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Post by ganews on Jul 1, 2022 11:25:36 GMT -5
The July poll winner is Stevie Wonder, "Songs In The Key Of Life". We could probably all use a little uplift right now. Post your thoughts below!
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Post by pantsgoblin on Jul 6, 2022 13:15:14 GMT -5
That angelic voice and musical ability. I respect it entirely and want to believe the hopes it expresses can be real.
But I don't believe it. Innervisions is more my jam, where we can at least be civil.
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repulsionist
TI Forumite
actively disinterested
Posts: 3,563 
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Post by repulsionist on Jul 7, 2022 17:41:22 GMT -5
I have this record and Innervisions from my "final access to physical media" plunder. Or, maybe it's just Stevie Wonder's Original Musiquarium I. Plunderers don't always remember their spoils. I enjoyed hearing these tracks. I most often listen to "Sir Duke", which our Prole Hole lent his thoughts to a coupla years back. As is my preference, for none of us paying attention anyway, I'm bending the song titles to express my sentiments in general. Thanks, Stevie. I Wish (there was) Joy Inside My Tears. |
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Post by ganews on Jul 8, 2022 11:44:19 GMT -5
One I considered Stevie Wonder for a discography review. This album deserved the song-by-song review treatment, but alas there is just barely enough time for my scattered thoughts.
Of course the theme is largely optimism, but I can't find it right now. When times are tough turn to God? I feel like that's part of the problem, but neither do I have time for that debate today. I started really taking notice with the "Contusion" instrumental.
I didn't find Stevie Wonder to be much of a lyricist for a good 2/3 of this album? Which is okay, there is plenty to enjoy here. The man is a helluva composer, and the more elements - horns, harmonica, whatever - the better. Normally with 7-minute tracks that go far beyond the singing I feel like someone needed to talk to the artist, but I didn't mind at all here.
Will Smith has nearly ruined "I Wish" for me, a sign of my particular age cohort. Not true for Coolio.
I had never heard "Black Man" before, really striking.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Jul 8, 2022 16:05:33 GMT -5
Always preferred the second half of this otherwise incredible album to the first, which despite having all the big name radio hits most people are already acquainted with, also has a few polite-nodders in "Have a Talk With God" "Village Ghetto Land" and "Pastime Paradise."
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Post by Djse (and a Sack of Cats) on Jul 16, 2022 10:35:26 GMT -5
I'm glad this won. I thought we could all use something made with and from this much love this month. I'll be back on my doom shit for August.  I was housesitting during a break from college when I first heard this album from start to finish, on vinyl. Blew my little mind. I'll come back and do the usual scattered ramblings thing for this album soon. |
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Post by pantsgoblin on Jul 16, 2022 17:59:57 GMT -5
Some trivia about ol' Stevie: In his own words, his blindness is due to "too much oxygen in the incubator." This is likely a reference to the early days of incubators being accepted in mainstream medicine to save preemies. Early on, doctors didn't realize that a 100% oxygen atmosphere would, sadly, detach the retinas in babies. Now they use a O2-N mix mimicking actual air. I recommend the episode of the 99% Invisible podcast about the bizarre history of incubators. Wonder plays percussion on all his albums as an adult. Many rockers (including Phil Collins and Eric Clapton) consider him the best drummer of his generation. |
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Post by King Charles’s Butterfly on Aug 4, 2022 23:12:50 GMT -5
pantsgoblin I want Innervisions to be my jam, but my copy was horribly, unplayably scratched (first pressing for $3). I’m a Talking Book guy by default, then. Used Wonder, really Wonder in general, is surprisingly hard to come by in Los Angeles, on vinyl and CD (I’m trying to avoid buying things online as has resulted in a massive collection of classical CDs). This album is sprawling. You can tell it’s an album that really benefits from being broken up into four sides. Knowing he was thinking of leaving the music industry this kind of makes sense, like he was trying to fit everything in before the end. I think it’s partly the album art and partly when I was listening to this album, but it really had a late afternoon feeling, a lot of things winding down, a lot of things melancholy. It’s probably my least favorite time of day, though. There were definite moments of compression, with multi-song upticks in rhythm and excitement, but this feels defined by the lulls (again, and on me since I could have spaced it out like a four-sider but didn’t, I wonder how these pacing changes hit with brief gaps and active involvement with the physical album). It’s a big album for “hey, I know that!” either because of its length or because a lot of it really caught on as singles (deservedly). There was a definite feeling of embarrassment from now realizing “Gangsta’s Paradise” had its basis in a Stevie Wonder song (much prefer Coolio’s version for the extra punch his voice brings and the better lyrical content).
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