Like the Haystack Needle

I am on a Stevie Wonder kick the likes of which you have never seen. I am All Stevie Wonder All the Time. I showed incredible, herculean strength in not playing ALL of his album "Music of My Mind" on the show yesterday. I would have played it TWICE if, during the show, I had realized that he was only 22 years old when he created that album.

I knew he was Little Stevie Wonder in the Sixties, but I couldn't figure out how he could be so mature in his music in 1972 if he were a teen in the Sixties. He must have been in his thirties when he wrote Music of My Mind and its follow-up, Innervisions. Right? RIGHT? No. Twenty-two for Music of My Mind and 23 for Innervisions. Which means, sportsfans, that he was 23 when he wrote "Higher Ground" and "Living for the City" AND "Golden Lady" AND "Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing," for god's great glorious sake. COME ON, WONDER.

I wonder if there were hundreds of extraordinarily talented musicians in the early Seventies who were just coming up dry and couldn't figure out why. "What is this miles-deep, sucking wound in my chest? Why do I hear wind whistling through the place where my very essence should be?" they'd all think. Then, Stevie Wonder would enter the room, with a ribcage the size of a dinosaur's, and they'd all think, "Oooooh, I get it. Stevie Wonder SUCKED ALL OF THE TALENT, SOUL, AND GOODNESS OUT OF EVERYTHING and used them to make the tightest, most poetic, loveliest albums possible. Oh. Well, then. That's okay, I guess." And then they would serve up another vanilla-choco twist at the Tastee-Freeze and think about the giant bag of weed they would use later to numb their psychic pain. Sorry, Leo Sayer. You were adorable, but you didn't stand a damn chance. Enjoy that cute dancin' song, though. It was really nice.

Okay! So, now that we've discovered my obsession, let's see yesterday's (remarkably restrained) playlist!


And here, faster than you can say "Todo 'sta bien, chévere," is the list:

Log for first part of October 22nd, 2009 show

Log for second part of October 22nd, 2009 show