I’m very glad I saw Gil Scott-Heron before he died. It was in Ottawa at the Jazz festival maybe 15 years ago. He was looking frail and friendly which were not the kinds of vibes I associated from listening over many years. It was an outdoor concert and it wasn’t too packed, I could walk right up to the stage and stand very close to him. He seemed very pleased, amused and maybe grateful about it all. At the top of the 2cnd floor escalator at the downtown central library in Winnipeg there were three bins of vinyl in the 70s and I was surprised as I grasped this was a thing, you could borrow a record, no money needed just a library card. Sometimes, I think this is a high water mark of workable Leftist attributes for social change. The titles for Neil Sedaka or the Allman Brothers or the Carpenters couldn’t hold a candle to the moment I made out the words The Revolution Will Not Be Televised by Gil-Scott Heron, whoever that was. It didn’t disappoint and I obtained history lessons from him about America, South Africa and poetry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"