Q: Who's Cleaning Up on the Loss of 'Summer Nights'?

To mark Stevie Wonder’s first tour in a decade and his stop at the Chateau Ste Michelle Winery down the road in Woodland, our compadres over at The Seattle Times invited its readers take their "Stevie Wonder Quiz" in their Monday edition. Having fond memories of one Stevland Hardaway Judkins as this funky white blog’s first introduction to Motown, funk and the ever –ambiguous “R&B”, Seattlest curiously accepted The Times’ challenge to find out just how well we know Stevie.

Turns out we know him fairly well, scoring a passable 7 out of 10. Most of the questions weren’t exactly stumpers. As you can probably tell, many of answers made themselves apparent for the lack of cleverly incorrect alternatives while other answers simply sang themselves to you. But still, 7 out of 10 ain’t so bad for a fan whose in-depth knowledge of the person to whom Luciano Pavarotti once referred as “a great, great musical genius” extends as far as a brief skim of Original Musiquarium I’s liner notes. Don’t get me wrong, songs like “Sir Duke” and “Superstition” most definitely changed the way Seattlest listened to music at an early age, it’s just that we’re almost certain we’d never pay that much money to see anyone…

Besides, how in the hell does Chateau Ste Michelle, fifteen miles outside of Seattle, score these shows over any one of a plethora of capable in-city venues anyway? The logic confounds us. Driving to a concert at a winery? Only if it’s cool to pass out drunk in the vineyard for the night. But whatever! Yes, Stevie rocks, but let’s be honest; his shit’s been smoothed out like a blended fruit beverage since Hotter Than July, in that 98.9 FM kind of way. There’s absolutely nothing is wrong with that – the 80s happened to everyone who was there – it’s just that Seattlest prefers to complement his Sauvignon Blanc with post-industrial illbient noise .