As a human being amongst many, I think I have one basic human right. And that's to curl up in a foetal ball wherever I am and go to sleep without being disturbed. I need sleep. And then to wake up again, get up, do the things that I need to do in my waking hours then settle down again. Back into the foetal ball.
Being a functioning member of society is rather more complicated. I have to imagine the existence and needs of others. At some point I have to realise in my mind that their existence is equally as important and significant as mine. If I'm really sold I'll want to start a family with one of them or march under a banner and try to get things changed or noticed. I also have to realise and acknowledge the value and importance of work and work really hard to make the most of the opportunity I've been given. I have to compete. I need to bring up children if I chose to have them to do the same.
Politics isn't easy either. For any of us. Let's listen to What's Going On by Marvin Gaye together to see if it helps us iron out these basic, essential, fundamental contradictions! If not we're sure to enjoy the listen. Trust me. I've heard this record before.
I just typed in the name of my residences in my first year at university into a search engine. This came up. It may not be where I lived but I think it is. I think it's the main drive leading up to the reception building at Fifer's Lane in Norwich where I spent that first year. Three or four people who might read this could refute or verify that for me.
In any case whether it is or not, when it came up on the search it inspired an unearthly, involuntary shiver in me. Human consciousness is quite an uncanny mechanism. Up the end of that road I'm sure I necked pint after pint of snakebite and black, talked literature, politics, culture, music and life. I tried to work out women. For the most part unsuccessfully. I made and hardened some of the best friendships I'll ever have and one evening turned and saw one of the most beautiful faces I'll ever see.
What's Going On is a university record for me. First year of university '85-86. I lived in a corridor with three similarly minded blokes. Rod, Ben and James. After the pub or when we returned from university we'd decamp to Rod's room and listen to records and discuss stuff. What's Going On was one of the records we listened to.
Here's Marvin. He's cooler than you or me. He's also more conflicted. Troubled. Trouble man.
I'm enjoying thoroughly writing up this blog since I started it a couple of months back. It's great, listening to music, exploring your emotions, punching out memories. I often feel when I start writing about a record that really means something to me that there's a bit of a weight there because you want to do these things justice. With this one I couldn't ever begin to do so because it's so far out there, says so many things and has meant so much to so many people far beyond my ken and will continue to do so indefinitely and with such good reason. It's indelible. It's the best record I've written about so far. It's always amongst the best five records in my collection and will remain so.
It's very much in its time and space. The Sixties becoming the Seventies. Violence, war and crime getting the upper hand on love and peace. Vietnam turning really, horribly, terminally sour, Black consciousness radicalising. Drug culture. New Hollywood. Disillusion with the American dream. CIA, FBI and government machinations. Paranoia. Watergate looming. It's very easy to watch the record spin, look at the cover and back sleeve and go right back there. Even if it's slightly before your time as it was before mine.
But there's also something incredibly sweet, eternal and transcendent about listening to it. It's a record that someone hearing it three hundred years from now will have no difficulty at all in understanding immediately. It's the first record I've reviewed on here that I have absolutely no doubt will endure for centuries, My only problem is to even begin to explain why.
Maybe it's because it sounds like the future. Generally with these reviews I'll play through the album and talk about it track by track. With this one there's no point and again I couldn't remotely do it justice because it's all of a piece. Gaye is backed by the Funk Brothers who were pretty much the Motown house band and apparently the album was fuelled by whisky and marijuana. It has that warm, sure glow despite everything that's going on beyond the studio doors on the streets of America and the world as a whole.
I'm sitting in my flat in lamplight with this playing on the wax facsimile I bought back in the Mid-Eighties which is still giving a pretty good account of its greatness despite reaching middle aged status for well worn vinyl. The album is less than forty minutes long. It's a cycle and a concept and gives grace to both of those maligned formats. Marvin soars throughout over the orchestrations which tip their hat to and realise the best traditions of soul, jazz, pop, R&B, gospel and funk and go beyond all of them.
In the first line of my review I stated my intention to get political, but during the course of writing this I've abandoned that idea because this album goes far beyond immediate politics or concerns. It describes and conveys consciousness. It takes you back in time. It lets you know where you are. It makes you imagine where you might be going. I've had almost thirty years with it. I hope I get thirty more. Just listen to it. It's as good as it gets.
No comments:
Post a Comment