The absolute highlight was Stevie Wonder singing "You've Got It Bad Girl" from "Talking Book."
History is wrong, "Songs In the Key of Life" is not Stevie Wonder's best album, not even close, that's "Talking Book."
The first step in the new Wonder paradigm, wherein he had total control over his albums, was 1972's "Music of My Mind." Despite opening for the Rolling Stones on the biggest rock tour in history, and including the track "Superwoman," "Music of My Mind" had minor commercial impact. People still perceived Stevland Morris as Little Stevie Wonder, not an auteur who could do it all by himself, competing not only with Paul McCartney and Todd Rundgren, but every rock and roll titan.
"Talking Book" changed that. But not everybody was buying albums at that point, many still saw Stevie Wonder as a singles artist.
But then Stevie doubled-down with "Innervisions" and "Living For the City" and "Higher Ground." But it was more than that, it was "Too High," "Golden Lady," "All in Love is Fair," "Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing" and "He's Misstra Know-It-All," the final cut an engaging masterpiece that seems to have been lost to the sands of time.
And then came "Fulfillingness' First Finale," a more subtle work that took time to seep in. The hit was "Boogie On Reggae Woman," but the killers were quieter, and penetrated further, cuts like the magical "Heaven Is 10 Zillion Light Years Away and "Creepin" and "They Won't Go When I Go." If you were on the trip, you were fully satisfied, in the same way you were with the two previous LPs.
And then came "Songs in the Key of Life." What a difference a few years make. The systems were streamlined, albums could be promoted in a heretofore unknown fashion. And the press finally caught up. But so did the public. We live in a racist nation, it wasn't until "Songs in the Key of Life" was released that everybody embraced Stevie Wonder. But he'd been fantastic for years, even better.
Look at the track listing for "Talking Book." It opens with "You Are the Sunshine of My Life," a song my modern music hating father could sing along with just as well as me. Then the subtle "Maybe Your Baby." The jaunty yet not slight "Tuesday Heartbreak." The second side opened with "Superstition," a track you only had to hear once to get, the sound of that clavinet alone was enough to close you. Then my favorite at the time, "Big Brother," which was more akin to a singer-songwriter number than anything on the R&B chart. Then the killer "Blame It on the Sun," followed by "Lookin' for Another Pure Love." And then the piece-de-resistance, a modern classic which many people first heard performed by Peter Frampton on his second LP, the one with the group, Frampton's Camel, "I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever)." Which leaves us with "You and I (We Can Conquer the World)," recorded by everyone from Barbra Streisand to Joe Cocker to Mariah Carey, which is the worst song on the album. That's right, this near standard is the worst song on the LP! And then there's "You've Got It Bad Girl."
"Yes, you know the plans I am making are intended to capture you
So you practice false reaction
To delay the things I do, the things I do, things I do
Oh, foolish you"
She's got it bad girl, so bad that Quincy Jones covered the song on his 1982 album and used it as the title of the LP, which is why Stevie played it last night.
But, but, but... These moments are becoming rare. Stevie is not on the road constantly, he's not playing the deep cuts, what are the odds I'll hear this again? Almost nil. It was a thrill.
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And there was a plethora of name talent opening the first half of the show, but it was the backup singers taking solo turns who put the show over the top in the second half, as well as Siedah Garrett, who came out looking like a space alien and took us out of this world with her rendition of her song "Man in the Mirror."
The show was somewhat chronological. I was hoping for a nod to Q's venture with Donna Summer, her Geffen debut that ultimately stiffed, before she delivered her next LP to Mercury and came back with "She Works Hard for the Money." But that Geffen LP...
The single was "Love Is in Control (Finger on the Trigger)." Anything but a conventional melody, a conventional song, and if you listen to it enough you get it. But the absolute killer is the sultry "The Woman in Me," the aural equivalent of the movie "Body Heat," you can feel the sweat. And then Jon and Vangelis's "State of Independence," that would have been a great number for the assembled multitude. But it was not to be. What we got was Michael Jackson.
Who's been dead for fourteen years. His personality, his identity has been picked over, and he looks anything but pretty. But the music, that remains. It's still standing. Untarnished. Superseding the tabloid drama.
Michael hadn't put out an album for four and a half years. Can't say the audience was waiting with bated breath. Childhood singer who came up at the same time as Donny Osmond, a lightweight trifle, and then came "Off the Wall."
This was no longer Motown, this was Epic, a machine, that could ship product and bring success home. But still... "Off the Wall" started in the Black market, took a while to cross over. Its success was subtle, anything but what came thereafter. It didn't sound quite like anything else, and nothing sounded quite like it. "Off the Wall" was ethereal and unique. Otherworldly. And you might not have heard it upon release, but it was only a matter of time before you were at a party and someone dropped the needle on "Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough."
I'm as white as can be. But when the orchestra started playing the notes, I jumped to my feet and started contorting my body in ways I didn't know possible, it was like I was infected. Politics fell into the rearview mirror. This was the power of music, to take you completely away, sans consciousness, just feeling.
"Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough" is not a ditty. It's a six plus minute journey. It locks into a groove and never lets go. You can't resist it. It doesn't beat you over the head, rather it penetrates you somewhere deep inside and then it doesn't let go.
They wanted to be startin' somethin', and they most certainly were. This was not a rock crowd, this was mostly a white crowd. An aged white crowd. But if you surveyed the boxes, the benches, you saw these people in their seventies grooving, it was nearly unfathomable that they had it in them.
And then there was "Billie Jean," the song that started it all, that turned Michael Jackson into a superstar. All it took was one television special. The world saw the moonwalk and people never recovered, Michael Jackson ascended into the pantheon in a matter of minutes. "Off the Wall" was still private, not ubiquitous, but suddenly "Thriller" was "Frampton Comes Alive," and beyond.
And I'm standing in the crowd realizing that we will never see this again. No one will have this ubiquity. No one will make music that we all know. Oh, it's possible, and I hope so, but no one's even playing on this level, no one's creating music that is transcendent, that crosses all ages and demos. And Michael may have had incredible moves, but it was all in the grooves.
Michael ultimately lost the plot, labeling himself the King of Pop, needing to top himself when the only alternative might have been to go smaller, but that wasn't his style. Michael ultimately became a cartoon, and then a train-wreck, but that music, it's set in stone. I'm there realizing why he could sell out all those shows in London at the same time thinking there was no way he could have ever performed them. If for no other reason than there was not enough of him to go around, people wanted everything, but he was only one person, he was crushed by the pressure.
And credit goes to Walter Yetnikoff, who has been nearly completely forgotten. But it was this substance abuser, ultimately more powerful and memorable than the self-aggrandizing Clive Davis, who told MTV that either they played Michael Jackson's video or he'd pull all of CBS's product. MTV didn't want to, but when it did the course of history was immediately changed, turned out that there was a huge untapped market for the music video channel, and Michael Jackson was the perfect person to bring people in.
Oh, Michael was rolling. He was already the biggest star on earth. But then...
He decided to spend an astronomical sum with the movie director John Landis to create the "Thriller" music video, which was even longer than the six minute song.
MTV treated the "Thriller" video as a tablet from God. With the premiere and subsequent airings. It was an event. The VJ would announce it was coming. You'd make a mental note to turn the TV on, or to leave it on.
I really didn't think they'd play it last night. But Avery Wilson strode to the front of the stage and... Avery Wilson? Who is that?
Turns out he was a contestant on season 3 of "The Voice." And Avery's doing a credible job as my mind is flashing on that red jacket and then during the break...
Wilson moves to the front of the stage and starts making Michael's moves. Throwing his arms. It was like 1983 was yesterday. We all know this choreography by heart. We may not think about it on a regular basis, but it's there, buried inside our brains.
Whew!
WHEW!
Michael's exclamations were in full force. And it was not like the man himself was in the house, but the music was an excellent stand-in. A remembrance of what once was. When a musician could stand with world leaders, could be as rich and powerful as anybody on the planet. When in studios across Hollywood there were people working long after dark, in the dark, trying to get it exactly right, wanting to please, wanting to titillate the audience, wanting to THRILL the audience!
Money didn't matter. Spend away, because if you got it right the return would pay for the expenditure many times ever.
The music was built block by block. By Michael, by Q, by writers, by studio musicians. And when you do it this way it's easy to lose the plot, to get so deep inside that you miss the target. But for a moment in time it was bullseye after bullseye.
It was thriller night. FOR YEARS!
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