Winter in America
In the early 1970s Gil Scott-Heron's tough-talking jazz-rock came across like a slap in the face, fiercely filling the Establishment in on issues ranging from substance abuse to the poverty and desperation raging through the black community.Winter in Americawas his breakthrough, with pianist Brian Jackson's dense arrangements matching the words blow for blow on the uncompromising title track (actually a bonus cut), the stinging "H20gate Blues," and the grooving anti-alcohol warning of "The Bottle"--"Don't you think it's a crime," Scott-Heron riffs, "the way time after time, people hit the bottle?" Some of Jackson's music may now sound a bit dated, but the years have done little to dull what writer Nathan George called Scott-Heron's "uncomfortable truths."--Michael Ruby