I drove cross-country with a tape of "Fulfillingness’ First Finale".

I don’t buy albums anymore.  I’m disappointed with the whole concept.  Oh, I get any disc I want for free, but I want almost none of them.  Every day somebody I don’t know tracks me down to ask me whether they can send me their CD.  As if I’m really going to play it.

You see the religion is all gone.  It’s a singles business.  Who the artist is doesn’t matter.  He’s just a two-dimensional cardboard prop for the label to throw hundreds of thousands of dollars of marketing money behind.  The business can’t come back because those in power have lost sight of what made it all work, the artists.

What does it mean to be an artist?

It means to lay your soul down.  Your truth.  The fame is ancillary.  If the success comes first, then you’re an empty vessel.  It’s kind of like love.  Would you like to get all your sex at a brothel?  Sex without love isn’t as good as masturbation.  Because what makes sex so good is the connection between the two people who are doing it.  What made the records of yore so good was the connection between the creator and the listener.

Oh, don’t tell me you’re into this artist or that.  It’s kind of like the movie business.  We’ve seen it all.  It’s just endless remakes.  Endless riffs on what’s come before.  But what if an artist went off on his own path, only following his own muse, desirous of connecting but unwilling to compromise.  Then you’d have Stevie Wonder.

It wasn’t like Stevie Wonder was following a textbook.  There was no manual.  He felt locked up in a Motown ghetto while rock bands were playing R&B influenced material.  He decided to bridge the gap.

There was nobody watching.  His label was in the singles business.  They had no presence in the rock world.  And the white youngsters digging the Stones, they thought Stevie Wonder was a hits artist, just a blind singer who could play the harmonica.

Now during the sixties, the whites had paid attention to the blacks.  The suburban rockers were Sly and the Family Stone fans.  But by ’72, Top Forty was over and there was nobody black on FM.

This was what Stevie Wonder was up against.

There was a first foray, a toe dip in the water.  "Music Of My Mind" is a very good album.  But it had a basic, throwaway Motown cover.  In an era when rock acts paid almost as much attention to the packaging as the music, "Music Of My Mind" was easy to ignore.

But then came "Talking Book".  With Braille on its cover.  And "Superstition" in its grooves.

Imagine if Dr. Dre had a sense of melody.  Imagine the kind of music he’d make.  Hopefully, something like "Superstition".

Word was it was written for Jeff Beck.  But then Stevie realized it was just too good.  He kept it for himself.

Synths were just coming into vogue.  But no one was using electronic instruments as the basis, the UNDERPINNING, for pop music.  That riff played on the synth was enough to draw you to the track like a mouse to cheese.  And then the offhanded way Stevie sang.  The OPPOSITE of Mariah Carey.  He wasn’t selling the lyrics by slapping you in the face, it was like he was on your couch telling you a story, you BELIEVED HIM!  And then came the HORNS!  The concoction ELATED you, you couldn’t stop drinking it in.  "Superstition" is what music is about.  Something so infectious that you’re immediately hooked and taken away from your regular life.

But "Superstition" wasn’t the only good track on "Talking Book", far from it.

I learned about the album from a college friend whose father worked at WMCA.  She wore a Good Guys sweatshirt around campus.  She accosted me by her dorm and TOLD ME, there was this Stevie Wonder record I HAD to hear.

She was right.  If an artist came out with an album as good as "Talking Book" today people would fall over dead upon hearing it, they’re just not prepared for something this good.

There was "You Are The Sunshine Of My Life" for my father’s set.  But we liked it too, because it wasn’t a cheap shot, since the rest of the album ROCKED, and had SOUL!

Pound for pound this is the best selection of album tracks of all time.  Even better than "Who’s Next".  After all, there was no "My Wife".

You had the sultry "Maybe Your Baby".  "Tuesday Heartbreak".  "You’ve Got It Bad Girl".  The exquisite "Blame It On The Sun".  And none of these are my FAVORITES!

Do you know "Big Brother"?

Your name is big brother
You say that you’re watching me on the telly
Seeing me go nowhere

The acoustic guitar had the feel of a record cut in COLORADO!  As if some country rocker was speaking from his soul.  But the record was cut in the metropolis, and the lyrics were about the ghetto.  A black man singing for a white audience about how they were bleeding heart liberals.  Ice-T’s records had as much truth, but nowhere near the subtlety, never mind the musicality.

But the piece de resistance is "I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever)".

The track walks a fine line between schmaltz and credibility.  Whereas Billy Joel falls on the wrong side of the divide, over-emoting platitudes, as you listen to Stevie’s song you just know he’s singing from the bottom of his heart.

Why, in all the discussion of the best rock albums of all time, "Talking Book" is never in the Top Ten, is just testimony to the short memory of white people.  "Talking Book" is a masterpiece every bit as good as "Rubber Soul".  (AND, just as innovative in its time!)

Then came "Innervisions".  Not quite as good as "Talking Book", but what’s better, the aforementioned "Rubber Soul" or "Revolver"?

The key track, of course, is "Living For The City".

But check out "Too High" all these years later.  Never mind "Higher Ground" or "All In Love Is Fair".  But it’s the closer which is magical, "He’s Misstra Know-It-All".  Nobody throws away songs this good anymore.   They don’t put this much effort into songs that will never be singles.  That’s how we got addicted to albums.  Because the song you NEVER heard on the radio was just as good as the ones you did.

I bought "Fulfillingness’ First Finale" the day it came out.  I had to.

And the fact there was only a year between all of these albums…  There was no remix album, just all new material every year.

The big hit off "Fulfillingness’ First Finale" was "Boogie On Reggae Woman".  I won’t say it’s the WORST song on the record, but it’s far from the best.

It wasn’t the in-your-face tracks that made "Fulfillingness’ First Finale" so great, but the quiet ones, the SUBTLE ones, that you only got a few plays in.  And we always played our albums multiple times, digesting them, from beginning to end.  The day Alicia Keys cuts something as heartfelt as "They Won’t Go When I  Go" is the day I believe she’s a major artist.  "They Won’t Go When I Go" sounds like it was cut in a church.  It’s got the feel of Elton John’s "Sixty Years On"…HAUNTING!

But then there’s "Creepin’".

Love is so amazing…

If you know the track your heart is turning to butter now.  "Creepin’" is what music used to be.  A mental movie.  That you snuck into in your car, your bedroom.  An aural landscape you could identify with.

But my favorite is "Heaven Is 10 Zillion Light Years Away".

It’s the sound of the stringed instrument coupled with Stevie Wonder’s emotion that ENRAPTURES YOU!

But in my heart I can feel it
FEEL HIS SPIRIT!

1976’s "Songs In The Key Of Life" gets all the accolades.  But anybody who says this is their favorite Stevie Wonder album telegraphs to me that they’re not a true fan.  The media had finally caught up with this blind musician, acknowledged him as a national treasure, and overhyped a very good record, with moments of genius, but what had come before…those three albums, "Talking Book" to "Innervisions" to "Fulfillingness’ First Finale", that run was every bit as good as the Stones’ from "Let It Bleed" to "Sticky Fingers" to "Exile On Main Street".

And I was there.  From discovery to the public hosannas.

It didn’t happen overnight.  The hype machine was not that good.  They didn’t have musical stars playing Rockefeller Center on the "Today Show".  There was no MTV.  "Rolling Stone" still had credibility.  It was like living through the run from Nintendo to PlayStation to PS2.  But as good as video games can be, they can’t touch your soul like music.  Still, music was a parallel universe, a secret club, that nobody was paying attention to, like the video game world, and we just couldn’t get enough of it.

Don’t blame Stevie Wonder for the end of the golden era.  This blind man had something to prove.  That he was a major musician who needed to be taken seriously.  He did everything he could, he achieved his goal, and when he found out all the success could not make his life work, he just couldn’t do it anymore.

That’s why these artists create such great work.  They have a need to COMMUNICATE!  They’re loners, who want in.  And the only entrance ticket they’ve got is music.  They just believe if they do good enough work, the door will open, they’ll be accepted, they’ll find love and happiness.

The motivation is different today.  Musicality is secondary to stardom.

Of course, there are real musicians out there.  But they’re not the ones in the spotlight, INSURING they stay in the spotlight.  When was the last time you played "How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb"?  And that came out only a YEAR ago!

There was only one Renaissance.  There’s been art since.  Even some greats.  Manet, Monet, Picasso.  Still, there was only one golden era.  I think we lived though the golden era of music.  From ’64 to ’74.  I don’t expect it to come back.  But if some of the values from that time became paramount again, maybe the picture would start to tilt, the scene would become vibrant again.

First of all, there must be emphasis on quality work overall, not just singles.  Except for "Living In The City", the best tracks of Stevie Wonder’s historic run were NOT singles.

Second, freedom must be given back to the musicians.  It’s not like the above albums were Stevie Wonder’s first.  But only when he got contractual freedom, to do whatever he wanted, did he come up with true greatness.  Executives meddling in music is like U.S. ski team coaches telling Bode Miller what to do.  Bode had to do it HIS way to win the World Cup.

Third, we must have open airwaves.  The pricks in charge of the major labels are INSURING that a reasonable alternative to Top Forty radio can’t exist, cutting their noses to spite their faces without even realizing it.  It’s only when we have a healthy EXPOSURE system that we have great music.

It’s got nothing to do with ripping and burning.  Nothing to do with piracy.  It’s got to do with the MUSIC!  There hasn’t been enough respect of the MUSIC!  We’ve turned off the public.  Hell, even I’VE been turned off.  By endless TV specials, bogus Grammy shows, vapid music television.  Who can believe in something so heavily flogged, so overexposed?

What I’m looking for is religion.  Something so gorgeous, something so inspirational, that I want to take it with me everywhere I go, to the point I can remember where I was when it was playing.

Wyoming is desolate.  I’d just graduated from college.  I was alienated.  But what got me through my tenure on I-80 was the cassettes I’d made.  Containing music I thought was made for ME, not businessmen, not gatekeepers, like "Fulfillingness’ First Finale".