The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised"
Single by Gil Scott-Heron
from the album Pieces of a Man
A-side	"Home Is Where the Hatred Is"
Released	1971
Format	7" promotional single
Recorded	April 19, 1971 RCA Studios
Genre	Soul, funk, proto-rap, Jazz poetry
Length	3:07
Label	Flying Dutchman
Writer(s)	Gil Scott-Heron
Producer	Bob Thiele
Gil Scott-Heron singles chronology

"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" is a poem and song by Gil Scott-Heron. It was the B-side to Scott-Heron's first single, "Home Is Where the Hatred Is", from his album Pieces of a Man (1971). It was also included on his compilation album, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (1974).

Original version

It first appeared on the 1970 album Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, on which Scott-Heron recited the piece, accompanied only by congas and bongo drums.

A re-recorded version, this time with a full band, appeared on the 1971 album Pieces of a Man and as the b-side to the single "Home Is Where The Hatred Is".

All these releases were issued on the Flying Dutchman Productions label. The piece's name was also used as the title to Scott-Heron's "Best of" album, issued in 1998 by RCA.

The song appeared in the film The Hurricane by Norman Jewison about the wrongful imprisonment of boxer Rubin Carter and the fight to free him.

In 2010, the New Statesman listed it as one of the “Top 20 Political Songs”.[1]

References

The poem is notable for its extensive political, cultural, and advertising references, including:

• "Plug in, turn on, and cop out," a reference to Timothy Leary's pro-LSD phrase "Turn on, tune in, drop out."[2]
• "Skag," slang term for heroin
• Xerox, best-known manufacturer (at the time of the poem's writing) of photocopying machines. The name has also become a genericized trademark that colloquially means "to photocopy".
• 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
• Spiro Agnew, 39th vice president of the United States under Nixon
• "Hog maws," sometimes misheard as "hog moss," soul food made from the lining of the stomach, or maw, of a pig
• Schaefer Award Theater, radio show by Dick Clark
• Natalie Wood, film actress
• Steve McQueen, film actor
• Bullwinkle, cartoon character
• Julia, a TV half-hour sitcom series starring Diahann Carroll
• "Give your mouth sex appeal," from Ultra Brite toothpaste advertising
• "The revolution will not get rid of the nubs," the nubs being beard stubble, from a Schick razor advertisement of the period.
• Willie Mays, one of the first African Americans to play in Major League Baseball.
• "NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32," a reference to television networks predicting the winner of presidential elections shortly after the polls close at 8:00.
• Whitney Young, civil rights leader
• Roy Wilkins, executive director of the NAACP
• Watts, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, referring 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," fictional setting of Green Acres and Petticoat Junction
• Dick and Jane, white children, a brother and sister, featured in American basal readers
• "Search for Tomorrow," a popular U.S. television soap opera
• "Women liberationists," a reference to members of the feminist movement
• Jackie Onassis, seen during the period in television broadcasts of John F. Kennedy memorials
• Jim Webb, U.S. composer
• Francis Scott Key, author of "The Star-Spangled Banner"
• Glen Campbell, U.S. pop music singer
• Tom Jones, Welsh pop music singer
• Johnny Cash, U.S. country music singer
• Engelbert Humperdinck, British-American pop music singer
• Rare Earth, all-white U.S. pop music band signed to Motown Records
• "White tornado," advertising slogan for Ajax cleanser, "Ajax cleans like a white tornado"
• "White lightning," a slang 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
• "Tiger in your tank," an Exxon advertising slogan created by Chicago copywriter Emery Smith[3]
• "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.
• "Go better with Coke," a Coca-Cola advertising slogan, "Things go better with Coke"
• "Fight the germs that may cause bad breath," from Listerine advertising
• "Put you in the driver’s seat," advertising slogan for Hertz car rental

Covers and allusions

The song has been covered, sampled, and parodied extensively.

• The Danish/German Mod/Punk band The Movement used a sample in their song "Karl Marx"
• Funk/soul all-female vocal group Labelle covered the song as part of the funk-rock medley in their 1973 album, Pressure Cookin', featuring a similar socially-conscious song, "Something in the Air".
• In the 1990s, the words were sampled by The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy.
• The song was covered by The Last Poets as the title track for one of their albums.
• British acid jazz group Smoove and dub band Brooklyn Funk Essentials parodied the song with their respective tracks "The Revolution Will Be Televised" and "The Revolution was Postponed Because Of Rain".
• Hip-hop artist Aesop Rock has also parodied the work, in his song "Coma" from Labor Days, "If the revolution ain't gon' be televised, then, fuck, I'll probably miss it." He later paid homage to the track on his LP "Bazooka Tooth," with the song "We're Famous" and the line, "The revolution will not be apologized for."
• British funk/jazz group Jamiroquai also claim "the revolution will be televised" in their track "The Kids" from their second album, The Return of the Space Cowboy, with singer Jay Kay adding "Yes, it will, Gil" as an ad lib.
• Elvis Costello's song "Invasion Hit Parade" from his 1991 album Mighty Like a Rose contains the lines "Incidentally the revolution will be televised/With one head for business and another for good looks/Until they started arriving with their rubber aprons and their butcher's hooks,"[4] an allusion to the song.
• The hip-hop group Public Enemy used the phrase "The revolution will not be televised" in the opening to its 1988 album, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.
• Hip-hop artist Common used the term as an intro to his 2000 single "The 6th Sense" ("The revolution will not be televised; the revolution is here.").
• Pop star Prince made extensive reference to this poem in his 1998 single "The War," a 26-minute noise jam/spoken word piece, in which a chant of "evolution will be colorized" is heard.
• The title track of Talib Kweli's Beautiful Struggle contains a reference in the opening verse: "Yo, I heard it's said the revolution won't be televised/But in the land of milk and honey there's a date you gotta sell it by." The song's chorus says, "The revolution is here."
• The Pulp album This Is Hardcore finishes with the track "The Day After The Revolution," which suggests that the revolution was televised but everyone missed it ("The revolution was televised/Now it's over, bye bye").
• The Sarah Jones song "Your Revolution," a feminist interpretation of the song criticizing misogyny in mainstream hip hop (with the key line "Your revolution will not happen between these thighs"), was banned by the FCC.[5]
• Dana Bryant contributed a version of the song with updated lyrics to the 1993 FFRR compilation Giant Steps Volume One, substituting, for example, MC Hammer and "Just Do It" for some of Scott-Heron's original references.
• The rock band Piebald released an EP called The Rock Revolution Will Not Be Televised in 2000. The title track contains the lyrics "Can't you see by the look in our eyes that the rock revolution won't be televised?"
• In 1993, the Welsh hip hop and electronica duo Llwybr Llaethog released a Welsh language version called "Fydd y Chwyldro ddim ar y Teledu, Cyfaill" together with the poet Ifor ap Glyn.
• In 2004, the Mexican hip hop and rock group Molotov released a Spanish-language version called "La Revolución."
• In 2004, gay cabaret duo Kiki and Herb performed the song as part of a medley called "The Revolution Medley" in their sold-out "farewell" performance at Carnegie Hall.
• Steve Earle played the Gil Scott-Heron recording immediately before the start of his set on tour dates in support of his 2004 album, The Revolution Starts Now.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, a documentary by Irish filmmakers, chronicles the April 11, 2002 coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.
• In the mid 1990s, hip-hop/rap artist KRS-One recorded a re-imagining of the song using different lyrics, written by Wieden+Kennedy copywriter Stacy Wall, for "Revolution," a Jake Scott-directed Nike commercial featuring Jason Kidd, Jim Jackson, Eddie Jones, Joe Smith, and Kevin Garnett.[6]
• BT and Rasco produced a song call "The Revolution" with updated lyrics: "The revolution will fought on all forms of media/It will be fought on phone wires/On cable modems" in an attempt to maintain the spirit of the original song. The song was released on 10 Years in the Life in 2002.
• Wu-Tang Clan's song "Wu-revolution" on their Wu-Tang Forever album contains the lyric "The revolution will be televised" (0:57) and "Yeah, the revolution should be, televised." (1:16)
• In 2005, the French group Expérience covers the song under the name "La révolution ne sera pas télévisée", in their Positive Karaoke with a Gun / Negative Karaoke with a Smile album.
• The 2007 album Lionheart: Tussle with the Beast by UK Hip-Hop act Klashnekoff contains a track called "The Revolution (Will Not Be Televised On Channel U)" which contains excerpts from the song.
• The song "The Sermon" on the Re-Up Gang's 2004 mixtape, We Got It 4 Cheap, has the lines: "The revolution will not be televised. (applause) A lot of times, people see battles and skirmishes on TV and they say 'A-ha, the revolution is being televised.' Nah, the results of the revolution are being televised. The first revolution is when you change your mind about how you look at things, and see that there might be another way to look at it that you have not been shown."
• "We Apologise for Nothing," the second single from Fightstar's album One Day Son, This Will All Be Yours, contains the line "Lets celebrate this change in turning tides, this revolution won't be televised".
• On "Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach" from Gorillaz's 2010 album Plastic Beach, guest vocalist Snoop Dogg raps "The revolution will be televised."
• A song featured in Gurren Lagann, "Libera Me From Hell", features the line "Revolution ain't never gonna televise"

Notes

1. ^ Smith, Ian K (25 March 2010). "Top 20 Political Songs: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised". New Statesman. http://www.newstatesman.com/music/2010/03/revolution-televised-gil-scott. Retrieved 25 March 2010. 
2. ^ Mansnerus, Laura (1996-06-01). "Timothy Leary, Pied Piper Of Psychedelic 60's, Dies at 75". U.S. - Obituary (The New York Times). http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9500E0DD1E39F932A35755C0A960958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all. Retrieved 2009-10-02. 
3. ^ http://www.petcaretips.net/famous_cats_tony_tiger.html
4. ^ http://www.elviscostello.info/lyrics/mlar.html Mighty Like a Rose
5. ^ Lee, Chisum (2001-06-19). Counter ‘Revolution’. The Village Voice. http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0125,lee,25714,6.html. Retrieved 2009-10-02 
6. ^ Eric King CD/AD » NIKE “Revolution”

External links

• Lyrics