change him, but simply, you need to have the right songs.
Mary Wells is the closest I can think of where the same mistakes were made. If you think of Mary well's early work, those are some of the most memorable songs you ever thought of.
But then fast forward and they try to change. When she moves record labels, they try to change her sound, they try to change the songs. And it didn't work. And that's why it failed. Because it's not just necessarily about the singer. The songs have to also catch. And that's where I think everything was falling apart.
Eva was going to the United States. He goes to Los Angeles, 1994, in March, early morning, the police, they respond to reports of a naked man.
It's a small apartment and apparently this is the story that I'm told on one side is that this naked man is climbing the balcony. He's just literally scaling the balcony, which is crazy if you think about it, but he's scaling the Balcony left and right. But he's naked. It's what it says.
At some point, they confront him on the upper floor, I think it's fourth floor of the apartment. And they tase him. He's standing on the balcony. Peace. They tase him and he falls.
Everybody accepts that the police essentially killed the man. The police said, no, he fell, it's an accident. But you have to ask Woody have fallen if he hadn't tased him. And the fact he was swinging balconies is the reason why they say he would have died anyway. Artazia was trying to calm him down. But we know that the tase is likely the root cause.
And the fact that there seemed to be no attempt to try to subdue him peacefully without having to tase this man. And we have to ask the question, is it possible that because of the skin tone of the man, that that's why they chose to tase him? But nobody's ever answered the question why he was acting that way to begin with. He was never known prior to this as having done any drugs or anything else. He didn't seem to. He just seemed to be acting strange for the sake of acting strange.
I talked about how he had essentially presented as bisexual so that he did not present as gay.
Messaging came out that he was going around the gay scene that's very strong in West Hollywood, and that he was splurging. He was going all in because now he can be free. It's called out of the closet that he can be free. He can do whatever he wants to do. And he wants to go go in all in on this world now because he didn't want to be hiding it. And then at some point, he wanted to present himself as a positive gay black role model, since that was lacking in the black community. That's the rumor spinning around.
When they did a postmortem, they found methamphetamines in his system. And apparently he had been doing methamphetamines for a long time. What I'm saying is that the gay scene may or may not have contributed to the drug use that eventually resulted in what appears to be a psychotic episode.
Basically, he's paranoid. He's thinking, hey, everybody's going to kill me and aliens are going to take me. And he's deranged and he doesn't know where he is.
And that may have explained why he was sitting out naked, why he's swinging from balconies, because he's. Because of these methamphetamines. But the Point is, the belief is that perhaps he was started down this road in the gay scene, as it's referred to, if he was exposed to that while he was out partying, because he was. He was doing heavy partying when he was there. Nobody can prove it, but that's the working theory. The other thing that contributed to this and the reason I told the story early on about being afraid of the police at that time, we're talking 90s.
Prior to him coming out, he was always kind of hesitant to interact with police. And when he got the fancy cars, he was always apparently pulled over. He was always being harassed by police.
Then you couple that with, if he truly was kind of in his mind, in the closet, and he was ashamed of it and he wasn't forthright about it to the public, it might have exacerbated why he would go and start, you know, with methamphetamines. If that was presented to him, you know, in that lifestyle. I don't know if that was. I'm saying that's the messaging that likely might have happened with Ephraim Lewis. This. Then another witness who was around at that time stated that they believed that he was celebrating his second album about to come out, and that this situation was fresh off of the partying that was being described that was taking place in the gay scene, that he had gone and literally partied. He was celebrating. He was trying to celebrate something good that was going to happen. And then something bad happened to him.
Nobody knows to this day why he was naked outside. Nobody knows that.
But we never got to see. We never got to hear a second album. We never got to experience more of what appeared to be somebody that was potentially going to be one of those legendary artists of the time in Ephraim Lewis.
All of which is to say we can't know what somebody's going through no matter how much money they're making. And we also can't dismiss that the more money you make, the more problems you get. Like Biggie said, and sometimes we take for granted that money is making people happy, we might think that those people are perfectly satisfied and happy. And the truth is they may be suffering inside and we should not look the other way.
If something's weird, if you notice somebody's acting out of norm, say something.
Don't just set. Don't just stand by because it might be too late.
If somebody is suppressing feelings, if somebody is suppressing urges, if somebody's feeling like they're not part of whatever it is, you know, whatever mask they've got on. And so they're trying to hide something. You can't know, but be okay if and when they confide that something's. That something's itching them, you know, something's bothering them and they want to talk it out or they want to be open or forthright.
Some people don't realize that there's nothing wrong with being that ear at nothing. Maybe you can't do anything else but be an ear. Maybe that's all you can do in a world where people are afraid to get on the phone. I know that's a foreign concept, but sometimes it's the difference as, to quote the song, it's sometimes it's how to save a life is all you have to do is listen when they reach out. And if they don't reach out, maybe there's a problem. Maybe that's why they're not reaching out. And maybe there's something that you can offer, you can't force it, though. I speak from direct experience. Sometimes people don't want the help. As much as we'd love to help everyone, sometimes they don't want the help. And you can in your mind, say if they would just reach out, sometimes they're not going to reach out. And we have to be okay with that, too. As much as it sucks, but I think having seen this myself, having witnessed it myself, it's difficult.
It's difficult to stand by and feel helpless. It's also difficult to watch young lives snuffed out before their time. It's challenging to see talent wasted. It's extremely frustrating. And all I can offer as advice is sometimes it's enough to just say, look, I'm an ear if you need it. Just call if you need a friend.
But also you have to accept if some people simply don't want the help, as much as that sucks. Some people, I said to a friend a while ago, I can't if you don't. If they don't love themselves, there's nothing I can do about it. I know it sounds cold, but that's the truth. We. We expect that people love themselves, but sometimes they don't. Sometimes it's just a facade and we can't know and we can try best we can, but sometimes it's a lost cause. I recommend if you get a chance to listen to Skin by Ephraim Lewis. The songs are on YouTube as well. I highly recommend it. Drowning in your eyes is one of the. In my opinion, one of the timeless songs that never got a chance. It gets radio play, but certainly not as much as I think it should, especially with all the garbage is out there now. But I do recommend listening to the entire CD and just hear him. He has a very haunting voice and it was written very well. Then the accent certainly helps on to boot.
I owe you guys another coffee upload. I've been sampling coffees and I will get another coffee upload this week for sure.
Then I've got some news. It's good. Don't it's not bad news. It's good news. Got some news. And I will be covering that next week's episode because I want to make sure to bring you up to speed with some pretty, I think maybe cool stuff that's to come here in the near future for casual talk radio.
O.
