lanklan, Jul 9, 2009
Gil Scott Heron - The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Pieces of a Man (1971)
Flying Dutchman/RCA - New York
Johnny Pate - conductor
Brian Jackson - piano
Ron Carter - bass
Pretty Purdie - drums
Burt Jones - electric guitar
Hubert Laws - flute, saxophone
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Edited by Azizi Powell
This is Part I of a two part pancocojams series on African American Gil Scott Heron's now classic 1970 spoken word piece "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised".
This post showcases a YouTube sound file of Gil Scott Heron's "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" and presents an online quote about the overall meaning of that spoken word and a Wikipedia excerpt about some of the cultural references in that masterpiece.
The complete words for the "Revolution Will Not Be Televised" is also included in this post.
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2024/09/gil-scott-heron-revolution-will-not-be_12.html for Part II of this pancocojams series. That post showcases a YouTube sound file of "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" and presents biographical information about Gil Scott=Heron. In addition, that pancocojams post includes a Wikipedia excerpt about that now classic spoken word as well as selected comments from the discussion thread of that showcased sound file.
The content of this post is presented for historical, socio-cultural, and aesthetic purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to Gil Scott Heron for his legacy and thanks to all those who are featured in the "Revolution Will Not Be Televised" recording. Thanks also to all those who are quoted in this post and thanks to the publishers of this sound file on YouTube.
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THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED
(Gil Scott Heron, 1970)
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 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 four
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 Mays 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 on report
from 29 districts
The revolution will not be televised
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers on
the instant replay
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers on
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 lifes of Roy Wilkins
Strolling through Watts in a red, black, and green
liberation jumpsuit that he has been saving for just the proper occasion
Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville Junction
will no longer be so damn relevant
And women will not care if Dick finally got 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 or Francis
Scott Keys
Nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom Jones, Johnny Cash, Engelbert
Humperdinck, 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, the
tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl
The revolution will not go better with Coke
The revolution will not fight 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
-snip-
Source- https://genius.com/Gil-scott-heron-the-revolution-will-not-be-televised-lyrics
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QUOTE ABOUT THE OVERALL MEANING OF GILL SCOTT HERON'S "THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED"
From https://www.civilrightsmuseum.org/news/posts/the-revolution-will-not-be-televised The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
The National Civil Rights Museum Celebrates Black Music
Month [no date cited]
" "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised is a frequently
repeated phrase, but few people have heard the astounding 1971 poem by Gil
Scott-Heron. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised provokes the reader to
realize that the true change will not be brought to them by corporations, but
rather through a change in one’s own mind and actions."
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CULTURAL REFERENCES IN THE SPOKEN WORD "THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED"
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Revolution_Will_Not_Be_Televised
" "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" is a
satirical poem and Black Liberation song by Gil Scott-Heron.
[...]
Each verse has several cultural references:[5]
- "Plug in, turn on, and cop out", a reference to Timothy Leary's pro-LSD phrase "Turn on, tune in, drop out."[6]
- "Skag", term for heroin[7]
- "Pigs", term for police[8]
- "Process", term for using chemicals to straighten a Black person's hair [9]
- Xerox, best-known manufacturer (at the time of the poem's writing) of photocopying machines
- Richard Nixon, 37th president of the United States
- John N. Mitchell, U.S. Attorney General under Nixon
- General Creighton Abrams, one of the commanders of military operations in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War
- Mendel Rivers, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee during the period of the Vietnam War (Rivers' name appears in the original 1970 recording, but not in the re-recorded 1971 version, being replaced by Spiro Agnew)
- Spiro Agnew, 39th vice president of the United States under Nixon
- "Hog maws", sometimes misheard as "hog moss", soul food made from the stomach of a pig
- Schaefer Award Theatre, an anthology of theatrical films that aired on several U.S. TV stations
- Natalie Wood, film actress
- Steve McQueen, film actor
- Bullwinkle, cartoon character
- Julia, the lead character on the half-hour television sitcom series Julia starring Diahann Carroll.
- "Give your mouth sex appeal", from Ultra Brite toothpaste advertising[10]
- "The revolution will not get rid of the nubs", the nubs being beard stubble, from a Gillette Techmatic razor advertisement of the period
- Willie Mays, baseball player
- "NBC will not be able to predict the winner at 8:32", a reference to television networks predicting the winner of presidential elections shortly after the polls close at 8 p.m.
- Whitney Young, civil rights leader
- Roy Wilkins, executive director of the NAACP
- Watts, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, alluding to the Watts Riots of 1965
- "Red, black, and green", the colors of the Pan-African flag
- Green Acres, a U.S. television sitcom
- The Beverly Hillbillies, a U.S. television sitcom
- "Hooterville Junction" (a corruption of Petticoat Junction, a U.S. television sitcom, and its fictitious location)
- "...will no longer be so damned relevant," a statement of approval toward the rural purge that led to the above three shows being canceled
- Dick and Jane, generic white couple derived from white children, a brother and sister, featured in American basal readers
- Search for Tomorrow, a popular U.S. television soap opera
- The Brighter Day, another U.S. television soap opera
- "Hairy-armed women liberationists", participants in second-wave feminism[11]
- Jackie Onassis, the late U.S. President John F. Kennedy's widow, seen during the period in television broadcasts of Kennedy memorials
- Jim Webb, U.S. composer
- Francis Scott Key, lyricist of "The Star-Spangled Banner"
- Glen Campbell, U.S. pop/country music singer, then hosting The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour
- Tom Jones, Welsh pop music singer, then hosting This Is Tom Jones
- Johnny Cash, U.S. country music singer, then hosting The Johnny Cash Show
- Engelbert Humperdinck, British pop music singer, then hosting The Engelbert Humperdinck Show
- Rare Earth, all-white U.S. rock band signed to Motown Records (this band is only referred to in the 1971 version)
- "White tornado", advertising slogan for Ajax cleanser, "Ajax cleans like a white tornado"
- "White lightning", a term for moonshine, the name of a 1950s country and western song by George Jones, and an American psychedelic rock band.
- "Dove in your bedroom", an advertising image associated with Dove anti-perspirant deodorant
- "Put a tiger in your tank", an Esso (now Exxon) advertising slogan created by Chicago copywriter Emery Smith
- "Giant in your toilet bowl," a reference to Liquid-Plumr commercials saying that it cleared so well it was like "having a giant in your toilet bowl" with an animation of a large arm using a plunger on your toilet.
- "Things go better with Coke", a Coca-Cola advertising slogan
- "Fights germs that may cause bad breath", from Listerine advertising
- "Will put you in the driver's seat", reference to advertising slogan for Hertz car rental"
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This concludes Part I of this two part pancocojams series.
Visitor comments are welcome.
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