Stevie Wonder - Masonic Temple Theatre, Detroit, MI, 4-14-1984

I plan on posting some more Stevie Wonder music in the near future. I'll start with this bootleg concert. It's a great recording and performance, maybe even the best single concert of his to listen to, since it comes just after his classic 1970s period and thus contains the vast majority of his greatest songs.

In my opinion, that classic period lasted from about 1972 to 1980. The 1980s were strange for Wonder. He still was a musical genius, but he often released disappointing records. A lot of that was due to overproduction and bad choices, such as switching to electric drums around 1984. Happily, those problems didn't occur with his live performances. 

This concert is two hours and forty minutes long! It's a tour de force by him. It includes hits from all points of his career up until then, plus some very good songs that remain unreleased to this day, such as "It's Growing," "I Can't Stand It," "Lighting Up the Candles" and the blues cover "Nobody Loves Me but My Mother." (Also, the song "Go Home" would be released on a 1985 album, but is done in a better style here.) It also preceded his often shlocky 1980s albums, starting with "The Woman in Red" soundtrack and the mega-hit "I Just Called to Say I Love You" released later that year. One might even argue his classic period extended through the date of this concert, because the few songs he released in the early 1980s, such as "Ribbon in the Sky" and "Front Line," were very good as well.

The concert took place less than two weeks after the death of Motown legend Marvin Gaye. I'm not sure, but I think this concert was a kind of hometown tribute to Gaye. That would explain the references to lighting of candles, as well as the song "Lighting Up the Candles," which I think was only ever performed at this concert. Gaye isn't directly mentioned much, although his name did come up at one point in the between the song banter and at another point as a shout out in the middle of a song. It's possible Wonder didn't want to address Gaye's death directly due to the strange circumstance of Gaye getting shot and killed by his own father. But clearly Gaye had to be on Wonder's mind throughout the concert.

The bootleg recording comes from a radio broadcast, so it sounds as good as you could hope for. I'm pretty sure it's the best live recording of him from the first half of the 1980s. However, there's one downside, and that's the recording was often cut off between songs. My guess is the concert was sometimes interrupted by commercials, DJ talk, and/or station identifications, and the bootlegger cut all those parts out. The songs themselves don't seem to have been affected, except for a strange fade in and fade out that removed most of the first verse of "You Haven't Done Nothin'." I removed what little remained of that verse so hopefully the loss will be hard to notice.

Other than that though, the main loss is the applause at the end of songs. I edited those, taking applause from the ends of other songs to make up for the losses. Probably, a lot of between song banter was lost too, but it's impossible to tell how much. But there's still a lot that remains. In fact, at one point he talked for five minutes straight about the first few years of his career. I also removed a few things that I didn't like. The main loss is the song "Walking the Floor Over You." Wonder did a cover of that country classic early in the show, but it was a piss take that only lasted about a minute, as an apparent joke that he was going to play songs the audience didn't like. I also cut out a few bits of the banter that I thought went on too long.

There was one minor sound problem in that a couple of times the backing singers took the lead vocals briefly, but their microphones were turned down so low that they couldn't be heard well. This happened at points in the songs "Living for the City" and "You Are the Sunshine of My Life." So I used the X-Minus audio editing program to boost those vocals. That's why those two songs have "[Edit]" in their names. Actually, I made edits to most of the songs due to the applause problem mentioned above, but I didn't want to put "[Edit]" in the titles of so many songs.

I went looking for this bootleg at all the popular bootleg sites on the Internet. I was surprised that I didn't see it anywhere except on YouTube. I'm glad I downloaded it way back when, and that I can share it with you now. This definitely is one of his best concert recordings.

01 It's Growing (Stevie Wonder)
02 Nobody Loves Me but My Mother (Stevie Wonder)
03 talk (Stevie Wonder)
04 Did I Hear You Say You Love Me (Stevie Wonder)
05 Superwoman (Stevie Wonder)
06 Where Were You When I Needed You (Stevie Wonder)
07 talk (Stevie Wonder)
08 All in Love Is Fair (Stevie Wonder)
09 talk (Stevie Wonder)
10 You and I [We Can Conquer the World] (Stevie Wonder)
11 Lately (Stevie Wonder)
12 Send One Your Love (Stevie Wonder)
13 I Can't Help It (Stevie Wonder)
14 talk (Stevie Wonder)
15 Ribbon in the Sky (Stevie Wonder)
16 Don't You Worry 'bout a Thing (Stevie Wonder)
17 Fingertips, Part 1 [Instrumental] (Stevie Wonder)
18 talk (Stevie Wonder)
19 Fingertips, Part 2 [Instrumental] (Stevie Wonder)
20 talk (Stevie Wonder)
21 Uptight [Everything's Alright] - For Once in My Life - Cold Sweat - Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud (Stevie Wonder)
22 talk (Stevie Wonder)
23 My Cherie Amour (Stevie Wonder)
24 Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours (Stevie Wonder)
25 Higher Ground (Stevie Wonder)
26 You Haven't Done Nothin' (Stevie Wonder)
27 Living for the City [Edit] (Stevie Wonder)
28 Go Home (Stevie Wonder)
29 Sir Duke (Stevie Wonder)
30 I Wish (Stevie Wonder)
31 You Are the Sunshine of My Life [Edit] (Stevie Wonder)
32 Superstition (Stevie Wonder)
33 Master Blaster [Jammin'] (Stevie Wonder)
34 talk (Stevie Wonder)
35 Lighting Up the Candles (Stevie Wonder)
36 talk (Stevie Wonder)
37 Isn't She Lovely (Stevie Wonder)
38 Do I Do (Stevie Wonder)
39 Happy Birthday (Stevie Wonder)

https://www.imagenetz.de/gDCbe

The cover photo comes from a 1984 concert, but one that took place in London in June.