RIP Gil Scott Heron

When Gil Scott Heron's album Spirits was released I went looking for it in the Glasgow branch of Virgin. I was confronted by the usual problem - where would you find it?

Under G for Gil, S for Scott, or H for Heron? And more fundamentally - was he in the Rock/Pop A-Z at all, or in the Jazz, Blues or Dance sections? Could be anywhere.

I asked an assistant, who answered with a blunt honesty: "If he's rock or pop, he's in the Rock/Pop A-Z, if he's jazz it's in the jazz section, or if it's blues or dance, look there."

I found it eventually, more by chance than design I think. I can't remember what section it eventually turned up in.

His music was like that. I remember him describing the problem of falling between easy genres, and how he was most probably classified as "Miscellaneous", and if there was a one word definition for jazz, that was probably it.

Most of the instant obituaries that popped up at the weekend referred to him as the 'godfather of rap'. Probably true, but he was much more than that. Blues, jazz and funk all infused his music, shot through with a poetic voice that few could match.

The Revolution will not be televised was held up as his high water mark, but even this wasn't the angry radical call-to-arms that some took it to be, instead it was a very funny and literate poke at how the media misrepresented the black community and used its issues for their own ends.

Primarily he was a poet, with a humorous and intelligent style, able to take political issues and reduce them to the human level, giving a voice to the people affected by those in high office and bringing those who abuse their power the treatment they deserved.

He had every right to be angry, more so than many other artists who made a good living as angry young men with guitars, but he was intelligent enough to see past the facades that are so easily put up to conceal the picture. While he poked fun at Nixon, Watergate, Spiro T Agnew and Ray-gun, songs like "Peace go with you brother" and "Your daddy loves you" reveal a man more concerned with the human than the political.

There's no denying that being a black artist made his career more of an uphill struggle than it might have been were he white. Similarly his drug problems probably silenced a voice that we really needed hearing loud and clear during the horror that was the Bush years.

There was a conspiracy theory in the late 80s that the Reagan government covertly allowed the ghettos to become saturated with cocaine and crack to snuff out any dissent and potential unrest. Possibly true, possibly not, but drugs certainly reduced Gil Scott Heron to a shadow of himself, releasing only two studio albums since the early 80s.

I saw him a couple of times during what was his later years, and despite his lack of record company support he remained a hugely impressive live artist. A disused cinema in the west end of Glasgow, with a friend too who is also now departed, was the first time, a couple of years later at the more respectable Queen's Hall in Edinburgh was the second. Both times it was an exceptional experience. Another show at the Pavilion in Glasgow was cancelled on account of a drugs bust at customs, and the downwards spiral of his later years began in earnest.

There were more appearances, and more records, but even his performance in the critically regarded "I'm New Here" was referred to in The Wire magazine as sounding like a sample on his own record. Awesome though it was, the full running time was around the same as the live version of Angel Dust on the live Tales of Gil Scott Heron release almost 20 years earlier. It felt at times more like a collection of posthumous works, given the finest production polish, but essentially a haunted collection of recordings of a voice that was not longer with us and hadn't been here for some years.

He played in Paris when I lived there, although I didn't get to the show I think he was better appreciated as an artist in Europe than he was in the US. The fact that he didn't fit into a commercial genre was seen as something to his credit rather than a problem.

This track comes from his 1977 album Bridges, an album that saw him working with long-time collaborator Brian Jackson and recounts his experience of playing at a festival near Marseille.

When I initially thought about starting this blog, I thought it should be wide enough in its scope to feature French acts, acts that sing in French or were influenced by France or French culture, or even acts that were playing there, and this track was actually one that I thought firmly fitted the bill.

While it might me more properly categorised under "Miscellaneous" than under "French music", it certainly merits inclusion.

Peace go with you brother.