gil scott-heron; redone

I’m New Here is a great one; not just a new one but a riverrunning reconnection with the cool and conscious coming poet. Music stripped back to and built from words, no over-production of the moment [80s reggae sauce] but yet a 110 st 70s flavour. One which vies with all and everything before.

There’s the broken home of 125th and Lenox and ‘B-Movie’ ghetto get outs, a fine version of ‘I’ll Take Care of You’, which Mark Lanegan ‘owns’ as far as I’m concerned, even the title track’s perfectly tempered cover of a Bill Callahan song [if only it were ‘Dress Sexy at My Funeral’ -but heh?].

I don’t know about you, but I had all that right bang mid-horizon… Anyway, this is good but no longer hot news.

Then I noticed this:

A ‘secret’ collection of Angus [Fairhurst]’s very earliest work from the 1970s! I’d never realised it before, nor asked him about it… Peace go with you brother, from now on.

From South Africa to South Carolina here includes ‘Johannesburg’ on it -amongst  a range of gotta move on lovely days. For the first time I actually read the lyrics, heard often in the open-air and in tighter, warmer corners, Clapham Common [was it?!] to Portobello Road, being earnest, not being earnest:

I know that their strugglin’ over there
ain’t gonna free me,
but we all need to be strugglin’
if we’re gonna be free
Don’t you wanna be free?

One long day boycotts are laughed at, rejected, not noticed and seem peculiarly futile, the next day every one is suddenly on their weeping knees, wearing the t-shirt for a TV special.

‘Soft water vanquishes the mighty stone’; cup hands, pour!