Kanye West

Now that we've got your attention. Mr. West will be at Tower Records Lincoln Center come Tuesday to sign copies of his new release. What makes that new release interesting among so many other reasons is the presence of Gil Scott-Heron's "Home Is Where the Hatred Is." Gil Scott-Heron has been called the father of rap and he is the natural reference for all hip-hop artists. He has disclaimed any credit for the rap movement.

Scott-Heron's Pieces of A Man was one of those works that appealed to a baby boomer's post adolescent angst within both cosms: the micro and the macro. If a boomer happened to belong to a class that had no business experiencing angst, Scott-Heron was a perfectly safe introduction to it. What follows is Vince Aletti's Rolling Stone review of this neglected masterpiece. Scott-Heron, like many of his peers, did not have a fondness for homosexuals. Aletti addresses that. It is an attitude that many young, black man past and present have armed themselves with for many reasons. It was interesting to dance to Scott-Heron and Jackson's "The Bottle" in gay clubs back in the day. It is hoped and more than likely that Scott-Heron's own attitude has changed. Pieces is also a psychological profile as is much artistic endeavour and it makes it very easy to see why Scott-Heron went there. Nevertheless the album will always be "involving and important."

Pieces of A Man
Gil Scott-Heron Label: Flying Dutchman FD-10143


Here is an album that needs discovering. It’s strong, deeply soulful and possessed of that rare and wonderful quality in this time of hollow, obligatory “relevance” – intelligence. Gil Scott-Heron’s first album, Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, was released almost two years ago when its author/composer was 21. Like the Last Poets’ work, Small Talk was predominantly conga backed poetry but it lacked the energy and flash of the Poets, and after I heard “The Subject Was Faggots,” I didn’t play it again.

[It’s strange to me how black intelligent enough about ‘oppression’ can turn around and slap that same oppression on ‘faggots’ and laugh about it – like the little kid who kicks a dog because he has nowhere else he can safely turn his anger.]

I would have forgotten Scott-Heron his passed-on oppression and his weak poetry were it not for three cuts on which he sang rather than read. His singing voice was firm and mellow without any of the self consciously hip “attitude” that affected his readings; and his songs had a strength that only intermittently sparked in his poems. Scott-Heron was clearly a better songwriter than poet and, in spite of a terribly ragged production, and interesting, even moving singer.

Happily, with the exception of “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” the best poem on Small Talk included here in a more fully orchestrated version, Pieces of A Man is an album of fine songs. Because most of the accompaniment by an excellent assemblage of musicians here calling themselves Pretty Purdie and the Playboys. (Bernard Purdie on drums, Ron Carter, an astounding bass man, Burt Jones on guitar; Hubert Laws, flute and sax; and Brian Jackson, Scott-Heron’s collaborator, on piano} is in a jazz style, the songs have a loose, unanchored quality that sets them apart from both RnB and Rock work. Scott-Heron sings straight out with an ache in his voice that conveys pain, bitterness and tenderness with equal grace and, in most cases, subtlety. Frequently the nature of the jazz backing is so free that the vocals take on an independent, almost a cappella feeling which Scott-Heron carries off surprisingly well.

But what is most surprising about the album, especially after an exposure to the awkwardly fashionable poses of his poetry, is Scott-Heron’s assurance and directness as a songwriter. There are occasional lines that seem to have slipped out of youthful poetry into mature songs (“Why should I subscribe to this world’s madness?”) and the long final cut , “The Prisoner” tends to get bogged won in its own heaviness. But generally the material is tough and real, “relevant” while avoiding, on the one hand empty cliché and , on the other fierce rhetoric, its own kind of cliché.

“Pieces of A Man” the album’s best song, describes in several short, almost cinematic scenes a man’s breakdown as witnessed by his son: “I saw him go to pieces.” Scott-Heron sings with measured sadness, as if stunned, and at the same time gets across the sense of hurt, anger and incomprehension in the character (if it is one) … he has assumed. He sings: “I saw the thunder and heard the lightning/and felt the burden of his shame/ and for some unknown reason/he never turned my way.”

Pieces of A Man has been out for some six months now [1971] with little or no critical notice. But apparently through word of mouth and some airplay on those rare progressive black FM stations, it has become one of the label’s best selling albums. It deserves to be. It may not be easy to find, but it’s an involving, important album (especially so because of its successful and accessible use of jazz) and it’s worth looking for.

-- Vince Aletti in Rolling Stone

P.S. Not to be missed is Esther Philips' recording of "Home Is Where the Hatred Is."
If you want goose bumps, go dig it up. -- Giano




PIECES OF A MAN
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Save The Children
Lady Day And John Coltrane
Home Is Where The Hatred Is
When You Are Who You Are
I Think I'll Call It Morning
Pieces Of A Man
The Sign Of The Ages Morning
Or Down You Fall
The Needle's Eye
The Prisoner