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Underplayed vinyl: Reflections – Gil Scott-Heron

The first song I remembered from Reflections by Gil Scott-Heron, before playing it again, is actually the final track, B-Movie, mostly about Ronald Reagan.

Gil Scott-Heron would have been 70 on April 1, 2019, reason enough to bring back a category on this blog. Underplayed Vinyl means records I used to play a LOT as LPs, but as I got into CDs, haven’t played nearly so much.

His “collaborative efforts with musician Brian Jackson featured a musical fusion of jazz, blues, and soul, as well as lyrical content concerning social and political issues of the time, delivered in both rapping and melismatic vocal styles by Scott-Heron. His own term for himself was ‘bluesologist’, which he defined as ‘a scientist who is concerned with the origin of the blues…’ Scott-Heron is considered by many to be the first rapper/MC ever…”

I have some other music by him. We Almost Lost Detroit appears on the No Nukes album. He co-wrote and sang on Let Me See Your I.D. on the Artists United Against Apartheid album Sun City. Most importantly, I have the epic The Revolution Will Not Be Televised on a compilation of 100 Years of Black Music.

Reflections (1981) is the only full Gil Scott-Heron album I own. The first song I remembered, before playing it again, is actually the final track, B-Movie, mostly about Ronald Reagan. It’s astonishing how relevant the lyrics still are. Just change the names of the players.

The idea concerns the fact that this country wants nostalgia
They want to go back as far as they can…
Even if it’s only as far as last week
Not to face now or tomorrow, but to face backwards

Reflections features:
Storm Music (Gil Scott-Heron)
Grandma’s Hands (Bill Withers)
Is That Jazz? (G S-H)
Morning Thoughts (G S-H)
Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler) (James Nyx, Marvin Gaye)
Gun (G S-H)
‘B’ Movie (Intro, Poem, Song) (G S-H)

Gil Scott-Heron, born April 1, 1949, died too early, on May 27, 2011 at the age of 62. I have found no cause of death, though “he disclosed in a 2008 New York Magazine interview that he had been HIV-positive for several years, and that he had been previously hospitalized for pneumonia.”

Pieces of a Man album (1971), the first cut being The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Winter In America (1974)
We almost Lost Detroit (1977 studio version with Brian Jackson)
Reflections album (1981)
Artists United Against Apartheid: Let Me See Your ID (1985)
Several National Public Radio pieces

ARA: Does Green Book feature the Magic Negro?

African-American filmmaker Spike Lee popularized the term, deriding the archetype of the ‘super-duper magical negro’ in 2001 while discussing films with students.

Green Book Mr. AmeriNZ himself, Arthur asked:

What do you make of the criticism of “Green Book” that it’s basically “Driving Miss Daisy”, with roles reversed, but still the Magic Negro “saving” the white person making them better. Spike Lee was apparently very angry about their award.

I suppose I should discuss what the Magical Negro/Magic Negro/Mystical Negro is. Wikipedia notes: “The Magical Negro is a supporting stock character in fiction who, by use of special insight or powers often of a supernatural or quasi-mystical nature, helps the white protagonist get out of trouble.

“African-American filmmaker Spike Lee popularized the term, deriding the archetype of the ‘super-duper magical negro’ in 2001 while discussing films with students at Washington State University and at Yale University.” Spike said, specifically to some British reporters, that Green Book was “not my cup of tea.”

TVtropes adds: “In fact, the Magical Negro really seems to have no goal in life other than helping white people achieve their fullest potential; he may even be ditched or killed outright once he’s served that purpose.” Key and Peale famously had a comedic Magical Negro Fight.

“Lee’s grumbling about ‘magical Negroes’ came amid a spate of films that included The Family Man, The Green Mile, and The Legend of Bagger Vance, all of which featured black characters with mystical powers that were employed entirely for the benefit of white leads.”

I don’t know the former, but I saw The Green Mile and I know enough about the latter to put them both in the category.

I don’t have room to address all the possible films considered in the category, but I think the consideration of Morgan Freeman in either The Shawshank Redemption or Bruce Almighty (where he plays God) as a magic Negro is absurd.

As for Green Book, I think Don Shirley was hardly the docile, helpful black person to make white person Louis Lip’s life better. It seems that they learned from each other.

To that end, some critics complain that Green Book is a “‘but also movie, a both sides movie’ that draws a false equivalency between Vallelonga’s vulgar bigotry and Shirley’s emotional aloofness, forcing both characters — not just the racist white dude — to learn something about themselves and each other.” That’s a different complaint, possibly a function of Vallelonga’s son co-writing the screenplay.

Oddly, Green Book sort of reminded me of – and I haven’t seen it since it was first released – Rain Man (1988). Charlie (Tom Cruise) has one sense of his brother Raymond (Dustin Hoffman), but has seen the light by the end of a six-day trip.

Read how Mahershali Ali changed a pivotal scene, saving the movie from falling into the “white-savior” trope, sort of the variation on the magical Negro.

Fight Poverty, Not the Poor; “White Genocide”

America is something we do, not something we are. It is an idea that can be shared by anyone who is inspired to share it.

poor people's campaign Rev. Liz Theoharis from the The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, came to my church this past weekend. It was a very meaningful event on Saturday night and Sunday morning.

Part of the scripture reading was the beginning of Isaiah 10 (NIV): “Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people.”

But beyond the message was the relational connections. I knew a LOT of people there, and not just my fellow parishioners. There’s a colleague from the North Country, way above Albany, who attended. He’d heard Liz speak on videos and wanted to see her in person. I sent him this Faith in Public Life webinar on Census 2020, trying to include everyone.

One friend shocked another – they had never met each other – in discussing John Calvin, the progenitor of Presbyterianism and his role in the burning of Michael Servetus. As the Calvinist said, “We never learned about THAT in my confirmation class.”

Still another buddy was stunned by the assertion, by me and another, that the National Rifle Association, founded 1871, was actually a largely non-partisan group in its first century. It’s only been since the 1970s that it became radically politicized.

Even someone breaking into our church at 4 a.m. on Sunday – a broken door window, but nothing of value apparently taken – did not cancel out the meaningfulness of the weekend.

The talk Saturday night, of course, began with more than a moment of silence for those massacred in New Zealand. I really have no words that aren’t better expressed by Arthur the AmeriNZ.

He too is incredibly impressed by the Kiwi Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who offered “the strongest possible condemnation of the ideology of the people who did this. You may have chosen us, but we utterly reject and condemn you.”

I was likewise taken by the Weekly Sift guy, Doug Muder, who managed to read the whole 70+-page “manifesto” of the gunman, something I was not able to stomach. Muder wrote Fear of White Genocide: the underground stream feeding right-wing causes.

A key paragraph of the Weekly Sift rebuttal: “In my view, America (or Western culture, for that matter) isn’t something that arises from the essential nature of the White race. America is something we do, not something we are. It is an idea that can be shared by anyone who is inspired to share it.”

I suppose it’s important to understand the hate mentality, though I’m not convinced that comprehension will be enough to stem the tide of bigotry. But I do see a linkage between the attack on the poor and attacks on racial/ethnic/religious “others.” It’s driven by fear.

It’s sometimes difficult to remember that most people are good and kind and just trying to get through life like the rest of us.

If you can read this, Ask Roger Anything

I allow the reader to ARA, and R must respond, usually within the month, to the best of his/my ability. Obfuscation is allowed, but it’s not generally required.

question As you may know, I’ve had various technical difficulties with this blog over the past couple months. First, the site was down over six hours in January, a result of two plugins – Really Simple Cache and W3 Total Cache – clashing; I kept the latter.

Ever since then, however, I’ve had a different problem. It involves folks landing on the same page as they were on the LAST time they were there, even though I’ve updated the site daily. As a result, the number of visitors to the site has dropped by about 80%.

It probably would have shrunk to nothing had I not posted the specific link to my daily post on Facebook. This is disappointing, of course.

And time-consuming to boot, as I contacted various folks for advice. This back-of-the-blog stuff, which also involves emptying the spam folder, e.g., cuts into the time and joy for my front-of-the-blog thing, i.e., writing the posts. I only have about 75 to 90 minutes a day to work on the blog, usually half the first thing in the morning and the rest scattered throughout the day, such as the last 15 minutes of lunch.

I’ve decided to be sanguine about it. The posts exist. If/when I get the problem fixed, maybe people will find the pieces. And, as I keep telling myself, I started this thing almost 14 years ago for an audience of one.

For those of you who can read this, it’s time to Ask Roger ANYTHING. Masochist that I am, I allow the reader to ARA, and R must respond, usually within the month, to the best of his/my ability. Obfuscation is allowed, but it’s not generally required.

As always, you can leave any of your questions, no matter how obscure, in the comments section or on Facebook or Twitter; for the latter, my name is ersie. Always look for the duck. If you prefer to remain anonymous, that’s fine, but you need to SAY so. E-mail me at rogerogreen (AT) gmail (DOT) com, or send me an IM on FB and note that you want to remain unmentioned; otherwise, I’ll assume you want to be cited.

King: weakest/most important big piece in chess

King of the Road – by Roger Miller was #1 for ten weeks on the adult contemporary Billboard charts in 1965

king I woke up on my birthday morning this month thinking about the king in chess. It’s the weakest piece, except for the pawns. It can only move one space at a time, save for castling, which can only take place once a game.

Yet the very point of the game is to capture the king. It lead to a melisma of thoughts about how we need to protect the most vulnerable among us. Dreams, and exhaustion, will do that to you.

Then I thought of all the people who have been dubbed the “king of” some aspect of life. “I’m king of the world, ” Jack Dawson (Leo DeCaprio) shouts, not long before he dies in the cold Atlantic in the movie Titanic (1997).

King of the Hill (1997-2010) was an animated program I watched a lot. Hank Hill, the patriarch of a middle-class American family in the fictional city of Arlen, Texas. He was hardly the monarch of his household.

My daughter is studying world history, and for all the great kings, Caesars and czars she read about, there were three or four duds.

As usual, the brain went right to music. A recent article in the Boston Globe suggested that Michael Jackson, who had been dubbed the King of Pop, should really make us uncomfortable now, after the revelations in the recent documentary Finding Neverland. So his music should, too. Discus.

Here’s a piece from NPR: Benny Goodman: Forever The King Of Swing

King Of Swing – Big Bad Voodoo Daddy

It’s Good to Be King – Tom Petty

King of Pain – The Police (#3 in 1983)
King of Suede – Weird Al Yankovic (#62 in 1984), parody of the Police

King of the Road – Roger Miller (#4 pop, #1 for ten weeks adult contemporary, #1 for five weeks country in 1965)

King Tut – Steve Martin and the Toot Uncommons (#17 in 1978); the Saturday Night Live performance

(Chart action from Billboard, pop charts unless otherwise indicated.)

For ABC Wednesday