Winter in America

Sad to hear that Gil Scott Heron has died…although amazing in some sense given his past lifestyle he lived so long to come back with his recent records, although I preferred his older stuff I had the feeling he had a better record in him – now we’ll never know.

So at the top is Winter in America from Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson’s excellent 1974 album ‘The First Minute of a New Day’ and here’s ‘Home Is Where the Hatred Is’ from 1971’s ‘Pieces of a Man’ as sampled by Kanye:

And here’s his classic ‘The Bottle’, which some confused as ironic because of his own struggles with addiction, whereas I see this song as partly autobiographical, as were many of them.

And to end on his lesser known ‘We Almost Lost Detroit’ which is about a near nuclear disaster, and was on his 1977 album ‘Bridges’ and also on the No Nukes album of the anti-nuclear concerts at Madison Square Garden. Here he is doing a stripped down version last year…