Fulfillingness' First Finale Cambridge MA

Fulfillingness' First Finale

Stevie Wonder

Motown Records, 1974

REVIEW BY: Jeff Clutterbuck

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 05/20/2004

What did I miss having not been born in the 70's? Well there wasVietnam, Star Wars, Disco, massive amounts of drugs, Watergate, theworks. I can now add to that list, Stevie Wonder.

For a moment, pretend you have never heard a Stevie Wonder song.Forget those insanely memorable hooks and riffs. Forget some of thegreatest vocal performances committed to record in the past 40years. Just mull on this fact: The man was blind.

Every struggling musician out there has had it easy compared toStevie Wonder. Blind since birth, somehow he was able to masternumerous instruments, production techniques, skills all people inthe music industry would kill to have had. And instead of his musiccontaining anger or spite towards the world and God, the manembraced them. Wonder's albums are expressions of the man'sfeelings.

Fulfillingness' First Finale was Wonder's follow-up to hisbrilliant album Innervisions. A short while after the release of that album,Stevie got into a car crash, and fell into a coma. He would awaken,and Fulfillingness' First Finale was his take on what he hadexperienced and learned.