Jeffrey Morgan's Media Blackout #215 is pain!
Little Stevie Wonder — The 12 Year Old Genius (Tamla) :: Talent is an asset ...
FIZZLING PLATTER OF THE WEEK: Isaac Hayes — Black Moses (Stax) :: The good news is that they diligently duplicated the original multi-flap album cover that unfolds into a cross showing Hayes in all his unchained glory. The bad news is that they also carelessly copied the double album's original vinyl configuration, which backed Side 1 with Side 4 and Side 2 with Side 3 so that both platters could be stacked on top of each other and played on a turntable in drop-automatic sequence. That's right, this negligent new reissue takes Sides 1, 4, 2, 3 and sloppily slaps them on the compact disc in that incorrect order — which means you're not hearing Black Moses in its original sequence as Hayes intended you to hear it back in 1971.
Little Stevie Wonder — Tribute to Uncle Ray (Tamla) :: ... and Little Stevie has it.
SIZZLING PLATTER OF THE WEEK: Ray Charles — Genius: The Ultimate Collection (Concord) :: Anyone who read the very first record review that I wrote in the inaugural edition of this column a half-decade ago — you could look it up and I suggest that you do — might think that I don't like Ray Charles. What I don't like is record companies that ascribe marketing musical MENSA awards on dead musicians who aren't around anymore to humbly debunk them. And if Charles did come up with that ego-aggrandizing Genius Loves Company title himself, then he obviously needed to give his head a few more shakes before he hit the road to Heaven. I mean, if Ray Charles is a genius, then what does that make Stevie Wonder? As the great German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once said: "Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see." Which makes this one hell of a talented compilation.
Stevie Wonder — Music of My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions, Fulfillingness' First Finale, Songs in the Key of Life (Tamla/Motown) :: Genius.
Be seeing you!
