Gil Scott-Heron, "I'm New Here"
I long ago abandoned hope of a new Gil Scott-Heron record. Yet here it is: a delicate, intense, skeletal testament to his history, progress and survival. He covers Robert Johnson, Bill Callahan, and Brook Benton but this is a deeply personal album from which we all can draw hope; a beautifully convincing snapshot of an artist very much unbowed.
Gil Scott-Heron is perhaps best known for an astute analysis of US politics, race relations, and the role of the media. His voice personified hip intelligence and detached anger. The layers of detail and meaning in several of his songs have probably spawned PhD theses. Consequently, while most commentators were, for example, fawning over Ronald Reagan, some of us had Scott-Heron’s voice of alternate reason in our heads reminding us: “quick as Kodak your leaders duplicate with the accent being on the dupe - cause all of a sudden we have fallen prey to selective amnesia - remembering what we want to remember and forgetting what we choose to forget. All of a sudden, the man who called for a blood bath on our college campuses is supposed to be Dudley 'God-damn' Do-Right?”
The death, this weekend, of former Secretary of State Alexander Haig gave me a timely reminder of the enduring power of those songs from the 1970s and early 1980s. Even if President Obama came to my house and spent a week reciting the words “a public servant who exemplified our finest warrior-diplomat tradition of those who dedicate their lives to public service” that would never erase Gil Scott-Heron’s indelible image of “Attila the Haig / running around frantically declaring himself in control and in charge / The ultimate realization of the inmates taking over at the asylum / The screenplay will be adapted from the book called Voodoo Economics by George 'Papa Doc' Bush. Music by the Village People, the very military 'Macho Man.'”
Back then, such wide-ranging multi-faceted critiques were given added credence by Scott-Heron’s ability and willingness to look unflinchingly upon his own milieu. In that respect his work compares with Sam Selvon’s nuanced descriptions of his fellow London-based Caribbean immigrants in The Lonely Londoners and Moses Ascending. By using insider knowledge, honesty, wit and irreverence both avoid applying any sentimental or romantic gloss to their subjects, and do so without being seen as a traitor. That same craft makes I’m New Here such a believable and modest self-portrait. The record is an incomplete jigsaw made up of oblique admissions, recollections, and acknowledgements; pieces of a puzzle of a man. And by turning his unflinching gaze upon himself, Scott-Heron has created an album as strong as any he has recorded.
Part of the success comes from the uber stripped-down sound which allows us to concentrate on the voice. On the title track, for example, a plucked acoustic guitar adds to the sense of isolation as the voice speaks alone and then breaks into song. Elsewhere, as producer Richard Russell mentions, programmed electronics are used in lieu of strings. One obvious sample apart, there seems to be less of a collage approach going on, and more a natural transmission of what might be termed “musical DNA” for an abstract merging of rural blues, spoken word, urban soul, and the rhythms of scratching, skipping and playground handclaps with a fractured (almost Burial-like) post-hip hop bass-heavy sound. The latter, of course, owing a good measure of its existence to the rhythms and poetry in Scott-Heron’s earlier work.
Just as the music is drawn from disparate decades, so snatches of lyrics and spoken interludes illuminate points in the artist’s life, with gratitude for a joyful early childhood and respect for the effort and sacrifice of others counter-balanced by flashes of personal flaws. At times, Scott-Heron’s voice sounds weathered and a little blurry, but often it booms with honesty and a craving to communicate. The tracks “Running” and “The Crutch” are perhaps the bleakest here, but no self-pity or preaching slows the flow. "Me and The Devil" is a thudding take on one of Robert Johnson's most quoted recordings. Although, this being GSH, first time he sings the line "You may bury my body, down by the highway side" he quickly adds "I don't really care where you bury me, once I'm gone."
So I’m New Here is not an alternate State of The Union update for those hungry to hear the ultimate dissection of W’s two terms, 9/11, Clinton, Hurricane Katrina or, say, the rise of media bigmouths and their moron retinue. There’s no evidence that Gil Scott-Heron spent his time in prison with a set of Bush Cards devising odes to a litany of religious loonies, feeble yes men and unrepentant pirates. We may never get to hear his thoughts about John Bolton, Kenneth “Kenny Boy” Lay, Colin Powell, Ahmed Chalabi, Condeleezza Rice, Jeb Bush, John Negroponte, Dick “Big Time” Cheney, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Robert Zoellick, Don Evans, Thomas White, Marc Racicot, Christie Todd Whitman, Ann Veneman, John “Crisco Oil” Ashcroft, Michael “FCC” Powell, Alberto Gonzales, Tom Scully, Paul “Wolfowitz of Arabia” Wolfowitz, William H. Haynes II, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, Robert McCallum Jr., George W. Bush, Gale Norton, Elliot Abrams, Elaine Chao, Larry Lindsey, Stephen “Mini-Nukes” Cambone, George Tenet, Viet “Spin” Dihn, Richard “The Prince of Darkness” Perle, William G. Myers III, John D. Graham, Robert Mueller, Mitch “The Blade” Daniels, Andrew “Yoda” Marshall, Lt. General Jay Garner, Karen Hughes, Andrew Natsios, Mercer Reynolds, Spencer “S.U.V” Abraham, Andrew Card, Douglas J. Feith, J. Steven Griles, Richard Armitage, Vice Adm. Dr. John Poindexter, Tom “Duct Tape” Ridge, Ari Fleischer, Paul O’Neil, or John Snow. Indeed, at this point that is about as likely as a project about his father: who legend has it was the first black player to feature for Glasgow Celtic F.C.
This album runs for only about half an hour but the beautiful combination of intellect, humility, sincerity and soul left me feeling reborn rather than short-changed. I’m New Here shows the benefit of being confident enough to use clarity and simplicity when writing and recording. It also demonstrates the value of saying what you have to say and then shutting up. We hear what now seems to be most important for Gil Scott-Heron: coming to terms with his mortality, with his life and the people who have helped shape him. In the process, he gives us a glimpse of the woman who raised him, a figure as vivid as any he has depicted in song or verse. I’m stunned by the pain, hope, and the love and enduring self-belief in these grooves. Thank God he’s recording again. As he says: “I’m the closest thing I have to a voice of reason.”
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