Gil Scott-Heron

When I used to work in Wembley around 1985, a person I worked with took me to see a gig that was part of the red wedge tour. (This was a bunch of artists supporting the labour party -- pre-Blair of course). We wanted too see Billy Bragg play, but he played first, so we missed him because we were in the pub.

What I actually only remember about the gig was hearing "the revolution will not be televised" by Gil Scott-Heron. This was an amazing track, that I spent a lot of time tracking down, by buying CDs and looking in cool record shops.

Nowadays I would just do a google search, or look on Amazon for a track I wanted The guardian are streaming his new album. I was so sad to see that he had a lot of alcohol and coke problems. His early songs seemed positive to me -- even the one about living in the bottle.