Original Musiquarium I

by

Stevie Wonder

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It says much for how consistent Stevie Wonder's 1970s music was that "Original Musiquarium," joining his best-known songs from his most successful era with four then-new recordings, fits together lyrically, musically, emotionally as a concept album.

Wonder's innovation during this remarkable period never seemed to cease; this continued right up to "Musiquarium's impeccable pacing. "Ribbon In The Sky" slides beside classic Wonder ballads like "You Are The Sunshine Of My Life," and 1971's haunting "Superwoman." The war protest "Front Line" furthers a social protest timeline begun by "Superstition" and "You Haven't Done Nothin'." Wonder's Carribean-flavored "Boogie On Reggae Woman" and "Master Blaster," play nicely against each other while the curtain-closer "Do I Do" (with Dizzy Gillespie on trumpet) pieces with "Songs In The Key Of Life"'s most jazz/R&B-flavored moments.

The four new songs not withstanding for completists, this is why "Musiquarium" is the only greatest hits collection essential even to those owning the original LPs. How many artists can you say that about?

If you love Stevie Wonder's music, you owe it to yourself to hunt-down a non-remastered version of these collections. I had the earlier versions, and lost one of the discs, so came back to Amazon to buy it again, and ordered this, thinking "hmm, remastered, and both discs in the same package" ...

Big disappointment. It sounds compressed and equalized excessively, it's harshly brighter, more distorted sounding and overall unpleasant to listen to. Also, the level of the analog tape hiss is notably hotter than on my "old" version! Certainly compressing and EQ'ing old masters can effectively raise the level of hiss, but this seems like more than what I would expect from that and I can't figure why. I almost wonder if this remastering was mistakenly done from an analog copy of the original master tapes (which is not unheard of). Regardless, it just plain sounds wrong.

Save yourself a minor heartache.. If the non-remastered versions are no longer available, buy used.