During my furst year at university, me and three of the guys in my corridor bonded majorly, largely over music. NME, which we pored over at the time, brought out a list of 100 albums they considered the best ever released. Instead of the usual suspects What's Going On by Marvin Gaye was Number One and Van Morrison's Astral Weeks Number Two. It's still my favourite list of this type. It probably pretty much reflects my own taste.
We listened to What's Going On a lot during this year. I bought my own copy. It was my entre into a whole new universe. Gaye himself had fairly recently been shot. But this wasn't the Marvin of Sexual Healing. On this record he's almost an alien being in a similar way to how Bowie is on so many of his Sevemties records. There's a sadness and wisdom to this album that still and always will endure. The photo of him on the cover says it all. What have we done? What are we doing?
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