For once in my life, I didn’t get exactly what I wanted at a concert and still walked out elated. In lieu of my desired throwback to nonstop ’70s funk from start to finish, Stevie Wonder instead turned in one of those legendary, well-rounded shows we’ll be talking about for decades. Saturday was mastery incarnate.
Photos by JanesAddiction
Take away the awe-inspiring Tony Bennett sit-in on For Once In My Life. Strip out Prince’s cool-as-fuck raunchy rhythm guitar cameo during Superstition. Stevie’s return to Madison Square Garden as a headliner for the first time in 11 years needed no celebrity frills — along with an eight-piece, three-singer band, Wonder played a monster two-and-a-half hour set filled with every possible hit.
The show was a bit more mellow, somber and emotional than I’d have preferred, but one thing is certain: That motherfucker can still play and sing as well as any time in his musical history. Close your eyes during Golden Lady or Too High and you’d think it’s 1974 and he’s touring behind Innervisions. His voice is still as powerful as ever, his personality as sharp as ever, his music downright timeless.
Sure I thought the show started out slow and that his backup band was the type you’d see at a reception celebrating a boy from the Goldstein or Schwartz clans becoming a man, but 150 straight minutes of Stevie fucking Wonder begets a huge smile from this jerk on his way out of the venue. Also, I now know that “God is Good” (as seen here during Saturday’s Master Blaster), and you can’t put a price on that. In lieu of continuing with one of them there proper reviews, I thought I’d turn to some non-pertinent news and notes for youse:
1. Every time the house lights go down and a band takes the stage, I generally hope the show begins with a balls-out rocker, a top-drawer opener eager to fuck me right in the ear. Stevie on this night didn’t disappoint, treating the crowd to a solemn speech that started with a moment of silence for 9/11 and an emotional anecdote about the loss of his mother. In a word, rager. Fucking rager.
2. I keed, I keed. It was moving. But said speech did contain a moment of “Oh na she di’int” hilarity. Stevie mentioned the date “May 31, 2006” and received a loud, female “WOOO!” that reverberated throughout the self-proclaimed world’s most famous arena, a scream similar to the one produced when an artist says he just came from “Cleveland” and an Ohioan perks up. Only Stevie immediately followed that noise with the words “That was the day I lost my mother,” which drew an audible “Ooooh” from the capacity crowd at this girl’s faux pas.
3. I rarely catch political acts of any kind, and whenever an artist makes a political statement or preaches (to the choir or otherwise), I generally take that moment to take a bat hit and tune out. Stevie took the opportunity in the third song of the night, Visions, to belt out a sermon, highlighted by the repeated phrases “I can’t believe it” and “That’s unacceptable.” He touched on hate and war and the obvious things that are unacceptable, though he lost me when he said something like “Everyone should have the right… pause … to insurance.” To car insurance? Life insurance? Workman’s comp? His mouth just moved faster than his brain on that one, methinks. And that’s unacceptable. Read on for more nonsense…
