Saturday, September 13, 2008

Gil Scott-Heron - "The Mind of Gil Scott-Heron" (1978)

Donated by the wonderful Greg. 
Wiki : 'The Mind of Gil Scott-Heron' (subtitled 'A Collection of Poetry and Music') is a 1978 album by spoken word and rap pioneer Gil Scott-Heron. Like many of Scott-Heron's albums, the album's content primarily addresses political and social issues; however, The Mind of Gil Scott-Heron relies far more on his spoken word delivery than his other albums. Whereas much of the artist's earlier albums contained backup jazz-funk music from Brian Jackson, many of these tracks, which address contemporary issues such as Watergate, the pardon of Richard Nixon and the Attica Prison riot, are either live recordings or studio-recorded songs with little more than sparse drum backing or occasional instrumentation. Many of the tracks featured were included on previous GSH albums.

Due to the length of some of the pieces - The Ghetto Code (Dot Dot Dit Dit Dot Dot Dash) is nearly 13 minutes long, and four other songs are longer than 7 minutes - the album consists of only seven songs.

One of the distinctive characteristics of Heron's poetry on this album is his use of chemical formulas to refer to certain people and events. For example, he refers to Barry Goldwater as "Barry AuH2O" and Watergate as "H2OGaTe".

Tracklist

"H2O Gate Blues" – 7:58
"We Beg Your Pardon (Pardon our Analysis)" – 7:52
"The New Deal" – 3:10
"Jose Campos Torres" – 2:36
"The Ghetto Code (Dot Dot Dit Dit Dot Dot Dash)" – 12:57
"Bicentennial Blues" – 8:39


7 comments:

Guy Magic said...

Hey Simon,

Thanks for televising the revolution!

Unknown said...

Simon,

You are my favorite person

cheeba said...

Thanks for this directing me to this one!

HAZE.Visivo said...

This is the best blog ever!!!
I should know i just went through 60 of them. We have the same taste it scaresme.
Ty for giving a shit and keeping it REAL.
Ray from Philly.

Simon666 said...

only just noticed there were comments here! thanks guys ...

jazztap said...

merci

Phil said...

Fantastic share - thanks Simon! I noticed you have re-upped everything and it's fantastic. I read Gil's autobiography and it's gotten me even more interested in him. I'm looking forward to hearing this one.