File under M, for midnight

Here's a great clip of the late, great Gil Scott-Heron, who died last week at age 62.  Enjoy the band's sweet music and stick around to hear the poet-singer's set-up for "Is That Jazz" (he comes in at 3:40).

Scott-Heron's music could not easily be compartmentalized. At various times it touched soul, jazz, funk and rap, and was always directed by the spoken word.  He mentions that in recent visits to record stores he was discovering his music "in a category called Miscellaneous. It bothers the hell out of me. The alphabet thing would be all right, it'd be under either 'H' or 'S.' You know they can't get that together either."

"In defiance of all the trends we refer to our music as midnight music. We call it the first minute of a new day, say that we badly need some first day music, say that we badly need some new ideas and some new things for our music..."

We surely do. And Scott-Heron delivered.