Brown Bread: Gil Scott-Heron

(Source: Grauniad)

The musician and poet Gil Scott-Heron – best known for his pioneering rap The Revolution Will Not Be Televised – has died at the age of 62, having fallen ill after a European trip.

Jamie Byng, his UK publisher, announced the news via Twitter: “Just heard the very sad news that my dear friend and one of the most inspiring people I’ve ever met, the great Gil Scott-Heron, died today.”

Scott-Heron’s spoken word recordings helped shape the emerging hip-hop culture. Generations of rappers cite his work as an influence.

He was known as the Godfather of Rap but disapproved of the title, preferring to describe what he did as “bluesology” – a fusion of poetry, soul, blues and jazz, all shot through with a piercing social conscience and strong political messages, tackling issues such as apartheid and nuclear arms.

“If there was any individual initiative that I was responsible for it might have been that there was music in certain poems of mine, with complete progression and repeating ‘hooks’, which made them more like songs than just recitations with percussion,” Scott-Heron wrote in the introduction to his 1990 Now and Then collection of poems.

He was best known for The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, the critically acclaimed recording from his first album Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, and for his collaborations with jazz/funk pianist and flautist Brian Jackson.

In The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, first recorded in 1970, he issued a fierce critique of the role of race in the mass media and advertising age. “The revolution will not be right back after a message about a white tornado, white lightning or white people,” he sang.

He performed at the No Nukes concerts, held in 1979 at Madison Square Garden. The concerts were organised by a group called Musicians United for Safe Energy and protested against the use of nuclear energy following the meltdown at Three Mile Island. The group included singer-songwriters such as Jackson Browne, Graham Nash and Bonnie Raitt.

Scott-Heron’s song We Almost Lost Detroit, written about a previous accident at a nuclear power plant, is sampled on rapper Kanye West’s single The People. Scott-Heron’s 2010 album, I’m New Here, was his first new studio release in 16 years and was hailed by critics. The album’s first song, On Coming From a Broken Home, is an ode to his maternal grandmother, Lillie, who raised him in Jackson, Tennessee, until her death when he was 13. He moved to New York after that.

Scott-Heron was HIV positive and battled drug addiction through most of his career. He spent a year and a half in prison for possession. In a 2009 interview he said that his jail term had forced him to confront the reality of his situation.

“When you wake up every day and you’re in the joint, not only do you have a problem but you have a problem with admitting you have a problem.” Yet in spite of some “unhappy moments” in the past few years he still felt the need to challenge rights abuses and “the things that you pay for with your taxes”.

“If the right of free speech is truly what it’s supposed to be, then anything you say is all right.”

Scott-Heron’s friend Doris Nolan said the musician had died at St Luke’s hospital on Friday afternoon. “We’re all sort of shattered,” she told the Associated Press.

The title track from his last album I’m New Here contains the line “I’m hard to get to know, impossible to forget”, which pretty much sums up the man and his music.

An interesting fact is that his father, also called Gil, or more properly Gilbert, played football for Celtic in 1951, becoming the first black player to play for Celtic and I think the second ever black player to play in the Scottish football league.

R.I.P. Gil Scott-Heron 1949-2011

Traces of cocaine found on 99% of British bank notes

(Pravda)

Cocaine is cheaper than a cup of coffee in a London restaurant, authors of the parliamentary report made to estimate the government’s struggle against the import of heavy drugs in the country said. The price of one gram of cocaine has lost 50% of its value during the recent decade.

Deputies of the British government believe that the measures, which the government takes to struggle against the import of heavy drugs, are dismally inadequate. The drug is still available in the streets, and the cost of cocaine dropped during the recent ten years from £80 to £40 per gram.

For comparison, a cup of coffee may cost from £2 to £8 in London. A glass of the cheapest wine or beer costs at least £3.50 pounds. The price of cocaine could drop against the background of its worsening quality, experts say. The drug may often be mixed with other substances, such as painkillers.

The cocaine, which the British police confiscated in 2009, was 27% made of the natural product. In other arrested batches, there was only %5 of pure cocaine.

There are other reasons that may have led to dropping prices on the narcotic substance. Prices on illegal substances depend on the risk connected with its delivery, storage and sale. A lower threat of punishment triggers the growth of competition on the market, which eventually results in lower prices.

Today, Britain is one of the prime receivers of cocaine in the Old World. British MPs believe that cocaine has gained popularity with the help of celebrities and successful businessmen. Many celebrities use cocaine and do not receive any punishment for it. Moreover, successful entrepreneurs may often look absolutely normal and take high positions in the society despite their addiction to cocaine.

British supermodels Kate Moss and Jodie Kidd would often make headlines because of their fondness for cocaine. Singers Katherine Jenkins and Amy Winehouse publicly stated that they used cocaine.

A cocaine scandal occurred in the British armed forces in 2004, when it was said that the Royal Highland Fusiliers and the Royal Scots took cocaine.

Great Britain comes second on the use of cocaine in modern-day Europe. The country can proudly take the first place at this point: traces of cocaine were found on 99% of the nation’s bank notes.

3% of Britain’s adult population tried cocaine in 2008-2009, which marked a five-fold increase in comparison with 1996. Britain is also one of the leaders when it comes to the use of such drugs as ecstasy and amphetamines.