We Almost Lost Detroit
Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson
Bridges, 1977
I haven’t been record shopping much recently but after taking the reMitch to The Thing and picking up 10 records, I uncoincidentally found myself walking into Good Records on East 3rd street, saturday after East Village Radio. This was the first record I found - a record I’ve wanted for about 7 years. I think the records are trying to tell me something (”don’t stop digging!”).
This is another one of those tracks that’s been sampled, then re-visited and re-sampled. The floaty keyboard intro was first sampled by the French duo Air on “Modular Mix” (you didn’t see that one coming did you, Dale?). I am pretty sure that was off the radar of J. Rawls who smartly chopped up the pieces of guitar between the lines of the first verse for Black Star’s “Brown Skin Lady” in 1999, which was definitely on Kanye West’s radar when he sampled the keyboard fills between the lines of the second verse for Common’s “The People.” I wonder if he was consciously trying to one-up J. Rawls, especially as he used the same technique. Who’s next? There’s still the horns at the end that are up for grabs.
From the album sleeve:
Wikipedia makes it really easy to know who Karen Silkwood was. He actually performed this song at a concert called “No Nukes” at Madison Square Garden in 1979.
>> songs are available for two weeks (192 kbps) [7.4 MB]
>> songs are available for two weeks (320 kbps) [12.2 MB]
April 18th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
What, nobody saw the movie ‘Silkwood’ when they were a kid? Holly Hunter getting her ass hosed and brillo pad scrub downed to reduce contamniation. Guess i was the only geeky kid on the block. And no J.O., i did _not_ see that Air sample coming. Way to call me out homes, that was a good one;) Keep em comin’ skillet!!!