Stevie Wonder, Live from the Hole in the Fence

Don't tell anyone, but there is a gap in the fence on the hill separating a remote section of Istanbul's Maçka Park and the Küçükçiftlik Park concert grounds. 

This being Turkey, someone probably intentionally tore this portion of the fence down a while ago. And this also being Turkey, of course no one has gotten around to repairing it yet.

I noticed the gap in the fence one day as I was jogging through the park, which seems to be in a perpetual state of reconstruction.   If I was a responsible person, my first thought probably would have been, "You know, they really need to fix that.  Somebody might get hurt."  Being an irresponsible person, however, my first thought was actually quite different.

"Finally," I thought to myself, as I jogged past the fence and back up the hill.  "A ticket to the Stevie Wonder concert I can actually afford."

*     *     *

Let me state for the record that I am not a fan of the outdoor festival/stadium concert.  At least not any more. The last time I attended one was to see U2 at Pittsburgh's Three Rivers Stadium, a concrete, AstroTurf-covered monstrosity so horrible for viewing anything that it was imploded and bulldozed more than a decade ago. 

I remember spending that U2 concert in one of the stadium's mezzanine seats, located approximately four and half miles from the stage.  My seat also was unfortunately located behind a large, drunken woman in an ill-fitting tank top, who stood the entire show with her arms in the air hollering "WOO-HOO!!  BONO!! UP HERE, BONO!!  WOO!! WOOOO!!" 

Yeah, like he can hear you. 
"I LOVE YOU, BONO!!  MARRY ME, BONO!!"
And like you've got a shot. Sit your ass down.
"WOOO!!"
And for God's sake: Shut. Up!

After this experience I decided that as far as live music was concerned, I'd rather go listen to an unknown jazz trio in a small night club than to see the Greatest Stars in the History of Recorded Music in a cavernous football stadium. 

Yes, this ruled out seeing out a lot of mega-acts that don't perform live unless fireworks can be set off during the show, but frankly I was old enough not to care any more.   I'd seen Springsteen, I'd seen The Rolling Stones.  Lighters over the head, exploding drum sets, lines at the outdoor chemical toilets ... yeah, thanks but, I think I'm done.

Yet the idea of  seeing Stevie Wonder in Istanbul - playing in a large, outdoor concert venue - was something else entirely.  More of a concept than a concert, really.  This was a chance to say for the rest of my life, whenever the subject came up at cocktail parties: "Stevie Wonder?  Oh yeah, he was great.  When I saw him in Istanbul."

The chance to say that, forever?  You tell me, what are the odds that someone at the cocktail party is going to top that?

The chance to say something like that is so good, it's almost worth paying for.  

I said almost.

*     *     *  

Honestly, I had no clue whether the hole in the fence scam was going to work at all when I headed out the door on Friday night.  There were all kinds of reasons to believe it wouldn't. Cops patrolling the park? A tarp over the fence?  Security guards waving people away and saying "there's nothing to see here," in Turkish? 

I really wasn't even sure that from the angle you could actually see performers on the stage.  (Yes, I probably should have looked into that.)  No matter.

I had already packed two frosty bottles of Efes into my computer bag.  I figured the worst that could happen is that I would miss the concert, but still have the chance sit in the park and drink beer by myself like a hobo. 

Except that, damn, I forgot my brown paper bag.

By the time I walk to the end of the park and reach the gap in the fence it is about 8:30.  Already about a half dozen people have planted themselves in front of the gap.  An older man is sitting on what looks like a tree stump.   Several adolescent boys have staked a claim to a front-row seat on a wooden pallet.

True, no one was going to mistake this for one of the luxury boxes at Cowboys Stadium.  But looking at the view through the fence, I'll be damned if from this spot you don't have a pretty good shot of the stage, at a distance that is not really that far at all.

Honest to God.  If this was a U2 concert in Pittsburgh, these seats would be going for $75 a pop.

On the downside, I notice the people there when I arrive have stopped talking and are looking at me suspiciously, like I just walked on to the wrong gangs' turf.   In the dark it's hard to tell whether this an enterprising group of Stevie Wonder fans, or nothing more than a well-located gypsy camp.

Is there another place to sit, maybe?

I look behind me to see a hillside, recently re-sodded during the on-going park restoration with lush, thick, green grass.   I walk away from the fence and up the hill, then turn and sit to survey the scene.  

This is it; I have struck freeloaders' gold.

While the concert has yet to start, I can hear the pre-show recorded music perfectly.  There is no one around me, and from this high spot I have an absolutely clear view of the stage below.  This is unbelievable, I think to myself. Why I am the only person in Istanbul to have figured this out?

As I lie back on the grass, reach for my beer and wait for Stevie Wonder to appear, I have concluded that I truly must be The Smartest Boy in the World.

That is until maybe 30 seconds later, when the Istanbul Parks Department turns on the lawn sprinklers.

*      *     *

I would be lying if I told  you I was born a Stevie Wonder fan.
I grew up outside of Cincinnati, Ohio, in the WASP-iest, whitest of white, Wonder Bread suburbs.  Our idea of exposure to "ethnic culture" was watching the Catholic families from Guardian Angels go to mass early in the morning and eat fish on Friday.  

For this reason Stevie Wonder and Motown was not really the music the kids at my school were listening to.  In fact anyone caught listening to anything with more soul than Sammy Davis Jr.'s "The Candy Man" was immediately sent home from school and placed on three days' suspension.

But when I was 11 years old, I bought a 45-rpm record of  Stevie Wonder's song, "Superstition."  Of course the funky drum beat intro pulled me in, but it was the riff with the electric clavichord that really hooked me. I'd never heard anything like it before, and if I think about it, I'm not sure I've heard anything like it since.  Then you throw in the pulsating three-piece horn section, and Stevie's iconic wail after the bridge? 

I played the grooves off of that record.

To this day, I think "Superstition" is one of the coolest, hippest, most unique-sounding pop records ever made.  As is the mark of all great songs, it never sounds dated. In the game where I'm cast away to a desert island and get to take ten records with me?  This definitely makes the cut.

After about 1980 or so, honestly I think a lot of Stevie Wonder's music became sugary and a bit over-commercialized. "Part-time Lover," "Overjoyed," and "I Just Called to Say I Love You," for example, have been banished from my iTunes play list, as I am worried about the risk of developing Type II Diabetes.

But the Stevie Wonder of the late 60s and early 70s, IMHO, was absolutely cooking.  Download "Talking Book" or "Innervisions" sometime and you'll see what I'm talking about.   This guy had already earned his place in the Pantheon of Popular Music before I had made it to junior high school, and he wasn't going anywhere. 

Yet in a career that literally spans 50 years (he started in 1962, when he was 12),  Stevie Wonder had never once performed in Istanbul, or any else in Turkey, until now.  And as luck would have it there was a hole in the fence, just above where he was going to do it.

*     *     *

My shirt has almost dried out by the time Stevie takes the stage around 9:30.   I managed to survive the lawn sprinkler incident losing only my dignity, as I ran down the hill serpentine, dodging water jets and clutching my beer bag like I was in an Indiana Jones movie.

A crowd of about 20 to 30 people has now gathered at the hole as the concert starts.  I have staked out a spot on the ground several yards away, between a scraggly tree and a large pile of yet-to-be installed paving stones.   I decide to just sit for a while and listen before trying to jostle for a spot at the fence.

As the show opens both Stevie and the Istanbul crowd seem genuinely delighted that he's here.   He gets halfway into his first song (Marvin Gaye's "How Sweet It Is")  before telling the crowd that he wants to say "hello in your language."  Someone apparently whispers in his ear, and Stevie repeats an imperfect but still understandable "merhaba!"

"Merhaba!"  the crowd shouts back.
Stevie says it again. "Merhaba!"
"Merhaba!" comes the response.
He does it yet a third time.  "Merhaba!"

Okay, this is cute and all, but I'm starting to get a little uncomfortable, realizing this is how the conversation would sound anywhere in Turkey if you were training your parrot.

"Merhaba!"
Jeez, not again.
"Merhaba!"

"I love you!"  Stevie says in English.  Someone on stage feeds him the line in Turkish: Ben seni seviyorum.

"Been ... sinning several of 'em." 

Oh, Lord.  Stevie please just sing.

I get up now and walk to the fence to join the rest of the freeloading crowd, which I notice is starting to grow a little restless.  Several have turned away from the stage to light cigarettes or play with their dogs.   What's going on right now is, you know, not particularly easy to dance to. 

"Merhaba!" 

Okay, Turkish banter is not the man's strong suit.  Fortunately it doesn't need to be.   He leaves behind the Marvin Gaye cover and shifts into his own reggae-flavored classic, "Master Blaster,"  then takes it up a notch with Innervision's "Higher Ground."

After an unfortunate deviation with a tribute to Michael Jackson and the aforementioned  "Overjoyed" (or as I think of it, the Air Jordan shoe commercial theme music),  Stevie gets back on track with "Ma Cherie Amour," and "Don't you Worry 'Bout a Thing." By the time he gets to "Signed, Sealed and Delivered,"  the whole place is dancing, singing along, and eating out of his hand.

Up here at the fence, the kids are loving it, too.  Truly, most of them are kids, relatively speaking, with a median age hovering in the mid 20s.  It occurs to me that the last time Stevie Wonder had a hit single, most of these people were not even born.  Yet here they are, with me at the fence, essentially sneaking into their grandfathers' concert.

Just behind the crowd stands a weather-beaten tree.  Two or three boys have climbed up the tree trunk for a better view.  In the middle of "Sir Duke," one of the tree-branch boys inexplicably begins to yelp.  No, really; this is a yelp like the yelp of a schnauzer, trapped in a closet somewhere.

Whether this is an expression of approval, derision, or Tourette's really is impossible to determine.  But let's go with approval, as down below the trees, the kids are now dancing, cigarettes in one hand and beer cans in the other.

Stevie is giving the concert crowd what it wants as he cranks out "I Wish," "If You Really Love Me," and "Boogie On, Reggae Woman."  But I look at my watch, and it's after 11:00 now.  And I'm still waiting.

Then I hear it.  The lead-in drum beat starts, then a cheer goes up when Stevie hits the first notes on the clavichord.

I reach into my computer/beer bag and pull out the last of two bottles of Efes.  I take a swig of the beer as the Turkish girls nearby dance on the wooden pallet.  One of them reaches over with her beer can, and clinks my bottle.

Four decades after I first played the 45 record on the floor of my bedroom,  I hear Stevie Wonder belt out the lines of "Superstition," live, as I stand peering over a fence on a hillside in Istanbul, Turkey.

Now isn't this just the damnedest thing.

"When you believe in things that you don't understand
Then you suffer ..." 

No suffering here, Stevie.  Everything's good.

Superstition is the way.