Friday 25 March 2011

4th March 2001. 7:2:33 - Picked by Cerys Matthews

My second Choose My Music post of the day - to be honest I was going to leave it a few days considering I have been banging out these posts left right and centre. Plus it appears this site is read more by spammers than actual people...but hey ho...who says internet scum can't have good music tastes.

The whole reason why there is a second post today is because the brilliant Cerys Matthews was kind enough to have a a little play with my game. And seeing as I consider her Cockahoop album as one of my favourites I figure that is a pretty good reason to post again.

Cerys chose the combination 7:2:33 (Bay 7, Row 2, CD 33) and picked out this little gem

Steve Wonder - Music Of My Mind



Being born in 1979 I was part of the rather unfortunate generation who's first taste of Stevie Wonder was the single 'I Just Called To Say I Love You'. A song which I find horrible on so many levels I can barely bring myself to think about it. It's a shame his most well known hit is so cringe worthy as his 1970's output was nothing short of brilliant.

The album was released in 1972 and was the beginning of perhaps kick started the most brilliant run of albums ever recorded. Music Of My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions, Fulfillingness First Finale and Songs In The Key of Life were all released in a 5 year period which is phenomenal by anyone's standard.

There are two things that stand out within this album, first is the length of the tracks - the first two alone clock in at over 15 minutes and on average each song lasts over 5 minutes each.

The second is this album could almost been seen as the time when 1960's Soul and R&B music collided with the 1970s. The use of synthesizers is prevalent throughout alongside the harmonica, which is rather basic by comparison. During my background checking there are suggestions that this album is one of the earliest works of black music to make use of synthesizers (although I seem to think The Aggrovators brilliant "Doctor Seaton" was released in the same year)

During this listen, which is the first in sometime is the very minimal use of drums, and where they do appear it seems to be more about adding depth with percussion as opposed to keeping rhythm...which is always a good thing.

Overall a cracking album from an artist who eventually went on to duet with Blue....what a shame.

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