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View Full Version : Gil Scott-Heron: the sentencing was not televised


skipshady
19 Nov 2003, 01:27 AM
This is a bit of old news, but saw this in the NY Post yesterday. Gil Scott-Heron, scheduled to appear last week at NYC club S.O.B.'s, was jailed and sentenced to 1-3 years for his July 2002 cocaine posession felony conviction.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/31/nyregion/31HERO.html?ex=1069390800&en=48c2a4115442aa1c&ei=5070
Last July, Gil Scott-Heron ... promised a judge that he would enter a residential drug treatment program in September, as soon as he returned from a summertime tour of Europe. It was his last chance to avoid prison for his felony conviction for possession of cocaine.

He returned but did not keep his promise. By the last week of October, he had made no effort to get into treatment, prosecutors said, so Justice Carol Berkman of State Supreme Court in Manhattan sentenced him to one to three years in prison.
At 52, Mr. Scott-Heron has lost many of his teeth, appears emaciated and sometimes slurs his speech.

It's a shame. "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" is one of my favorite records to come out of the 70s and while the pop culture references are dated, the message is valid today as ever.

Dyvel
19 Nov 2003, 03:08 PM
Drug addiction will do that to you

Real Ray
19 Nov 2003, 09:05 PM
That's a shame really.

If you want to hear a current artist who was clearly influenced by him, listen to Michale Frenti w/ Spearhead or Disposable Heroes Of Hipopracy-Televison, the drug of a nation. Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation. An homage to Heron, really.

Mel Brennan
21 Nov 2003, 09:07 AM
Or, just listen to Heron's Winter in America, for a prescient analysis of where we are now.

Geniuses often self-destruct...overwhelmingly sad.