10:05 AM Tue, Jan 27, 2009 | Permalink
By Sheila Lennon  Email this author | Email this entry |
Stevie Wonder,
Funkyfied Rainbow
[Big Fro Records, 2CD]
Live at the Rainbow Theatre, Finsbury Park, London, January 31, 1974. A very good stereo soundboard.
Back at the Rainbow in 1974, Wonder was just hammering away at the songs from Innervisions. This show probably went unreleased not because of any technical shortcomings but because every song was played like a jam session for a Miles Davis album. Guitarist Michael Sembello and Wonder are dueling on stage, finding new spaces in the songs that were never recorded in the studio.
The version of Visions is almost eight minutes long. If you add the spoken intro where Wonder talks while his band cooks up a slow jazz tempo, then it's 10 minutes. The first track of CD1 is Contusion and that's 18 minutes long. Living For The City is 11 minutes, with Wonder soloing rapturously. And the three-minute single You Are The Sunshine of My Life is stretched to 12. Then there's seven minutes of Superstition and finally a blowout jam with the impromptu [You've Been Better To Me Than] A Lot Of My Dreams and Wonder ad-libbing inventively the lyrics as he goes along.
The folks at Big Fro Records took it upon themselves to liberate Stevie Wonder's Rainbow Concert, for which we owe a mighty big thanks. An excellent bootleg never officially released. Maybe someday, hopefully soon.
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