I’m fairly confident that JESUS will have a gun when he comes back to Earth, especially if he plans on hanging out in America. We loooooooove guns in America. Almost as much as we love GOD. Okay, truth is that we don’t nearly love GOD as much as we love guns, but we love righteous indignation, and that’s a way of loving GOD too I think. As a matter of fact we will shoot you over our righteous indignation, because that’s how JESUS would want it. If he had a gun.
Jesus will be returning to the Earth soon to bust his God-given gat. So sayeth a Michigan militia. The FBI has arrested several members of the militia and charged them with sedition. Blacks and Jews are still not off the hook tho’ since this wasn’t the ‘race war’ militia, but the ‘government is the anti-christ’ militia. The race war militia is still getting their shit together somewhere in Colorado.
TWitter users have a popular hashtag designation when they want to “tweet” about music they are listening to. They type #MM for ‘music Monday’. It’s silly groupthink (we’ll talk about this later) similar to the #FF (follow Friday) hashtag, but at the end of the day the internets is a bastion for silly groupthink memes.
Maybe that’s why I bought two(2) vinyl copies of Gil Scott-Heron’s latest album ‘I’m New Here’. Maybe I thought I could zig while the rest of the world zags. I suppose the idea of trying to be an individual is also groupthink on some level. I like the vinyl edition mostly because of the art that was issued inside of the album jacket.
Gil Scott-Heron is an amazingly honest artist. In the sense that what you see is what you get and the pretense is removed and thrown away. His greatest characteristic in his music is his frailty, his vulnerability. I think Gil Scott-Heron’s honesty with this characteristic is what makes him so great. He sits before you naked [ll], yet unafraid. There is nothing that you can steal from him that he won’t just give you of his own volition.
Editor’s note: Our good friend Willis Still Sunsweet forwarded this review he posted online elsewhere…
Had Gil Scott-Heron’s (b. 1949) superb I’m New Here not come out recently, this might have been a threnody. Sixteen years had passed since Heron’s previous album, 1994’s invigorating Spirits; more than a decade lay between that and its predecessor, Moving Target. In the interim he’d been adduced “proto-rap”— reductive praise for America’s greatest living blues singer but that doesn’t get it all either; Heron’s brilliance is too vast to summarize.
Gil Scott-Heron’s 1970 debut, Small Talk At Lenox & 125th, set the lyrical tone, a black Phil Ochs via Langston Hughes, “Whitey On The Moon” with spare percussion grooves. His 1971 follow-up, Pieces Of A Man, was the musical future, with pianist/composer Brian Jackson’s avant soul-jazz arrangements allowing Heron to speak and increasingly sing of everything: “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” “Home Is Where The Hatred Is,” “Who’ll Pay Reparations On My Soul,” “We Almost Lost Detroit,” “B-Movie,” an epic evisceration of Ronald Reagan and more. Then darkness veiled his eyes.
In November 2001, as New York State prisoner number 01R5191, Heron began serving eighteen months for “Crim Poss Contr Substance 5th.” In July 2006, as 06R3165, twenty-six months more; again, possession of cocaine. Which travails make I’m New Here all the more staggering. He stares down Robert Johnson and Bobby “Blue” Bland, tries to write a letter but can’t get past “Dear Baby, how are you?” He triumphs anyway. Welcome back, brother.
‘I’m New Here‘ is unlike any R & B we are accustomed to because the ‘B’ that normally represents the shallow themes of selfish bullshit has been supplanted with the spiritual ‘B’ that belongs to blues music. The blues isn’t supposed to make you feel bad either. The blues should make you reflect on what you can do to make your soul complete. The blues is your humanity and everything that you love. I’ll cherish my memory of Gil Scott-Heron as the most honest, real artist I ever listened to and I thank him for reminding me of my great-grandma.
Editor’s note: The following drop via AFROLATINO.TV press release…
Creador Pictures announces the official website launch for the groundbreaking television documentary, “Afro Latinos: The Untaught Story” (Afro-Latinos: La Historia Que Nunca Nos Contaron”). Created and Produced by award-winning television producer Renzo Devia and co-produced by celebrated journalist Alicia Anabel Santos. This seven part series is expected to leave viewers with a new perspective on the heritage of Latinos worldwide, in addition to a better understanding of the modern day adversities still facing Afro-Latinos today.
Who are Afro-Latinos? Afro-Latinos are the descendents of the enslaved Africans who were forcibly taken from their land and dispersed throughout Latin America. There are an estimated 200 million Afro-descendants throughout Latin America; yet the majority, have no political or economic power.
More than two years in the making and independently produced and filmed throughout Spanish and Portuguese speaking nations across the Caribbean, Central and South America. This provocative documentary Afro-Latinos: The Untaught Story delves deep into the Afro-Latino experience as no one has ever seen before. Segments cover topics ranging from history, identity, language, religious taboos, beautiful traditions, art and social issues. This documentary gives a voice to these marginalized communities who have been excluded from history books for centuries. Creador Pictures, LLC hopes to unite all of the Americas with the fascinating knowledge they have gained.
The documentary features provocative scenes capturing intimate rituals, such as Santeria and Voodoo. The series offers revealing interviews from AfroLatino celebrities, political figures, scientists, educators and anthropologists. The most moving footage comes straight from the voices of the people—this is a story that directly affects these communities located in the outskirts of Latin America’s bustling metropolitans.
AFROLATINO.TV is the definitive on-line destination for the global Afro-Latino community. Visitors can watch video footage and see photos taken from the producer’s journeys to dozens of countries on their quest to decode the lineage of African blood in Latin America during the documentary filming.
Teachers across the nation have already used this valuable site as a resource to encourage the curious to further investigate the history Afro-Latinos. This site offers comprehensive information and links to philanthropic organizations for each country visited to inform those communities on where to go if they are discriminated against. In addition to moving and entertaining blog testimonials, the film crew shares information about the books, music and artwork they discovered along the way with via digital travel journals.
Once upon a time in America if you owned a home that meant you were firmly part of the ‘middle-class’. While you certainly weren’t wealthy you at least had a source of equity to draw down from in order to secure loans for a new car or to send your children off to college. The middle-class of America is an eroding dream and the ideal of homeownership has become a burden of debt too great for many to bear.
I’m sad to see Phoenix in the top 5 of that list. I almost relocated to Phoenix after I finished working at the World Trade Center site in 2002. I wanted to get away from the city I had lived in for more than thirty years. I was prA’li a bit depressed too. Working at ground zero was exhilarating at some times and downright devastating every other moment. My dad convinced me to stay in NY and I was able to find an apartment that was in walking distance to their home.
In some ways I’m happy that my dad isn’t around to see the mess they made of the economy. Everything he believed in and worked his ass off to achieve has come undone by the soulless shenanigans of the wealthy and their retinue. I hope the people in Las Vegas, Phoenix and Orlando get their lives back, but that isn’t the way that capitalism works now is it?
