The Original Musiquarium I by Stevie Wonder (Vinyl record album review)

Record basics

• Album name: The Original Musiquarium I
• Artist name: Stevie Wonder
• Year: 1982
• Number of discs: two
• Label: Tamla Records
• Collection: Selman
• Distinguishing characteristics:
  • Scratched into side one of LP: 6002-TL2-A GIA G1
  • Scratched into side two of LP: 6002-TL2-B GIB G1
  • Scratched into side three of LP: 6002-TL2C 1C
  • Scratched into side four of LP: (H MP) TLD-6002 GIA G1
• Buy it on Amazon: $22.99

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’m not familiar with this Stevie Wonder record, but I’ve previously reviewed two others:

• Innervisions (1973): 2/5
• Fulfillingness’ First Finale (1974): 2/5

What I expected

I hope this double-LP compilation is not as bad as Innervisions and Fulfillingness’ First Finale, but I have a bad feeling about it, and suspect there might be some disco and some elevator music.

What it was actually like

I thought that Superstition might have been the funk song whose chorus goes, “Very superstitious…” and I was right, and it was a good song.

Besides that, I also recognized Isn’t She Lovely, which I kind of imagined every suburban Jewish dad asking the DJ to play at his daughter’s bat mitzvah reception, and also You Are the Sunshine of My Life, though I suspect that I might have been familiar with a different version of it, because this one did not sound that familiar. I might have recognized the funk song I Wish, but I was not sure.

And then there were several songs that I knew from previous Stevie Wonder record reviews. From Innervisions:

It turned out that I recognized Higher Ground, a pretty famous funk-sounding song that I thought was good. I never realized that it was a Stevie Wonder song, but now that I know, it’s my favorite Stevie Wonder song by far.

I also recognized Living for the City from Innervisions, and still didn’t like it.

From Fulfillingness’ First Finale:

Boogie On Reggae Woman was a pretty good techno-funk song, and I thought the harmonica in it was great, though I’m not sure what was supposed to be reggae about it. I considered it the best song on the record.

You Haven’t Done Nothin’ was another that I recognized from Fulfillingness’ First Finale and it was a similar style to Superstition, but not as good.

On the subject of reggae music, I did not expect there to be any on this record, but Master Blaster (Jammin’) was a reggae song and one of the better tracks, while Sir Duke was jazz song that, if I listened closely enough, sounded a bit like a ska song.

Most of this record, however, was quite bad. Choosing a worst song would be impossible, but I particularly disliked Superwoman (Where Were You When I Needed You) and Send One Your Love for their combinations of jarringly anti-melodic atonality.

Front Line was one of the more rock sounding songs, but I still thought it was terrible.

Do I Do went on forever, and since it lasted almost ten and a half minutes, taking up more than half of the fourth side, and was previously unreleased, I suspected that it may have been included primarily to fill up enough space to justify making this into a double LP.

Grade

2/5: bad, but I was able to listen to the whole thing