RIP Gil Scott-Heron – an innovative voice goes silent at 62

This was sad news for me, and one of those things I read that immediately takes me back to a point in time. 1978. Bloomington, Indiana. I was living there, a very messy life, rooming with a woman in a $95 dollar-a-month apartment. We were about 20 yards from the railroad tracks, and trains would barrel by every fifteen minutes or so, shaking the apartment. Even at that rent we had trouble paying, and every month was a struggle. There in the soundtrack to our lives, among whatever else we were listening to, was Gil Scott-Heron. His album ‘Secrets‘ had come out that year, and we listened to it over and over and over. There was one song on it, ‘Show Bizness,’ that I still recite to myself (for Scott-Heron was an early innovator of the marriage of spoken word and music that came to be called rap and hip-hop; many of his songs were more recited than sung).

Do you really want to be in show bizness
It’s the highly constant come and go bizness
Got you hangin’ out in places you got no bizness
People sell their souls just to be in show bizness
Show bizness, it’s alright with me Gil Scott-Heron was brilliant, a trailblazer, a pioneer, and a very distinct part of the soundtrack to my life. Hats off and hearts out.]]>