October 28, 2006

Stevie Wonder's live 1973 performance of "Superstition". Performed with members of his Wonderlove backing band on "Sesame Street", of all places.
posted by New Frontier 18 years ago
  • Check out Ron Jeremy playing the trumpet! And on Sesame Street!
  • Not to piss on your parade, but Sesame Street had a hell of a lot of good players through there.
  • Man, even the dumpy trumpet player was funkier than I'll ever be.
  • Speaking of 70's television, puppets and classic performers...check this out.
  • The true funkiness of the 70s seems to have gone into hibernation. Nothing is funky anymore like that was funky. And damn, what a good song. What do we have nowadays to compare? "Snap ya fayhnguhs" ?
  • Thank you mandyman! I have heard that song for 30 years and never bothered listening to it or understanding it. Thank you Mandyman, thank you Liza, and thank you Muppets!!! I miss you Scred!
  • That kid standing on the upper balcony is rocking the fuck out.
  • It's wonderful. I've seen it a couple of times since 1973, but I'm proud to say that I say it the first time around at the age of three.
  • saw, jeeze.
  • Ok, so this post happened to come up a few days after I got sucked into watching a lot of muppets guest appearances. The Dizzy Gillespie one is pretty cool. And this one leaves me speechless.
  • Stevie and his music rules and this was good but I didn't think this was a *great* performance: the drummer started the tempo too fast and it sped up from there. But then again, I'm a spoilsport nitpicker and people hate me.
  • I LOVE AFFILIATE SPAM! 1) Snag Video From YouTube 2) Amazon Ads to same product 3) ??? 4) Profit!
  • Mandyman, that Liza one is awesome. Was that her dancing too? What a hottie! And the Vincent Price one is blowing my mind. Holy hell is that a strange clip.
  • Mr. K: have you never seen the movie Cabaret? Liza was a bit zaftig in it, but her dancing was quite hot, and maybe enhanced by the pale skin, curves and probable lack of bra. The cabaret scenes are the most memorable, but the entire movie is good.
  • Am I the only one disturbed by the near-seizure like dancing of that little girl on the fire escape?
  • "drummer started the tempo too fast and it sped up from there." Bet your ass if Stevie didn't like that tempo, he would have stopped it & they would have done another take. It's not unusual to play songs live much faster than on record, in fact, it's pretty much something you always do. That actual song changes tempo several times throughout, on the original recording. On that record it is actually pretty slow, comparitive to the live versions. This is a highly energised version, supposed to be exciting. They played it differently every time I've heard it live. Shouldn't play a song live like it was on the record, anyway, otherwise you might as well just set up a tape player & let people listen to that, yeah?
  • I'm surprised that girl on the balcony didn't do herself an injury! Funky and also takes me back.
  • I heard him play it this summer and it was back to being slow. But funky- he had a great band though he didn't look none too healthy.
  • The true funkiness of the 70s seems to have gone into hibernation. Nothing is funky anymore like that was funky. George Clinton still is Living Color Bootsauce Outkast Primus Fishbone Red Hot Chili Peppers Faith No More Jamiroquai Just a few... But, I can kinda agree; funk has left the mainstream stage thanks to those jackasses and their synth brass in the eighties.
  • That song is so inspiring. I couldn't help but smile while it was playing, and even my little girl started dancing, too. And she's only 18 months old. Anyone else catch the shout-out to Cookie Monster about 3:30?
  • InsolentChimp: A theory, indeed, but Stevie, in all honesty, outfunks them all.
  • And having said that, I agree furthermore with the second half of your statement. And the world could stand to funk a little more (and the Stevie video made me smile. As did the Dizzy one).
  • Red Hot Chili Peppers? That stuff is rock. A/B Stevie's version of Higher Ground with theirs. Not even close.
  • To hear the funk in the RHCP you need to listen to the older '80's era P-Funk/Stevie influenced songs like Behind the Sun, Special Secret Song Inside, Sir Psycho Sexy, Apache Rose Peacock, Sexy Mexican Maid, Funky Crime, Backwoods, Walkin on Down the Road, their cover of Subterranean Homesick Blues, even Falling into Grace from the new-ish stuff... Yes, they didn't cover Higher Ground as a funk song, but why try? Homage is homage. A lot of their stuff (especially new) is rock, same with most of the other bands. Stevie wasn't all funk, either... Outfunking is such a subjective thing, I'd like to leave it that they all have their own white-knuckle grasp of their ever-loving polymorphic zeitgeist of funq.
  • Go, whiteboy, go.
  • I also seem to remember the whole point of Living Color was to prove black guys *can* play rock. In conversation, Doug Wimbish was kind enough to confirm this.
  • Well, alright, since you put it like that, IC...
  • loves me some polymorphic zeitgeist type funq
  • I don't want to split hairs on rock and funk as genres. There's both funky rock and funk that rocks.
  • I'm in ur zeitgeist, polymorphing ur funq. sorry
  • living coloUr
  • Thanks, mandyman -- I only saw that Liza episode in the last couple of years, and the whole murder-mystery theme probably made it one of the best Muppet Shows, although it's surprising that I never saw it the first time around. That one, and Gene Kelly. Wow. That episode, plus the stuff she did for Arrested Development, showed me why the lady was a Star, rather than just a sotted has-been that she's commonly known as. A couple months back, during pledge-drive, PBS ran some concert of hers of Cabaret-vintage, all Fosse-choreographed, and I was completely blown away. Cheese, all of it, but man oh man -- no denying the talent there. We now return you to your Muppet programming.
  • I don't know which I love more about the Stevie Wonder clip--the extended 4-minute jam, or the shout-out to Cookie Monster that precedes it. Awesomely funktastic!
  • drummer started the tempo too fast and it sped up from there *ShNNNNNnkkKKKkkkkk!* *snk* Ah! *snrfk* *snf* Whoo! Whoready t'get fu-HUN-kay-hayyy? Anyone see the clip of James Taylor singing "Your Smiling Face" to Oscar? bien!
  • No but I seen this. I really would have like to have seen Nirvana sing "I hate myself and want to die" to Elmo... I think things would have been different.
  • PigAlien, I found this performance of "Superstition" on a terrific U.K.-based Stevie Wonder fan site. I'd definitely recommend the site to anyone interested in Stevie Wonder. It contains, among other things, Wonder's entire song catalogue available for sampling, a well-written full-length bio, an extensive list of songs he's written for other artists to perform, even a graduate thesis on key songs composed during his heyday in the early 1970s. And yes, you'll find several videos taken from YouTube, such as this one. Certainly worth a look, with much more to offer than Wonder's own official site (at least until it's revamped).
  • Damn. I ran into this a few months back but didn't post here. Shame on me! Stevie wonder is a musical genius.
  • *tires of shaking fist at corporate ban on video, flash, and all that goodness* Me WANTS COOKIES! Wants to see video!! Uggh...
  • I'm surprised that girl on the balcony didn't do herself an injury! I'm pretty sure that's a boy.
  • Feist finds her way to Sesame Street. Metric tonne of AWESOME, right there.
  • Der Vid Feist. I didn't think it was possible to love the woman any more, and now she goes and does something like this...
  • Stewart considers his Sesame work to have been one of "the two most distinguished bits of work that I've done in the US." I wouldn't disagree.