Oil Well Bootlegs - RSC CD: Stevie Wonder – Higher Ground Oil Well

Stevie Wonder – Higher Ground
Oil Well – RSC 030 CD

1 Contusion 20:17
2 Higher Ground 3:21
3 Mary Wants To Be... 3:13
4 To Know You Is To Love You 7:10
5 Signed, Sealed And Delivered 3:02
6 Visions 9:58
7 Sunshine Of My Love 11:51
8 Superstition 7:27
9 Lot Of My Dreams 6:05
Length:1:12:23

Note:
All songs by Stevie Wonder.
~~Live in Brighton, July 4, 1973~~
Live in London at Rainbow Theatre, London on January 24th, 1974

Lineup:
Stevie Wonder - lead vocal, keys
Michael Sembello - guitar
Reggie McBride - bass
Ollie E. Brown - drums

This is the same bootleg that made up the Funkafied Rainbow bootleg and that bootleg has all of this happening in London, January of 1974. This is probably Stevie Wonder's most heralded and celebrated bootleg. What we have here is an amazing soundboard performance (9/10 sound) of many great tunes covering Stevie's peak...almost the lost live album we've all been waiting for, with the fabulous Wonderlove band. On the front cover of this Oil Well release: Stevie Wonder performing live during a concert on a pink cover.

This concert was going to be officially released, but later on Stevie changed his mind, saying the audio quality of the tapes wasn’t up to snuff. This is strange, because the bootleg is a soundboard recording, and has great sound. Everything comes in crystal clear.
If you take a look at this CD, the first thing that will strike you is the length of most of the songs. Seven minutes, eleven minutes, even eighteen minutes.

There has always been some confusion regarding the recording date of this album. There are those who claim to be registered in 1973 and those in 1974. An incorrect date from 1974 (December 31) is often reported but on that date other bands performed at the well-known Rainbow in London, not Wonder. In support of what has been said there are several sources as well as the posters and posters of the dates themselves. In the early days of 1974 Wonder did, however, several concerts at the Rainbow. On 24th January 1974 Stevie Wonder played two concerts (one at 6pm and the late show at 8.30 pm) at The Rainbow. The shows were recorded and released as "Funkyfied Rainbow".(ticket of the show - here)
Read below for more informations!

Audio quality:

Quality content:

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Rainbow in London, 1974.
For one of the greatest performers of the 20th Century, there’s very little live material afloat from Stevie Wonder, especially from his celebrated “golden age” in the 1970s. This man released a string of perfect albums in the 1970s (from “Music of My Mind” in 1972 to “Songs in the Key of Life” in 1976), yet never issued an official live recording during that period, which is a shame.

This is a bootleg of Stevie’s concert at the Rainbow in London, in 1974. In January 1974, Stevie Wonder played two dates at the Rainbow - here the ticket. Wonder played on 20th, 24th not 31st as many sources say - The Doobie Bros, Snafu, Three Man Army and Queen played on 31st at Rainbow - ticket here), among his first public performances after surviving a serious automobile accident five months earlier that left him in a coma for four days and resulted in a partial loss of his sense of smell and a temporary loss of sense of taste. Despite the setback, Wonder re-appeared for a European tour in early 1974, performing at the Midem convention in Cannes, at the Rainbow Theatre in London, and on the German television show Musikladen. The sold-out concerts at Rainbow were attended by many fellow musicians, including Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Pete Townshend, Charlie Watts, Rod Stewart, Eric Clapton, and David Bowie.
http://www.rainbowhistory.x10.mx/M-Z.htm

You take a look at that 1974 date, take a look at Stevie’s large, multi-ethnic band (complete with electric guitar, keyboards, a great bassist), and you figure you’re in for some stoned-out mid-‘70s “hairy funk,” which was the style at the time. But, save for a few moments, that’s not the case.

The majority of the running time on the longer tracks is given over to Stevie improvising while playing his clavinet alone; there are only a few moments of full-on funky jamming from the complete band. Which is a shame, especially for anyone who’s seen that great footage of Stevie on “Sesame Street” from 1972, playing “Superstition” live with his touring group; there they tear through the song and take names. --- The fact is, this is a great concert, with great sound, and it should’ve been released officially. Definitely hunt it down if you are a Stevie fan (and let’s face it, what excuse would you have to NOT be a fan of golden age Stevie Wonder?).
Reviewed by Joe Kenney

Who is Stevie Wonder
Stevie Wonder is a much-beloved American icon and an indisputable genius not only of R&B but popular music in general. Blind virtually since birth, Wonder's heightened awareness of sound helped him create vibrant, colorful music teeming with life and ambition. Nearly everything he recorded bore the stamp of his sunny, joyous positivity; even when he addressed serious racial, social, and spiritual issues (which he did quite often in his prime), or sang about heartbreak and romantic uncertainty, an underlying sense of optimism and hope always seemed to emerge.

Much like his inspiration, Ray Charles, Wonder had a voracious appetite for many different kinds of music, and refused to confine himself to any one sound or style. His best records were a richly eclectic brew of soul, funk, rock & roll, sophisticated Broadway/Tin Pan Alley-style pop, jazz, reggae, and African elements -- and they weren't just stylistic exercises; Wonder took it all and forged it into his own personal form of expression. His range helped account for his broad-based appeal, but so did his unique, elastic voice, his peerless melodic facility, his gift for complex arrangements, and his taste for lovely, often sentimental ballads. Additionally, Wonder's pioneering use of synthesizers during the '70s changed the face of R&B; he employed a kaleidoscope of contrasting textures and voices that made him a virtual one-man band, all the while evoking a surprisingly organic warmth.

Along with Marvin Gaye and Isaac Hayes, Wonder brought R&B into the album age, crafting his LPs as cohesive, consistent statements with compositions that often took time to make their point. All of this made Wonder perhaps R&B's greatest individual auteur, rivaled only by Gaye or, in later days, Prince. Originally, Wonder was a child prodigy who started out in the general Motown mold, but he took control of his vision in the '70s, spinning off a series of incredible albums that were as popular as they were acclaimed; most of his reputation rests on these works, which most prominently include Talking Book, Innervisions, and Songs in the Key of Life. His output since then has been inconsistent, marred by excesses of sentimentality and less of the progressive imagination of his best work, but it's hardly lessened the reverence in which he's long been held.

Stevie Wonder at Rainbow 1974
At the We Are One concert in Washington for Barack Obama, Stevie Wonder dug deep into his repertoire for a song to sing. He chose Higher Ground from Innervisions. But if you ask us, this sterling live rendition of Visions from his famed Rainbow Concert is the cream on the cake.
As he introduces Visions to his London audience 35 years ago, Wonder talked about his hopes and dreams. “The lyric that I wrote to this song expresses the question that I will probably have for the rest of my life,” he said. “About the visions, about the things and places that we only see in our minds.”

He said it was a shame that we have to build a world of make-believe in our souls. “It’s a shame people have to escape from reality by getting high.” But he hoped, “Maybe someday, I’m sure not in my lifetime, but someday it might… come together. I hope that through my music, through my expression, singing and writing you all can feel and understand how I feel.”
On that cold January day in America, Stevie Wonder’s vision came together when a million people received their new president. A colored man, a negro, a black man that until that moment was just a dream, a vision in somebody’s mind.

Back at the Rainbow in 1974, Wonder was just hammering away at the songs from Innervisions. This show probably went unreleased not because of any technical shortcomings but because every song was played like a jam session for a Miles Davis album. Guitarist Michael Sembello and Wonder are dueling on stage, finding new spaces in the songs that were never recorded in the studio.

The version of Visions is almost eight minutes long. If you add the spoken intro where Wonder talks while his band cooks up a slow jazz tempo, then it’s 10 minutes. The first track of CD1 is Contusion and that’s 18 minutes long. Living For The City is 11 minutes, with Wonder soloing rapturously. And the three-minute single You Are The Sunshine of My Life is stretched to 12. Then there’s seven minutes of Superstition and finally a blowout jam with the impromptu [You’ve Been Better To Me Than] A Lot Of My Dreams and Wonder ad-libbing inventively the lyrics as he goes along.
The folks at Big Fro Records took it upon themselves to liberate Stevie Wonder’s Rainbow Concert, for which we owe a mighty big thanks. An excellent bootleg never officially released. Maybe someday, hopefully soon.
http://bigozine2.com/roio/?p=132