Stevie Wonder is like the best boyfriend/girlfriend figure you can think of. Check it. Everyone has their very possessive memory of him and his songs. It becomes intensely personal. I will fight you for my very very special memory of “Master Jammin’.” I will. I promise you. My 1980s something memory of running around Highland Park with my dad, rocking the Osh Kosh cords and big smiley sunshine t-shirts, Pre-Con gelled ponytails courtesy of Patrice (the mom unit), feeling like I got away with something when we all us neighborhood kids got to watch “Aliens” at Kirsten’s house (I think) in the living (later having nightmares that a little creature word burst out my belly and unable to drink orange juice aka alien blood for years), jump rope routines with my girls, falling out over muddled grade school misunderstandings, Miss Baily telling me that I could write well….you just don’t know. And I’m sure you’ll tell me your Stevie song memories are of equal value to you. He is not just a songwriter but a soundtrack to so many lives.

So when I tell you that his concert at MSG was an experience that will allow me to die happy, you understand I’m not trying to be an overindulgent literary snob. I am speaking the holy ghost truth.

I was tired that night but excited to see my genius musician girl Maritri. Both of us might as well have had toothpicks in our eyes over the week we had (mine will be a very short blog after this - sad - her’s because she is a music hustler!). But as soon as Stevie sat at the piano, my heart rose to the top of the Garden and never came down. My favorite thing is when a genius actually performs the songs as they were created, very little movement into trying to compete with the Ushers/Rhiannas/Beyonces by trying add a Neptunes beat or a crunk dancer. I was afraid though because there was that award show where they made my Stevie DANCE to my own dismay. Stevie Wonder does not need to dance to put an exclamation point on his songs. Period. Ha.

Anyways, I’ll not run down the song list because its all of the ones that make you float into a cloud of heavenly familiarity. Picture your favorite childhood memory and lay your favorite Stevie song over it and you’ll be where I was. I never jumped shouted or back up danced so much in my life.

And then it happened.

The beginning was Tony Bennett coming out to sing “For Once In My Life” with Stevie. Tony Bennett, for me, is the Rat Pack era I never got to see. He brings an era I’ve been obsessed with straight to my ears with such ease that I am spoiled when I hear a singer come up short. If Tony can do it, why can’t you? I know. I don’t sing. Shut up. I am flawed. Anyway, Tony belted out notes that would make a wannabe teenage star cringe with shame. The man’s lungs are bigger than South America.

It didn’t stop there.

We near the end of a perfect evening. I have made peace with the idea that I have now seen Stevie and Tony Bennett live, in my lifetime, uncompromised and I didn’t feel like I should’ve seen them 15 years ago.

Then it happened.

The familiar base line echos the Garden, bouncing off thousands of dancing bodies of varying ages. Stevie and his band are in a zone. And then…a very small man unassumingly walks on stage and picks up a guitar. I look up at the big screen and see the familiar face of the small man but since I’m so used to seeing him on television, it doesn’t register that he is ON the damn stage. Stevie says to us, as if his cousin Junebug just walked in the room to offer us Kool-Aid, “Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for Prince!”

I open my mouth but nothing comes out. Everyone around me runs around like somebody scored a touchdown. We’re high fiving and silent screaming. Prince doesn’t really look at us. He just plays with that sly shy grin of his, like his rolling a jawbreaker around in his mouth. He does rifts that you haven’t even dreamed of. We try to savor the moment like it’s a thousand dollar sip of wine, sucking our mouths and closing and opening our eyes but the moment is almost as speedy as his entrance. He never says a word and is gone before we can really take in that we just saw Prince and Stevie Wonder on stage together. Prince struts in his high heels, waves and he is gone.

Stevie’s finale is “Always” which means a lot since this whole concert is dedicated to his recently passed mother. We tear up and cry as he grabs his back up singers, including his daughter Aisha, and does a little dance, disappearing off stage. Despite repeated repeated repeated (did I say repeated) requests for an encore, we finally figure out that he’s probably back at his hotel room by the time we decide to leave.

I die happy that night.

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