Old school music lovers do you remember..........
Change is a Process Not an Event
when i heard this as a kid, it made me want to be a poet:
The revolution will no be televised
You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.
The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.
There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.
Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.
There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be right back
after a message about a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.
The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.
The Meanings of Funk
By Kenneth Carroll
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, February 1, 1998
When Parliament-Funkadelic founder George Clinton uttered, "What's hap'nin' CC?," on his 1975 album "Chocolate City," he might as well have said, "Watson, come here." Clinton's cool, didactic diatribe, buoyed by five minutes of chitlin-cleaning funk, became the allegory that linked black Washingtonians regardless of caste, class or politics. Even before it Clinton put a beat to it, Chocolate City was a metaphorical utopia where black folks' majority status was translated into an assertion of self-consciousness, self-determination and self-confidence...........
Chocolate City was a cultural muscularity flexing itself inimages like Gaston Neal and the New School of African American Thought hosting Sun Ra in the middle of 14th Street. It was Robert Hooks and the D.C. Black Repertory Theater. It was Shirley Horne, Buck Hill and Carter Jefferson on sax, Bobby Sanchez on trumpet and Fred Foss on alto at Twins. It was Bill Harris on guitar at the Pigfoot, Butch Warren on bass anywhere; it was Chuck Brown at the Maverick Room on Wednesday night; Billy Stewart at the Koko Club at 8th and H; Trouble Funk at the Coliseum, Experience Unlimited at the Panorama Room, and Gil Scott-Heron's "H2O Watergate Blues" in regular rotation on black radio. It was a pop cultural expression of hope. .......... DJs were the founding fathers and propagandists of Chocolate City. The two black AM radio stations, WOL and WOOK, were driven by personality jocks-the Nighthawk, Sonny Jim Kelso, Mr. C., Soul Poppa the Be-boppa, Big Bill Haywood, Leon "The Lover" Isaacs and others-men who were almost as big as the stars whose music they played. According to Bobby "The Mighty Burner" Bennett, who started a legendary career at WOL in 1968, the DJs had been calling D.C. Chocolate City for three or four years before George Clinton. "Chocolate City for me was the expression of D.C.'s classy funk and confident blackness," says Bennett, who still plays music from the period on WPFW-FM. "D.C. was a major market, and the record companies knew that their acts had to come through here to prove their worth in the black community. This is not to criticize young cats today, but in the '70s black artists like Earth, Wind & Fire, all the Philly International groups, Kool & the Gang, etc., had messages in their music. It was more substantial and added to the idea of cultural awareness." ......
Change is a Process Not an Event
on 7/14/09 5:02 am - oklahoma city, OK
girl, you took me way back................I loved GSH. I saw him last in Dallas, TX around 1988.............he did his poetry, but he was a hot mess.Poetry was always in his heart & soul....................so as long as he's living and breathing he's still going to bring it !!!!!
Thanks for sharing............I thought he was either dead or in prison !!!!
MKae
