Monday, January 1, 2007

SHUT 'UM DOWN


SHUT 'UM DOWN by Gil Scott-Heron.

Happy New Year! And welcome to the re-launched blog!

There's no better way to kick off the new year than with prime Gil Scott-Heron. Shut 'Um Down sounds like it's trying to WAKE YOU UP, stop dreaming. We know now that America wasn't really listening to Scott-Heron, and it was about to spend the next decade on a yawning woozy nostalgia trip (it's "morning in America," as the President would say).

This particular tune, off 1980 (incidentally, Scott-Heron's last album with Brian Jackson), was probably written with Three Mile Island in mind, so you wouldn't think it's topical. But Scott-Heron's righteous, confident, astringent funk sounds pretty good in 2007!

LISTEN.

Photo: Divis ditch, 2006.

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