The Silver Jew

by Jesse Jarnow

There's no real sport in arguing the semeticism of David Berman, who named his band the Silver Jews, and very publicly rediscovered Judaism himself after becoming sober around 2004. "Ain'tcha heard the news? Adam and Eve were Jews," he'd sung on 2005's Tanglewood Numbers. When the 15-year running outfit started to perform live for the first time in 2006, Berman brought them to Israel, where he was filmed at the Wailing Wall, wearing tefillin and weeping. One doesn't have to go hunting for it. Unlike Bob Dylan or Lou Reed or Neil Diamond, he's probably perfectly happy to be considered a Jewish songwriter. So, what do we do with that information? No where one goes looking for David Berman--his six full-lengths with the Jews, his book of poetry actual air, interviews, documentary, art shows of strange cartoons, his Menthol Mountains blog, even his Judaism--one runs into a strange, unknowable figure.

"That guy's a better songwriter than Dylan," a friend of mine once said of Berman, in an attempt to be provocative. "I bet you didn't know that, did you?" It took me a few years to come around to what he meant, to be able to hold it in my head as a true statement and really believe it -- which I think in a circular way has a lot to do with Berman's Jewishness. His music obviously works with the same basic stuff as (especially) mid-'60s Dylan, verse/chorus forms, surreal/funny non-sequiturs as vehicles for wry beatitude. But where Dylan's songs grab for familiar phrases of folk music, borrowing a change or an image, Berman never seems to need to do that. That is, one can pick apart Dylan's songs -- a line from the Anthology of American Folk Music here, a Woody Guthrie phrasing there, on up through his borrowings from Confessions of a Yakuza in 2001. Those phrases, in their way, remain holes in Dylan's shtick, places where there is quantifiable evidence of his imitative creative process. Berman has no such holes, at least not so gapingly open. Bob Dylan might have written better songs, but I think Berman might really be the better and more original songwriter, if such a distinction can be made. But true originality, even the kind that might be dismissed as simple indie-era post-modernism, is exactly what remains unknowable.

One observable thing about David Berman: his total command of language. Throughout the fantastic 2008 documentary, Silver Jew, he slips into parable. Berman recalled, "One day when I was making [Tanglewood Numbers] I was having a very hard time with the engineer, the producer, and I didn't know what to do--this is the first time I tried it, and I asked for a sign--and I walked the three blocks and, leaning up against a tree at the very end [of the street] there were these really nice shears for pruning trees, just sitting there. I said, 'Okay, well, I still don't believe in super-nature, but maybe this means I should cut the relationship off with this person and pare back the tracks and start the album somewhere else."

Elsewhere, he speaks of coming across a field of wild strawberries and deciding to turn the Silver Jews into a touring outfit. Another story about Berman that struck me pretty hard was Nick Weidenfeld's astonishing Fader piece "Dying in the Al Gore Suite," about Berman's 2003 suicide attempt, in which he attempted to overdose on Xanax and crack in the Nashville hotel room where Al Gore conceded the 2000 election. "I want to die where the Presidency died!" He wore his wedding suit. Sometimes, he just acts in parable. When he retired the Silver Jews in 2009, they played their last show in a cave.

If all of this sounds like cult of personality mumbo jumbo to get at the music of a favorite musician, it might be. But Berman (again, perhaps not quite literally) once declared that the Silver Jews were an abstract art project conceived while he and future Pavement founder Stephen Malkmus worked as security guards at the Whitney. It doesn't really matter if Berman is telling the literal truth in his stories about strawberries and shears or wedding suits. There is the sense, almost always, that he is simply operating on a much more abstract level than most. In a way that is almost completely lost in the over-informed age, he remains the archetypal mystic.

Unlike the once-mysterious S.M. and dozens of other musicians from their generation, Berman has never gone for the big reveal, never outed himself as just a normal guy who likes sports and aims for a pleasant life in the 'burbs. Despite moving to Music City U.S.A., there's not a single Nashville Skyline in his catalogue. In 2009, he declared that the Silver Jews were over entirely. Partially--he said--because of his father, Richard Berman, an anti-union lobbyist apparently legitimately known in his field as "Dr. Evil." "My life is so wierd [sic]," the Silver Jew wrote. "It's allegorical to the nth."

The sum total of all of Berman's gestures shines nearby, but never so close that we can touch it, a mythic figure passing from a life of addiction to redemption, of a seemingly tyrannical father, of poetry, of parable. One might go looking for traditional Hebrew archetypes to describe him. There's the Wandering Jew, the Kabbalistic Jew, the Curious Jew, the Happy Jew, the Quiet Jew. Maybe. Maybe I'm just making these up. But no matter how expert one might be in the old stories, David Berman long ago invented his own self to travel inside, whether or not he records as him again: the Silver Jew.





Download:

"Sometimes a Pony Gets Depressed" mp3
by The Silver Jews, 2005.
available on Tanglewood Numbers

"Suffering Jukebox" mp3
by The Silver Jews, 2008.
available on Lookout Mountain Lookout Sea

"San Francisco B.C." mp3
by The Silver Jews, 2008.
available on Lookout Mountain Lookout Sea

"Animal Shapes" mp3
by The Silver Jews, 2005.
available on Tanglewood Numbers





"Honk If You're Lonely" mp3
by The Silver Jews, 1998.
available on American Water

"Inside The Golden Days Of Missing You" mp3
by The Silver Jews, 1996.
available on Natural Bridge

"Tennessee" mp3
by The Silver Jews, 2001.
available on Bright Flight





"Buckingham Rabbit" mp3
by The Silver Jews, 1998.
available on American Water

"Death of an Heir of Sorrows" mp3
by The Silver Jews, 2001.
available on Bright Flight

"I Remember Me" mp3
by The Silver Jews, 2001.
available on Bright Flight

"Advice to the Graduate" mp3
by The Silver Jews, 1994.
available on Starlite Walker




photos: by Michael Scmelling from Dying in the Al Gore Suite

God Help the Troubadour

by Ben Greenman

Phil Ochs was born five months before Bob Dylan and died sixteen months before Elvis Presley, and that tells you all you need to know about him, and that tells you nothing. Ochs was an earnest activist, and a rebel, and a satirist, and a town crier, and a crack-up. He built and dismantled personae with such rapidity that it’s sometimes difficult to find the real person who, in theory, provided the foundation on which those personae were built and dismantled. Born in Texas, raised in Ohio, gifted musically and culturally omnivorous, Ochs appeared on the Greenwich Village folk scene in 1962 and performed at Newport, the folkies’ Mecca, in 1963. Early on, he defined a certain kind of straightforwardly sardonic protest song, bringing Woody Guthrie’s plainspokenness into the tumult of the sixties. Bob Dylan famously remarked that Ochs was getting better and better, and that Dylan could’t keep up with him. In 1967, he took a sharp left turn in his work, abandoning guitar-and-voice for a lavishly pretentious folk-rock. He brooded, marvelously, and then broke out of the brooding with both gallows humor and lovely, clear poetry. Many of his most beloved songs come from this period, such as “Pleasures of the Harbor”and “Tape from California.”

Then came Ochs’ sixth album, Rehearsals for Retirement, which he released in 1969. The album was recorded after Ochs appeared at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and it’s at once a document of the deepest despair—it grew out of terror and sorrow over the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, and the cover image was of Ochs’s tombstone—and a rollicking good time. “Pretty Smart on My Part,” the leadoff track, skips along on a fleet acoustic riff before descending into a disturbing, if hilarious, series of psychosexual portraits of America. Phil, in chracter, is menaced by a hitchhiker, whips a woman with big breasts, is terrorized by an intruder, experiences humiliation at the hands of the cops, and plots to assassinate the president. Elsewhere, Ochs is the subject of his own pained investigation: “My Life” is almost unbearably naked in both its sound and its subject (“My life,” he sings, “is now a death to me”). “William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park And Escapes Unscathed” is a ghostly piano ballad that, in its last thirty seconds, gives way to a glib bit of vaudeville:

Where were you in Chicago
You know I didn’t see you there
I didn’t see them break your head
Or breathe the tear gas air
Where were you in Chicago
When the fight was being fought
Where were you in Chicago
‘Cause I was in Detroit

The album closes with its spectral title song, which starts with one of the most depressing couplets in pop music (“The days grow longer for smaller prizes / I feel a stranger to surprises”) and gets worse from there. Worse, but not even more beautiful: Ochs’s singing in this period is, I think, his best: his limited range and keening style are a perfect match for both the personal lyrics and the more baroque production. “I wear a different kind of garment,” he sings, “in my rehearsals for retirement.”



As it turned out, the garment wasn’t metaphorical. After Rehearsals for Retirement, Ochs commissioned a gold suit from Nudie Cohn, Elvis Presley’s tailor, and transformed himself in a kind of pre-Andy Kaufman King manqué. That period produced exactly two records: the sarcastically titled Greatest Hits, in 1970, which consisted of all new material, and then Gunfight at Carnegie Hall, a chronicle of an utterly chaotic March 1970 live date that included a bomb threat that cut short the first show, an altercation with unhappy fans who wanted to get into the second show, and Ochs’s idiotic solution to this problem—he smashed the glass window of the box office, severely lacerating his thumb, and performed the second show with his hand bandaged. And that’s just the offstage drama. Onstage, Ochs played some of his beloved protest songs but also the standard “Mona Lisa,” Merle Haggard’s “Okie From Muskogee,” and medleys devoted to the work of Elvis and Buddy Holly.

Gunfight at Carnegie Hall was, for most purposes, the last of Ochs as a singer. He began to suffer from crippling writer’s block and equally crippling alcoholism. He traveled extensively (he was mugged in Tanzania, damaging his voice), became interested in Chilean politics, performed at a huge rally in Central Park in April 1975 when the Vietnam War ended. And then, the eternal darkness of madness: Ochs started telling people that he was a man named John Butler Train who had murdered the real Phil Ochs and taken his place. This eventually passed, but what remained behind was insurmountable depression and suicidal thinking. Ochs hanged himself on April 9, 1976.

Many artists have recorded tribute songs: Tom Paxton, Billy Bragg, John Wesley Harding, Todd Snider. Snider’s “Thin Wild Mercury” is built around the famous story of Ochs getting kicked out of Dylan’s taxicab after weighing in unfavorably on “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window.” Well, unfavorable is a relative term. “It’s not as good as ‘Positively 4th Street,’” Ochs said, telling the truth, and Dylan took the mixed review in stride, ordering the driver to stop the car and throwing Ochs out onto the sidewalk. He also delivered a parting shot that stung like an epitaph: “You’re not a folksinger, Ochs, you’re a journalist.”

And then, of course, there’s Dylan’s own “Lenny Bruce,” which isn’t about Ochs, except that it is. Ochs, of course, also wrote a song about Bruce (the heartbreaking “Doesn’t Lenny Live Here Anymore?”), and Dylan’s mournful, clumsy elegy starts by talking about freedom and rebellion and shining the light of truth in the eyes of power. It ends, though, in a cab, which makes me wonder if he’s been talking about Lenny Bruce at all:

Lenny Bruce is dead but he didn’t commit any crime

He just had the insight to rip off the lid before its time

I rode with him in a taxi once

Only for a mile and a half, seemed like it took a couple of months



Download:

“Pretty Smart On My Part” mp3
by Phil Ochs, 1969.
available on Rehearsals For Retirement

“William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park & Escapes Unscathed” mp3
by Phil Ochs, 1969.
available on Rehearsals For Retirement

"Chords of Fame" mp3
by Phil Ochs, 1970.
available on Phil Ochs Greatest Hits

“Tape From California” mp3
by Phil Ochs, 1970.
available on Gunfight at Carnegie Hall

“Thin Wild Mercury” mp3
by Todd Snider, 2006.
available on The Devil You Know

“Lenny Bruce” mp3
by Bob Dylan, 1981.
available on Shot of Love, 1981

"Doesn't Lenny Live Here Anymore?" mp3
by Phil Ochs, 1969.
available on Rehearsals For Retirement

England's Newest Hitmakers

In April 1964, the Stones released their debut record in the UK, it would appear in a slightly different form in the US six weeks later. Recorded at the tiny Regent Sound studio in London, these would be their last recordings (aside from a few stray tracks) made in England until 1966's Between The Buttons. It's an amazing debut, and again is comprised almost entirely of covers. On the day of it's release in the UK, it sold 100,000 copies, and by early May had knocked With The Beatles off the top spot of the charts.

It opens with Bobby Troup's "Route 66," originally a hit for Nat King Cole, which they undoubtedly learned from Chuck Berry. Keith transposes Johnny Johnson's piano riff to the guitar, and it is one of their most searing live numbers of the early years. The song selection includes blues numbers they had been playing around London in the clubs, as well as their take on current US Soul and R&B hits. There's a version of Gene Allison's "You Can Make if you Try, which they probably learned from the Solomon Burke version, the b-side to "If You Need Me" which they would lay to wax months later at Chess Studios in Chicago. The single from the LP in the US, "Tell Me" was the first recorded Jagger-Richards composition, and went to #24 on the US Billboard charts. Keith plays a 12 string acoustic and sings harmony into the same microphone. It's also their first great pop record.

(to be continued)

Download:

"Route 66" mp3
by Chuck Berry, 1961.
available on New Juke Box Hits






"I Just Want To Make Love To You" mp3
by Muddy Waters, 1954.
available on His Best 1947-55

The boys get "roasted" by Dino:





"Honest I Do" mp3
by Jimmy Reed, 1957.
available on Best of the Vee-Jay Years



"Mona" mp3
by Bo Diddley, 1957.
available on I'm A Man: The Singles As & Bs 1955-59

I'm A Man - The Singles As & Bs 1955-59 [ORIGINAL RECORDINGS REMASTERED]


"Now I've Got A Witness" mp3
by The Rolling Stones, 1964.
available on England's Newest Hitmakers



"I'm A King Bee" mp3
by Slim Harpo, 1957.
available on The Excello Singles Anthology

The Rolling Stones on the Mike Douglas Show:
Soundman out to lunch, but stay tuned for interview at the end.





"Carol" mp3
by Chuck Berry, 1958.
available on The Great 28



"Tell Me" mp3
by The Rolling Stones, 1964.
available on England's Newest Hitmakers





"Can I Get A Witness" mp3
by Marvin Gaye, 1963.
available on Gold



"You Can Make It If You Try" mp3
by Gene Allison, 1958.
available on You Can Make It If You Try

"You Can Make It If You Try" mp3
by Solomon Burke, 1963.
available on If You Need Me



"Walking The Dog" mp3
by Rufus Thomas, 1963.
available on Walking the Dog




part 1 : here

********************

Gather No Moss

Between June of 1963 and February of 1964 The Rolling Stones released three singles, one EP, and a couple other tracks on a compilation. All in the UK, and all before the release of their first LP. All but two those songs were covers. The trajectory of their career couldn't yet have been imagined. Firstly, they wanted to be the the best blues band in London (they were), and by the time they started recording, they wanted to share their love of American Blues, Soul, and R&B with a larger audience (which they did). The Stones weren't the only band in London doing this, but they were the best. They eventually wrote songs of their own (as urged by their manager Andrew Loog Oldham) but for the most part, their early records, up until 1966's Aftermath are heavily comprised of covers of black American music.

So, as the story goes, nearly fifty years ago, in late 1961 on the outskirts of London in Dartford, Mick and Keith, old boyhood friends reunite at a train station. Mick is carrying a copy of Chuck Berry's Rockin' at the Hops and The Best of Muddy Waters. BINGO! The alliance is born. in the coming months they start playing, and find Brian Jones, who is masquerading around town as a slide-guitar playing Elmo Lewis. Later they add Stu, Bill and his Amp, and Charlie.

It's no accident that their first single would be a Chuck Berry song on one side and Muddy Waters on the flip, two artists they would re-visit frequently, and soon enough meet at Chess Studios in Chicago. Their second single "I Wanna Be Your Man" is a song they got from Lennon and McCartney, when Oldham invited them to the studio. It was a something that McCartney considered a throwaway, and the Stones took it gladly. I've never been one to choose between the Beatles and the Stones, but if you were comparing the their versions of this particular song, which the Beatles eventually recorded in their next sessions, the Rolling Stones win this one hands down. The b-side, "Stoned" was their first original 'composition,' - basically a blues jam - and was banned in the U.S. for it's suggestive lyrics. Their third single, "Fortune Teller," was shelved and eventually appeared on a UK compilation. Next, an EP of more great American R&B, and a single of a Bo Diddelyized version of Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away," backed by "Little by Little," a Stones original based on a Jimmy Reed riff - both recorded for the first LP which was soon coming. At that session, were Phil Spector and Gene Pitney, who contributed some maracas and piano respectively, and Spector copped a partial songwriting credit for "Little by Little."

(to be continued)

Download:



"Come On" mp3
by Chuck Berry, 1961.
available on The Great 28



"I Want To Be Loved" mp3
by Muddy Waters, 1955.
available on Anthology: 1947-1972

***********





"I Wanna Be Your Man" mp3
by The Beatles, 1963.
available on With the Beatles (Mono)



"Stoned" mp3
by The Rolling Stones, 1963.
available on Singles Collection: The London Years

***********









"You Better Move On" mp3
by Arthur Alexander, 1961.
available on The Greatest






"Poison Ivy" mp3
by The Coasters, 1959.
available on Baby That Is Rock 'n' Roll



"Bye Bye Johnny" mp3
by Chuck Berry, 1960.
available on The Great 28



"Money (That's What I Want)" mp3
by Barrett Stong, 1959.
available on Collection

***********





"Fortune Teller" mp3
by Benny Spellman, 1962.
available on Fortune Teller



"Poison Ivy" mp3
by The Rolling Stones, 1963.
available on More Hot Rocks: Big Hits & Fazed Cookies

***********







"Not Fade Away" mp3
by The Crickets, 1957.
available on Buddy Holly Gold

"Little by Little" mp3
by The Rolling Stones, 1964.
available on Singles Collection: The London Years

***********



Bonus:

"Andrew's Blues" mp3
by the Rolling Stones (and others), 1964.
unreleased

"Mr. Spector and Mr. Pitney Came Too" mp3
by the Rolling Stones, 1964.
unreleased

An All American Trilogy... Boy

"Uncle Sam needs you, Boy
I'm a gonna cut your hair off
Take this rifle, Kid
Gimme that gui-tar
Yea-ah..."

Today, on the 4th of July, when we Americans do what we do to celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence (eat meat, drink beer, and blow shit up), let us pause and reflect on the glory that is "The All American Boy."

In 1958, when Bobby Bare was about be inducted into the Army and his pal Bill Parsons was returning from his own call to duty, they teamed up with a forty year old drifter of Irish and Cherokee descent named Orville Lunsford and recorded a one-off demo talking blues called "The All American Boy" at Syd Nathan's King Studios in Cincinnati along with a Parsons original, "Rubber Dolly."

There are many versions of this story, and it's hard to tell what's what. But what we do know is that these two recordings were released as a single on the Fraternity label, and Bare, who had allegedly said that he didn't want his name on the record, got his wish. When the single came out it was credited to Bill Parsons on both sides. The songwriting credit for "The All American Boy went to Parsons and Lunsford, and unbeknownst to Bare who was then overseas, it raced up the charts to #2 a few months later.

Many thought the track to be about Elvis who had also been inducted into the Army, but it was more than likely an autobiographical joke that Bare improvised before he shipped off. Parsons, with a hit on his hands, was touring for Bare's record, including a spot in early 1959 on Buddy Holly's final tour, The Winter Dance Party, where Cricket Waylon Jennings heard Parsons rehearsing one day and asked if that was him on the record. "No, he's in the Army now." When, Bare was discharged, we went on to record a sequel "I'm Hanging Up My Rifle," and later, a third variation, "Brooklyn Bridge," making it a trilogy of sorts.

Mickey Newbury's "An American Trilogy" is an arrangement of two Civil War songs and a folk ballad. Elvis used it as a grand finale to finish his shows in his later years, and it is the staple of every fat Elvis Impersonator's repertoire. What's more American than that?

Happy Independence Day, Folks...


Download:

"All American Boy" mp3
by Bobby Bare, 1958.
available on Singles (1959-1969)

"I'm Hangin' Up My Rifle" mp3
by Bobby Bare, 1960.
available on All American Rock 'n' Roll: The Fraternity Story Vol 2

"Brooklyn Bridge" mp3
by Bobby Bare, 1963.
available on Detroit City


************


"All American Boy" mp3
by Grandpa Jones, 1959.
available on Country Music Hall of Fame

"All American Boy" mp3
by Bob Dylan and The Band, 1967.
available on The Genuine Basement Tapes


************

"An American Trilogy" mp3
by Mickey Newbury, 1971.
available on Frisco Mabel Joy

************

"Dixie" mp3
by Bob Dylan, 2003.
available on Masked & Anonymous

"Glory Hallelujah" mp3
by Furry Lewis with Lee Baker Jr, 1969.
available on Take Your Time

"All My Trials" mp3
by Dave Van Ronk, 1957.
available on The Mayor of MacDougal Street: Rarities 1957-69


*************

Radio Free Song Club

For the past year and a half, I've been hanging out with some of my friends about once a month to record a podcast called the Radio Free Song Club. I'm there as a photographer, but the others assembled are songwriters, musicians, sound engineers and visiting guests. It's hosted by Nick Hill (formerly of the Music Faucet on WFMU) and singer-songwriter Kate Jacobs. Dave Schramm is the bandleader, and is joined by a semi-rotating band known as The Radio Free All Stars, which includes David Mansfield, JD Foster, Jeremy Chatzky, Doug Wieselman, Andy Burton, Paul Moschella, Ted Reichman, Anton Fier and many others.

The concept of the show is that the club members-- which include (among others) Freedy Johnston, Jody Harris, Laura Cantrell, Peter Blegvad, Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby, Peter Holsapple, Victoria Williams, Kate Jacobs, and Dave Schramm--contribute a newly written song each month. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't, but the results are always interesting. Some come as finished masters sent by email from across the sea or out on the road. Others come as demos which are then dubbed live by the all-stars in the studio. On one episode, the band played live with Victoria via Skype. Peter Holsapple has released a CD of new material comprised entirely of songs written for the show.

There have been numerous guests as well as live performances by the club members on each show, including Syd Straw, Beth Orton, Ronee Blakley, Bob Neuwirth, Mary Lee Kortes, Lianne Smith, Susan Cowsill, Glen Hansard, Alana Amram, Steve Wynn, Katell Keineg, and Michael Hurley.

Everyone involved, including Gary Arnold and Andy Taub, who have offered their studios as well as their services, have worked for free, giving their time and their talent to this labor of love. The shows are available for free and have produced some 150 masters of new songs thus far.

This is top-shelf entertainment, folks.

So, the Radio Free Song Club has launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for incidental costs in producing this fine show.

Won't you please consider sending a donation? This project will only be funded if at least $5,555 is pledged by Thursday Jun 23, 11:58am EDT. We are most of the way there, and every little bit helps.

In the meantime, here's a few of the songs from the show, including Victoria Williams's version of Townes Van Zandt's "Buckskin Stallion," recorded for the last show, live at The Living Room in New York City, in tribute to her recently deceased horse, and for now, only available here.

Download:

"Do You Remember That?" mp3
by Wreckless Eric and Amy Rigby, 2010.
from Radio Free Song Club: No. 007 Double Issue



"Buckskin Stallion" mp3
by Victoria Williams, 2011.
from Radio Free Song Club: Sweet Sixteen Tons
(coming in August)

"Cote d'Azur" mp3
by Peter Blegvad, 2010.
from Radio Free Song Club: Third One Now



"Letters She Sent" mp3
by Laura Cantrell, 2010.
from Radio Free Song Club: If 9 Was 6



"Don't Call Me Pete" mp3
by Peter Holsapple, 2010.
from Radio Free Song Club: Third One Now



"A Little Bit of Something Wrong" mp3
by Freedy Johnston, 2010.
from Radio Free Song Club: Second Number

"Mister Control" mp3
by Jody Harris, 2010.
from Radio Free Song Club: First Issue

********

Visit the Radio Free Song Club on the web: HERE
on Facebook: HERE
and at Kickstarter: HERE

video by Tony Cenicola:



all photographs © Ted Barron, 2011.

Gil-Scott Heron

"The youth was gone, and he looked like an old man, freshness erased by some unknown blackboard cleaner. It was a new day for John Lee. There had always been a smile on his lips and a chuckle rolling over his vocal chords, ready to be exposed with only the slightest provocation. The daytime was gone from his eyes. All that remained was the night."

Gil-Scott Heron, from The Vulture, 1970.


by Drew Hubner

Gil-Scott Heron wrote "The Bottle" in the late 60's but he never stopped drinking. He never left Harlem, he smoked crack, and when I saw him last summer in Marcus Garvey Park, he had the gap-toothed gleeful grin of a bum. Whenever the band kicked in, he threw his head back and no one looked happier to be there. He looked like a six foot seven homeless guy leading the band. He also looked like a three year old kid. Most artists when they make it, they go live in LA or whatever. Gil-Scott Heron never did. He was not a rapper, though he did rap in the same way that Bob Dylan rapped. Dylan was not a folk singer either, he's a blues guy. He always was. Heron is jazz. That night in the park he told a story about the origins of jazz. He rapped. He was from the generation that used that word a little differently; Rap Brown comes to mind. It seemed incongruous that someone like Heron smoked crack, someone so intelligent, so aware. But he was eaten up by the same monster that ate Rap Brown. It also seemed incongruous when we heard that Brown shot a black sheriff in Alabama with a big ol' pistol.

Heron knew America. He wrote about America like no one else and the America that he lived with and lived in was not kind to black artists or to black men. Some can live in the suburbs, Heron never could. This is not even a black thing altogether; it's an artist thing. And it's not a value judgement either. Why does Dylan keep touring, when he can't even sing really? Why did Joe Strummer go to raves and hang out with wankers half his age, when the consumers of his music wanted the Clash to play "Rock the Casbah"? Heron's final album, I'm New Here from last year was amazing. It was just like those Johnny Cash records produced by Rick Rubin, spare genius in the raw, a voice in bare essence. In Harlem on 3rd Ave there's a bike shop that has that photograph of all the jazz guys taken on an afternoon in the late 50's, right there in the neighborhood. Everyone from Diz to Monk. Dozens of guys along with 10 lucky neighborhood kids. The thing that amazes you is that all those guys could be in the same place at the same time to pose, but they all lived right there in Harlem. That's the NYC Heron lived in, still. But the city passed him by. The city had changed, not altogether of course, but Heron had not left. That's what that album said. Listen to it. It is not even music, more of a testament, like the pictographs on canyon walls left by the Apaches to tell us what they saw of the world. Heron did rap but he was not a rapper, he was a jazz singer. RIP, brother.

Download:

"New York Is Killing Me" mp3
by Gil-Scott-Heron, 2010.
available on I'm New Here

"On Coming From A Broken Home (Part 1)" mp3
by Gil-Scott-Heron, 2010.
available on I'm New Here

"On Coming From A Broken Home (Part 2)" mp3
by Gil-Scott-Heron, 2010.
available on I'm New Here

**********

The Other Side of Gil-Scott Heron
video and photographs by Monique de Latour
from The New Yorker