"In 2005, having decided to approach Gil Scott-Heron to suggest that we
made a record, I stopped listening to any of his previous output. This
was to avoid feeling intimidated by the weight of Gil's musical history,
and by the sheer quality of the 14 studio albums he'd released since
1970.
Part of my initial suggestion to Gil was that we recorded sparse,
stripped down versions of his old songs. We both thought that might make
an intriguing album. So we started off recording versions of some of
Gil's repertoire, just voice and piano. But our album gradually evolved
into something different - "I'm New Here", which as the title suggested,
didn't touch on any of Gil's previous recordings (except for "Your Soul
And Mine", which is a re-imagining of "The Vulture" from Gil's 1970
debut LP "Small Talk at 125th and Lennox").
I didn't pay much attention to the acoustic versions of Gil's older
repertoire that we had recorded, as I was so focused on our making an
entirely new album. We didn't make the album we set out to; we made
something different.
In November 2011, six months after Gil died, I sat down to listen to the
whole of Gil's back catalogue, on vinyl, album by album,
chronologically. It's an incredible body of work; 13 albums between 1970
and 1982, and then 2 ("Spirits" and "I'm New Here") until Gil passed in
2011. I did this as a sort of meditative exercise, for the joy of
sitting and listening to Gil, now that I was no longer getting to hear
his voice down the phone from Harlem. Richard Russell, XL Recordings, London, 2014
- Did You Hear What They Said? 4.02
- Better Days Ahead 4.40
- Household Name (Interlude) 0.12
- Your Daddy Loves You 4.06
- Changing Yourself (Interlude) 0.10
- Pieces of a Man 4.36
- Enjoying Yourself (Interlude) 0.13
- Alien (Hold On to Your Dreams) 3.01
- Before I Hit the Bottom (Interlude) 0.21
- 95 South (All of the Places We've Been) 3.12
- The Other Side 3.04
- The On/off Switch (Interlude) 0.26
- Blue Collar 3.54
- On Bobby Blue Bland (Interlude) 0.17
Gil Scott-Heron - Nothing New LP
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£18.99