We attended a Stevie Wonder concert last night. Well...actually, let me rephrase that. We were supposed to attend a Stevie Wonder concert last night.
A few weeks ago Gina IM'd me with some wonderful news. "STEVIE WONDER IS PLAYING AT THE BEACON!" she excitedly yelled at me in capital letters. "YOU'RE KIDDING ME!" I screamed back. Sure enough, Stevie Wonder and friends were playing on October 28th. Tickets were purchased, and my expectations were high. The lineup of acts included Stevie (of course), Faith Evans, Roberta Flack, and DMX...not too shabby. I had visions of Stevie sitting regally behind his piano, singing his heart out all the classics that I love. I pictured his "friends" joining in occasionally, mixing things up with interesting arrangements of "Sir Duke" and "Superstition;" DMX throwing down raps, giving props to the King himself. Unfortunately, upon our arrival at the Beacon, I realized that perhaps my expectations were too high.
As we walked up the stairs to the balcony, I spied a poster telling us that not only were the aforementioned performers going on last night, but we were also to be treated to performances by Montel Jordan and Naughty by Nature. I expressed to my fellow concertgoers a concern: Since there were so many acts on the bill, I was worried that there were only two possibilities. Either each performer would get only about 20 minutes for their set, or we would be there till about 4am waiting to see the (alleged) headliner, Stevie Wonder.
We sat down in our seats to the strains of Montel Jordan singing "This is how we do it." (A nice little blast from the past, but not exactly one of my absolute favorites.) Montel, clad in a tight sleeveless shirt and sporting a single spandex glove, bid us adieu, and the emcee ran onstage.
Rather than immediately introducing the first act, he treated us to the first of many diatribes regarding the coalition that had been the catalyst for last night's performance, the AEC (The Artists Empowerment Coalition). From what I gather from the countless lengthy speeches that were given throughout the night, the AEC is a group of musicians brought together to champion the causes of other musicians. I'm sure it's much more involved than that, but to be honest, largely due to the fact that I was so excited to see Stevie, the whole thing was completely lost on me. Finally the emcee stopped his speech and introduced the next act, Naughty by Nature.
Now don't get me wrong, ain't nothin' wrong with a little "OPP" or "Hip Hop Hooray" to get a party going, but for the life of me I could not recall any other hits that they could possibly dazzle us with. Sure enough, Naughty came out rapping "OPP," followed that up with about 10 minutes of filler, and closed (shirtless) with "Hip Hop Hooray." No surprises there.
We were then treated to another emcee (possibly a politician) extolling the virtues of the AEC, and finally Roberta Flack was announced. I thought..."Okay, finally, here we go." Unfortunately for Roberta (and may I emphasize, NOT her fault), her performance was pretty bad. I don't know who or what to blame more. The faulty sound system? Definitely. The fact that her band was likely provided by the theater and had quite possibly never rehearsed with any of the performers? Of course. How about the fact that Roberta's back up singers were chatting amongst themselves throughout the entire performance? Roberta looked great, and could still belt it out, but unfortunately the feedback from the microphone was so horrible that it seemed to be causing her visible pain. The sound was so bad that she basically threw in the towel for "Killing Me Softly," leaving the audience to sing the majority of the song. I don't blame her one bit, we probably sounded quite good considering the fact that we didn't have the faulty sound system and half-assed back up singers to contend with. While we half-heartedly applauded as she left the stage, I felt bad for Roberta, but mostly just hoped that they could get their act together before Stevie went on.
When the next emcee was finished with his speech about the AEC, the next act was finally announced. I expected DMX or Faith Evans to follow, and was quite surprised when it became clear that Stevie Wonder was the performer he was hyping us up for. Stevie was led on stage to his keyboard and (after a quick little snippet about the AEC), began to play. On a positive note, he sounded as good as ever, and looked great. Mostly, I was awed that I was actually in the same room as him. Sadly, the positives ended there. The sound problems that occurred during Roberta's performance were largely fixed, but the performance itself was so disorganized that I found it difficult to even look at the stage. The main problem was that there were no fewer than 143 people joining him for his performance. It appeared that everyone, from the back up singers to the clean up staff, had somehow ended up on stage with Stevie. I like to think that Stevie gave them all permission to join him in his performance, but Gina wisely stated that it was entirely possible that they were only up there with him due to the fact that he couldn't actually see that they were up there with him. I felt as if Stevie had been taken advantage of. I had no doubt in my mind that all the backup singers and musicians (and Beacon Theater ushers) that had snuck on stage would all be going around bragging that they had performed with Stevie Wonder. Fortunately for the audience, an intelligent sound technician had sensibly turned off (or turned down) all the backup singer's microphones, so we thankfully could not hear what I'm sure was a horrendous cacophony of 143 voices singing along in unison. His performance was short, a couple of songs, and then a quick medley of some of his biggest hits. As he walked on stage I felt incredibly disappointed. There was a whole hell of a lot of buildup for just 15 minutes of Stevie Wonder. What was most disappointing was the the realization that came to me a few moments later when we saw that the concert was not over, and were floored to find out that Stevie Wonder was not the headlining act.
Faith Evans performed next, and she was fine, though the feedback problem seemed to have returned.... I wasn't really paying attention. I actually left during the middle of her performance and completely missed DMX. I just couldn't get over the shock that Faith Evans and DMX received better billing than Stevie Wonder. I wonder if perhaps this is the beginning of the end? Are eventually all the great performers going to be relegated to being sandwiched between a semi-washed up Hip Hop act and a gangster rapper? Who will be the next one to fall? Is Stevie's next stop going to be playing carnivals? I'd like to think that this is not so, and that perhaps Stevie was simply doing his duty as a musician by lending his well respected name to a cause that he felt strongly about. For the sake of all the great musical artists, I hope that it's the latter not the former. I have high hopes, but I did just hear some disturbing news from my mother after relaying this story to her. Apparently The Beach Boys recently performed at the Lynden County (population 8000) Fair this summer. Ouch.
