First, to gain your trust, one I like as much as the folks in the audience!

Last week my good friend HVB SUMMONED me to the floor of the Halls of Rock to explain what my problem was with certain Stevie Wonder songs. I explained myself promptly and clearly, or so I thought. Mwall clearly grasped what I was getting at. A poll supported the gist of what I was getting at. Only HVB failed to get it. He wanted examples of Stevie Wonder songs that bum me out and cause me to trash only one aspect of one of our national treasures.

As much as I dreaded revisiting some of these numbers, the first thing that came to mind was to pull out my copy of Innervisions. Here’s a classic Stevie Wonder album that contains some of my favorite songs by the man: the spine-tingling “Living for the City”, the supercool “Higher Ground”, and the always-fascinating helix-like structure of “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a Thing”! Unfortunately, it’s also home to “Visions”, “Golden Lady”, and “All in Love Is Fair”. I’ve skipped these songs for so long that I couldn’t be sure by title alone of which ones particularly offended my sensibilities. For the good of the Hall, I made myself listen to three examples from this one album. Following are my thoughts on each number. I hope this clarifies my feelings for you, Hrrundi.

My 10-year-old son asked me a few days ago what Jimi Hendrix‘s music was like. I raved about his guitar playing, telling him of my belief that no one’s come close to playing guitar as powerfully and effortlessly as he did. “You’ve heard it before,” I told him, but my efforts to hum out riffs of songs he’d heard in the car while I played Smash Hits failed to ring a bell for him. I told him I’d play him some records this weekend. That was the end of our discussion.

Friday night, conveniently, VH1 Classics played the kind of great/kind of depressing documentary The Jimi Hendrix Story. I called my boy over to the TV during a performance clip. About halfway through the song he said, “His guitar playing is amazing, but his voice is just OK.” He watched another 10 minutes with me, making connections to that Guitar Hero game, which he’d just played for the first time at a friend’s house the day before. “Now I see why you get extra points when you do this,” and he jerked an imaginary guitar neck into the air while making a Rock Face.

This morning I showed him the above video, one of my favorite live clips of the guy. As it wrapped up he asked me if he could start taking guitar lessons this summer. Thank you, Jimi!