I always wonder at public grief for the deaths of those we have never met, but some people work their way into our hearts, and so their deaths feel personal.
R.I.P. Gil. Thankyou for the wonderful, intimate show you performed in early 1999 at the Bottom Line in New York.
Over two hours of Gil Scott-Heron and his Amnesia Express, live at the Kulturzentrum Schauburg in Bremen, Germany, April 18th, 1983.
Worth it alone for the Gil's opening solo voice-and-rhodes performances of "We Almost Lost Detroit", "Angola Louisiana" and "Three Miles Down", the last of these featuring a similar singalong to one I remember taking part in when I last saw him perform in 1998.
There's an intimacy in these three tracks that I haven't picked up from the other bootlegs. So this now becomes my second favourite GSH bootleg after the Bottom Line show.
Considering this has gone through a cassette generation, there's a good clarity to the recording of his voice throughout, even if he does complain at one stage that he must have "left his voice on Lufthansa". Bass guitar is a little far back in the mix from the recorder position, which probably explains the title that the original DIME seeders gave the set.
"The Bottle" (excerpt)
"Washington D.C." (excerpt)
In the band tracks, the reed and brass particularly shine through in the arrangements. There's a really superb, understated flugelhorn solo from Alonzo Bailey in "Better Days Ahead".
Lots of talk from GSH between tracks - he's still the only guy who can merge from spoken word to poetry to song without you noticing the joins, where the setup is all part of the song.
The seeders added a few other GSH songs from TV broadcasts, and a bonus live performance from Dana Bryant of Scott-Heron's "The Revolution Will Not be Televised" from Jazzfest Berlin. Fantastic stuff!
CD 1
1 Intro 1:26
2 We Almost Lost Detroit 5:42
3 Intro 2:13
4 Angola Louisiana 5:19
5 Intro 4:10
6 Three Miles Down 4:34
7 B Movie 16:28
8 Intro 1:03
9 A Legend In His Own Mind 5:14
10 Intro 0:30
11 Winter In America 7:49
12 Band Intro 3:27
13 Intro 1:26
14 Shut 'em Down 6:21
CD 2
1 Intro 1:24
2 Washington D C 4:39
3 Intro 1:29
4 The Bottle 14:00
5 Intro 1:08
6 Better Days Ahead 11:06
7 Intro 4:39
8 Johannesburg 7:12
bonus tracks:
9 Winter In America 4:34
"Ohne Filter" German TV March 1984 (broadcast date):
10 Not Needed / Statement4:03
from "Keynote" (SAT1 - German TV) 1994
11 The Revolution Will Not Be Televised 5:18
Dana Bryant
Jazzfest Berlin, Traenenpalast, Oct 28 1993 (FM recording)
MUSICIANS
Gil Scott-Heron - vocals, keyboards
Alonzo Bailey - trumpet, flugelhorn
Vernon James - alto and soprano sax, flute
Ron Holloway - tenor sax
Larry McDonald - percussion
Kenny Powell - drums
Ed Brady - bass
Glen "Astro" Turner - keyboards, harmonica
CREDITS & BOOTLEG HISTORY
FM broadcast to cassette, cleaned and de-glitched by Langtang and Wolf.
With much buzz surrounding Gil Scott-Heron'snew album, here's a half hour bootleg featuring four kicking tracks from a 1986 live show at the Glastonbury Festival, originally broadcast on the BBC. Here we capture GSH somewhere in the middle of his 12 year hiatus between "Moving Target" and "Spirits", but he's in fine voice and spirit.
Keyboardist Kim Jordan switches between synth and piano, and she contributes some particularly fine piano solos - she was a member of Gil's touring band for 12 years, also appearing on the live "Minister of Information" album and "Spirits", both in 1994.
Also appearing on those albums was the Turrentine-ish saxophonist Ron Holloway, who also played on"Moving Target" from which both "Blue Collar"and "Washington DC" appear live here. He went on to record some albums for Milestone in the 90s, including 1998's "Groove Update"which features GSH on new versions of "Three Miles Down"and "We Almost Lost Detroit". That album also featured drummer Rodney Youngs from here.
Joe Phillips' guitar adds a blues sensibility to the proceedings, occasionally rocking things out a little too much for me, but holding back (or held back) enough to not ruin things. Bassist Robbie Gordon played with GSH from 1978 until 1994. He released a solo album called "Still Growing" in 1996, which included an unusual straight-ahead acid jazz version of Gil's classic song "B-Movie".
In the comments for this post, Jamie said :
"I was at this gig as a young, wide-eyed first-time Glastonbury festival-goer. I was 16 years old, I'd just left school two days previously and had just had the best weekend of my life up to that point. What this tape omits is that 'Johannesburg'was aborted initially due to the lack of crowd response. Gil had asked the crowd to sing along with the chorus and he'd explained, patiently, that if we didn't sing up he wasn't going to do it. Cue the first 'What's the word?' bit and a fairly lacklustre response from the crowd. Gil cut the band and gently mocked our poor singing. I remember him saying something along the lines of 'OK, I know you were probably too busy pulling on a joint and missed it but this time you've gotta sing up'. The next chant of'JOHANNESBURG!' you can hear on the recording."
"I once had a pee on a fence next to him at Glastonbury festival, right after he’d just come off stage. And when I asked him if he didn’t have a hospitality area backstage and his own posh toilets, he shrugged and sad, “Yeah man, but I like to pee with the people”.
TRACKS
01 'Gun' (4.23)
02 'Washington DC' (5.05)
03 'Blue Collar' (12.30)
04 'Johannesburg' (8.44)
MUSICIANS
Gil Scott-Heron - vocals, keyboards
Kim Jordan - keyboards
Joe Phillips - guitar
Robbie Gordon - bass
Ron Holloway - saxaphone
Rodney Youngs - drums
Larry McDonald - percussion
CREDITS & BOOTLEG HISTORY
FM > cassette (1st gen) > CDR > WAV > trader's little helper > FLAC
Originally posted on DIME by Roofwalker.
I've converted to WAV and 320-mps from the FLACS.
Thanks to Roofwalker, and Scott for the alert!
Blogs linked to in this post are Pure Diggin', BeeQ, RockNRollaZ, Look On the Nice Side and Blaxploitation Jive. Please say hi to these folks and thank them if sample their wares, so that they keep posting.
Tracks not appearing on the others are the latin-funk banger "17th Street" and "Must be Something We Can Do" but it's all good, starting off with the usual kickass latin percussion jam.
This is a soundboard rip that has then been broadcast on WRVR-FM, and finally recorded on reel-to-reel quarter-inch tape. Hope you enjoy it!
TRACKLIST
01. Intro Jam (3:16) 02. 17th Street (6:12) 03. Must Be Something We Can Do (5:24) 04. It's Your World (4:45) 05. Home Is Where The Hatred Is (12:40) 06. Johannesburg (6:36)
I joined the DIME network to see what I could bring across to the blogosphere, and the first score is this wonderful show (in FLAC and MP3) from Mr Gil Scott-Heron in Berkeley, California in 1978. Thanks to Scott for pointing me at it.
This comes from an FM broadcast. An MP3 recording of it was posted at Sounds From the Edge of the Universe earlier this year by Miles from Birds With Broken Wings.
Essentially we've got the same band - minus one percussionist - that I wrote about in the 1977 Bottom Lineshow post. Six months after that, it's a pretty similar tracklist, but they're playing with formats and structures a little more. Allan Barnes' synthesiser lines are coming more to the fore, but without sacrificing Brian Jackson's jazzy rhodes tones.
"Home is Where The Hatred Is" excerpt
Gil characteristically opens with local issues, attacking recent cuts to the Afro-American Studies program at Berkeley, seamlessly swinging between polemic and poetry in a spoken piece called "Them Other Niggers". This leads straight into "The Spirit of the Drum", with Gil leading call-and-response vocals with the band, most of whom are on percussion.
From there on it's all-out latin, funk and jazz with not a moment of filler. 73 minutes of joy, hope you like this one!
Tracklist
01. Intro 02. Gil's Opening Speech 03. The Spirit of the Drum 04. Hello Sunday, Hello Road 05. 95-South (All of the Places We've Been) 06. Racetrack in France 07. We Almost Lost Detroit 08. Home is Where the Hatred Is 09. Band Introductions 10. Song of the Wind (aka Blow Wind Blow) 11. Band Introductions / The Bottle 12. Johannesburg
The Midnight Band
Gil Scott-Heron (Vocals, Guitar, and possibly Piano) Brian Jackson (Keyboards, Flute) Allan Barnes (Saxophone, Synthesizer) Delbert Taylor (Piano, Trumpet, Congas, Flugelhorn, Vocals) Barnett Williams (Congas, Percussion) Siggie Dillard (Bass) Reggie Brisbane (Drums) Also at 'Never Enough Rhodes'
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
Gil Scott-Heron - genius, activist, brilliant poet, jazz-funk pioneer, rap pioneer, possessed of a beautiful spoken and singing voice, possessed of both a searing intelligence and a sense of humour. The guy's had his troubles with drugs in recent years, and we can only hope he gets it together and keeps going, because the world needs more people like him. And in combination with Brian Jackson he's just unbeatable. Gil for President! Brian for VP (with his hair in a bun)!
Vildgolia - excerpt
Some unreleased live recordings sound like they've been recorded from the venue's bathroom, then there are the quality ones like this one. This fantastic, powerhouse two hour performance was recorded straight from mixing desk at the Bottom Line club into a PCM, an early digital recorder, then transferred to WAV and then FLAC. It sounds great, and is now my favourite live Gil Scott-Heron album. It just needed a cover, so I made one. (Today's downloads have the WAVS, and also a 320kb MP3 version I've made from the WAVs)
This performance comes a year after the mostly-live album "It's Your World" and the week before the release of "Bridges". It's comprised mostly of tracks from the latter, with some favourites and one-offs added. These are not just renditions of album tracks - the Midnight Band is steaming, with long percussion sections and improvisation. So even if you've got all of these tracks, and all of his live albums, you really, really need this.
'Hello Sunday Hello Road'- excerpt
Gil starts with a ten minute monologue that turns into the poem "New Deal". He starts seemingly casually talking about the state of the world, and builds into a scathing media commentary, an africanist world perspective and an account of a black hostage taker in Cleveland whose demands were "All white folks leave Earth!". The starker and darker his commentary becomes, the more humour he brings in ... It's extraordinary to hear his summation of "change" at the end of the monologue and to realise the resonance of his discourse on contemporary thought and politics.
'Home is Where the Hatred is' - excerpt
This band is HOT - up to three people on rhodes with Brian Jackson at the forefront - check the fifteen minutes of keyboard and brass workouts on "Home is Where the Hatred Is" - three or more people on percussion under the guidance of Barnett Williams, latin-tinged trumpet solos from Delbert Taylor, great sax work from Allan Barnes ...
The percussion workouts here are insanely good. The band follow the monologue with the five minute percussion / chanting of "Gumbai", and there are six minutes in the middle of "The Bottle"with just latin percussion and voice - check this excerpt :
'The Bottle'- excerpt
I first saw Gil perform in 1994, around the time his comeback "Spirits"was released. He was pretty lost at the time, and kept wandering off stage to do ... something ... it wasn't a great show. But then I saw him in January 1999, also at the Bottom Line, in a special reformation gig of the Midnight Band with Brian Jackson - and they were spectacular. I think there's something about the intimacy of that club that brings out the best in people.
I could go on all day and all night about how good this 1977 concert is - but i'll hold back and say : just download it and enjoy it.
SIDEBAR : ALLAN BARNES (woodwinds & synth)
Some of these players had cut a limited edition jazz-funk album the year before called "Freedom Serenade" under the name Malone & Barnes and Spontaneous Simplicity. It's got a Blackbyrds/Mizells feel. Together with keyboardist/vocalist Johnny Malone, saxophonist Allan Barnes (who was also in the Blackbyrds) co-led the series of graduates from Donald Byrd's influential jazz program at Howard University. The album also featured other players from this live session : trumpeter Delbert Taylor, bassist Siggie Dillard and some guest work from Brian Jackson. Malone and Barnes also wrote the funky track "Disco Dancin" on the 1979 Taste Of Honey album"Boogie Oogie Oogie"
TRACKLIST
01.New Deal- 10:20 02.Gumbai- 5.28 03.Race Track In France - 10.50 04.95 South - 6.47 05. Hello Sunday, Hello Road - 3.51 06.It's Your World - 6:57 07.Home Is Where The Hatred Is- 15:55 08. Almost Lost Detroit - 7.22 09. Vildgolia(Deaf, Dumb & Blind) - 12:44 10. Winter In America - 6:54 11.Under The Hammer - 5:06 12. The Bottle- 16.02 13. Johannesburg- 5.44
Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson Live at the Bottom Line New York, NY August 20th, 1977 Recorded SBD - PCM - FLAC.
POST CREDITS
Covers and conversions by Simon666 Files reposted from Dexondaz with permission. "It's Your World" link at Radio Transistor "Bridges" link at Milkcratebreaks. "Freedom Serenade" link at Martian Shaker"Boogie Oogie Oogie" link at Groove Eternal
Donated by the wonderful Greg. 
Some of these players had cut a limited edition jazz-funk album the year before called "Freedom Serenade" under the name Malone & Barnes and Spontaneous Simplicity. It's got a Blackbyrds/Mizells feel. Together with keyboardist/vocalist Johnny Malone, saxophonist Allan Barnes (who was also in the Blackbyrds) co-led the series of graduates from Donald Byrd's influential jazz program at Howard University. The album also featured other players from this live session : trumpeter Delbert Taylor, bassist Siggie Dillard and some guest work from Brian Jackson. Malone and Barnes also wrote the funky track "Disco Dancin" on the 1979 Taste Of Honey album "Boogie Oogie Oogie" 