Arcade Fire. My Morning Jacket. Mavis Staples. Fleet Foxes. These are but a pittance of the many great acts I will be catching this weekend at the Austin City Limits Music Festival this weekend. (There are some other big ACL names, like Coldplay and Kanye, that I respect, but they just don't light the RT fire.)But if I had to pick just one act to see the whole weekend, it would have to be Stevie Wonder, who is closing Saturday night's festivies, at the same time as My Morning Jacket, one of my favorite current bands. Which band to see? That's an uptown problem, as they say.
As much as I enjoy MMJ, especially their new record Circuital, Stevie is a true genius, and when he is in the house, you must pay proper respect. "Genius" is a word that gets thrown around a lot in rock circles, to include charlatans like Axl Rose and Patti Smith, but it truly applies to Mr. Steveland Morris and a handful of others in the rock canon: Dylan, Lennon/McCartney, Prince, Bon Jovi... you get the idea.
Around 1996, Stevie played a free promo show at an HMV record store near my Upper East Side apartment at around 2am on a Tuesday night.
Sensing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I waited several hours in line alone to attend the show along with about 200 strangers and saw him rip through a few new tunes before going into classics like "Sign, Sealed, Delivered" and "Isn't She Lovely." I was lucky to be there.
This weekend, Stevie will be Livin' for a different City, the City of Austin thank you very much. Here's a vintage clip to show you the true genius in action.
Get yer Stevie Wonder on iTunes here.
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