GIL SCOTT HERON RIP

Today we all heard the very sad news that Gil Scott Heron had passed at the age of 62. Undeniably one of the most talented voices of the last 40 years. He will be greatly missed.There's a good article about the man which you can read in full HERE. It talks about Gil's life, upbringing, his voice ,and the demons that haunted him up untill his final days.

Gil Scott-Heron is frequently called the “godfather of rap,” which is an epithet he doesn’t really care for. In 1968, when he was nineteen, he wrote a satirical spoken-word piece called “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” It was released on a very small label in 1970 and was probably heard of more than heard, but it had a following. It is the species of classic that sounds as subversive and intelligent now as it did when it was new, even though some of the references—Spiro Agnew, Natalie Wood, Roy Wilkins, Hooterville—have become dated. By the time Scott-Heron was twenty-three, he had published two novels and a book of poems and recorded three albums, each of which prospered modestly, but “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” made him famous






When he ran low on money from royalties, de Latour says, he would arrange for gigs and insist on a deposit to pay for the band’s airfare. He would spend the deposit, then arrive with a two-piece band, which was all he could afford. When his money ran out altogether, he slept, sometimes for two weeks. “He could sleep until he knew the next check was coming,”