Well would you look at that, the videos work once again! Hopefully this is not some sort of cruel April Fools joke and it will stay this way.
This post, you can consider it covering both today and tomorrow; it doesn't matter. This guy died 32 years ago today, and was born 77 years ago tomorrow, so you are welcome to take your pick. In his honor I will share something you cannot get anywhere else on Earth, because I made it myself.
He didn't really have the easiest or the happiest life... lives that end violently, at the hands of a family member, aren't typically all sunshine and roses. He battled hard drugs for most of the last 15 years of his life, and they proved his demise. But while he was around, no other single artist made music superior to him, and in the case of many of his tracks, no one ever will.
The other night I was watching cable TV and Trouble Man came on; although I am intimately familiar with MG's stellar music from the film, I had never actually seen the movie. At the end of the hour and a half, I concluded that it was likely the best of all the Blaxploitation flicks of that time, and the soundtrack was a central reason why.
Nope, there just isn't much to say about Marvin Gaye. His music will never die, never go out of style. Babies will forever be made to it. People will forever get married to it. It will always be the soundtrack of the human lifetime, everywhere.
All of these come from weird box sets where they published some odd, isolated backing tracks and alternate mixes. I did them all in Sound Forge and Vegas; you'll see my handiwork and what I've done will become clear if anyone's familiar with these tunes.
Sure, he liked to play in the snow. Sure, he was never the same after Tammi Terrell died in 1970. Sure, he was as imperfect a person as any of us. But it makes exactly no difference. He made dozens of records that are probably being played all over the world, in a million different places, right as I'm typing this.
Did I mention there isn't a whole lot to say about Marvin Gaye that hasn't been said already? He's a world changing figure and that is that. To start the weekend off on the right foot, I will share something really cool that I have worked on for many years.
As a hobby, something I enjoy doing is to construct strange, extended remixes and edits of existing tracks, often using extraneous materials relating to various tracks to make versions of songs that never existed before. Marvin here is one of my all-time favorite artists to do that with, and for the last 8 years or so I have been working on and revising this compilation of all his crucial 1970s non-LP tracks, many of them mutated into heretofore non-existent form by yours truly.
These are, dare I say, tremendous. I am as proud of this tape as anything of this nature I have ever done, and of all the music I have here (hint: it's quite endless), I probably play this in the headphones when I am out and about more than any other single 80 minutes of music in this room right now.
Marvin Gaye
A Funky Space Reincarnation
1971-1981
01 I Want You (remix)
02 The World Is Rated X
03 You're the Man
04 Where Are We Going
05 I'm Going Home (edit)
06 Symphony (remix)
07 Sad Tomorrows
08 Anger (extended edit)
09 Ego Tripping Out
10 A Funky Space Reincarnation
11 Mondata (edit)
12 Checking Out (Double Clutch)
13 'T' Plays It Cool (film version)
14 Life Is Now In Session
15 Got to Give It Up (single edit)
Total time: 1:19:52
non-LP tracks from the Seventies, in some cases heavily mutated by me
497 MB FLAC/April 2016 archive link
No Foolin' here, just 80 minutes of pure Soul Funk power. If you grab anything ever from me and my archives, it oughta be this little platter... I hope it grooves your weekend, and I hope it causes you to remember and appreciate Mr. Marvin Gaye, who crammed a whole lot of groove into his nearly 45 years with us.--J.
4.2.1939 - 4.1.1984