Wow, he is my favorite “rapper”. Home Again and The Revolution Will Not Be Televised are just so friggin awesome. Home Again captures, perfectly, the desperation of living in the inner city. Other than that I don’t know much about the guy. Any of you dopers grow up listening to him?
PS- A very good video from his last album in like 2012 I think:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OET8SVAGELA
That would be quite the feat as he died in 2011.
I don’t know much more than “The Revolution…”
What was the verb?
Earlier songs - Re-ron, B Movie and Revolution… got surprisingly good airplay in Australia.
He toured here at least once. I saw him with a mate, and we were somewhat disappointed.
Recently I bought the same friend Scott-Heron’s autobiography The Last Holiday, which he pronounced ‘Yeah, pretty good. Interesting.’
i have couple of his books but havent read them yet
He is someone I have listened to a bit and liked - a sophisticated slam poet and performance artist as much as a rapper. Interesting to hear that his live performance was only okay, since I would’ve assumed it would be his strength.
You’ve never heard of an album being released posthumously?
His last studio album was released in 2014, and his last compilation album came out in 2012.
His first album, Pieces of a Man is amazing. The Revolution Will not Be Televised gets all the attention, but the rest of the album is just outstanding R&B with a strong jazz flavour.
All this love and nobody has pointed out to the OP that the man’s name was Gil Scott-Heron?
First Minute of a New Day is a wonderful album, another collaboration with Brian Jackson. It features the magnificent “Winter in America,” which, no matter what you think, did not appear on the Winter in America album. (That was a deliberate joke.)
Other songs to listen for that haven’t been mentioned include “Pardon Our Analysis (We Beg Your Pardon),” “Johannesburg” and “Whitey on the Moon.”
The inevitable nitpick: Small Talk at 125th and Lenox was his first album, and includes the first version of “The Revolution Will not Be Televised.”
Am I the only one who keeps reading that as “Girl Scout Heron”?
I read it as “Girl Scout Heroin” and thought wow, is it that time again already?
It took me a minute to get this. Bravo.
Love him. Look for him on the Richard Pryor-SNL appearance.
I love listening to B Movie
I saw him live at Blues Alley in DC, circa 1992, and he put on a wonderful show. This was promoting “Pieces of a Dream”. Jazz poetry with some instrumentation.
Hey, (bleep,) today Pagey is 71 if he’s a day and if he didn’t sell it at the crossoads he got it straight from Gil Scott (and anyone he could steal it from).