STEVIE: ONE. BEATLES: ZERO.

It's been a long while since I listened to any mainstream rock albums start to finish. I'd been ignoring that part of my listening. I'd been listening to reggae, jazz, funk, rockabilly, international music and various compilations. Listening to a rock album, to me, is scary, as if by listening to a band that could be played on a "classic rock" station I'm somehow endorsing the format. I loathe the classic rock format. But I'd be a liar if I said I didn't like that era of music, I do. It's just that people who listen to classic rock don't seem to care about going beyond classic rock. That's generalizing I know, but shit, just let the Allman Brothers go.

So I started my experiment with the White Album, beginning to end. I've listened to it a thousand times. But never, in all the times I've heard it it, did I have a song stuck in my head days later. This time it happened, and it had to be motherfucking "Bungalow Bill". After a day of that rattling my skull, it was on to LP #2. I found a mis-filed copy of Stevie Wonder's Innervisions. From the first bars of "Too High" all the way through to the end, it was like gargling with CBD oil. Everything was A-OK, "Bungalow Bill" was the fuck out of my head.

Innervisions was the third LP Stevie Wonder released after renewing his contract with Motown at the age of twenty-one, following Music of My Mind and Talking Book. He'd received a higher rate of royalties and, more important, total artistic control. He responded with three of his most enduring albums ever. Those three LPs pretty much define the classic Stevie Wonder sound, and he played the bulk of the instruments himself. Of the four all time classics below, he is only aided by backing vocals on one ("Too High") and percussion on another ("Don't You Worry 'bout a Thing"). This, at the age of twenty two. What were you doing when you were that age?

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Listen:
Stevie Wonder - Too High mp3 at NTNU (?)
Stevie Wonder - Living For the City (streaming) at YouTube
Stevie Wonder - Higher Ground (streaming) at YouTube
Stevie Wonder - Don't You Worry 'bout a Thing (streaming) at YouTube