Today I am in the universally unpleasant circumstance of having to work for a portion of what should be a day off. However, all work and no play makes one a dull boy, so before I dive in I am determined to provide you, gentle readers, with another music review.
Disc 1729 is…Dream of a Lifetime
Artist: Marvin Gaye
Year of Release: 1985
What’s up with the Cover? Giant Head Cover! Marvin Gaye’s giant head, which makes a significant amount of sense.
This is also an early CD release, which you can tell by the requirement of the picture to clearly warn you this is a "COMPACT DISC". This is not your parent's 45 single in a new plastic case, people, this is the technology of the future!
How I Came To Know It: I already had a couple of Marvin Gaye’s famous records from the early seventies, but this one arrived via Sheila, who bought it on a whim while shopping in a thrift store. She’s taken to thrift store CD purchases that look good, interesting, or just plain weird. I love this development and the additional chaos it brings to the CD Odyssey. Many more of these to come in future reviews.
How It Stacks Up: I have three Marvin Gaye albums. I don’t love any of them, but I’m going to assume the early classics have a leg up on this one. I put “Dream of a Lifetime” in at #3.
Rating: 2 stars
Listening to a Marvin Gaye record is a lot like listening to Megadeth. Not from a musical style perspective, mind you. I mean that both artists tend to have one or two awesome songs and a whole lot of filler.
This is true even of early Marvin Gaye classics that feature such incredible songs as “Let’s Get It On” and “What’s Goin’ On” and the tradition carries forward onto his first posthumous record, 1985’s “Dream of a Lifetime”.
Marvin Gaye seems to really “rise” to the occasion when he’s feeling sexy, and “Dream of a Lifetime” two best songs both delve right in.
The record starts with an apparently moralistic song, with “Sanctified Lady”. Gaye describes a plethora of sexual identities and proclivities before settling on his desire for a “Sanctified Lady”. I assume this means a 'good girl', although given the relish the Gaye lays out the various and sundry other possibilities, and the sexy back beat accompanying said options, I find his ultimate appeal for a nice chaste girl less than believable.
Gaye doubles down on the dirty with “Masochistic Beauty,” a song that explores a kinky sexual encounter. This song is so explicit that the producers felt compelled to put a pre-Tipper Gore warning label on the back of the album that reads, ““This compact disc contains lyrical content that may be considered offensive to some listeners” (yes, it is underlined). Gaye creates the smallest bit of plausible separation from the topic by affecting an English accent and an almost theatrical spoken word delivery but otherwise spares neither the rod nor the word. If you’re looking for an 18th century style metaphorically inspired song of romance, taste and subtlety, this song is not for you. You will find no double entendres here.
Where the record most notably differs from Gaye’s early seventies work is in the production and arrangement. The album relies heavily on organ and synthesizer in place of horn section. I thought I would hate this, but Gaye manages to make the transition without losing any of the funky groove that defines his style.
Unfortunately, Gaye also doesn’t shy away from his other tradition – long meandering songs that are more focused on a notional groove than any artistic direction. Be prepared to let your mind wander around through seven plus minute songs like “Life’s Opera” that earnestly go in a lot of directions but never arrive at a satisfactory destination.
It won’t sound like the Marvin Gaye most people are familiar with at first, but underneath you’ll find the record is still, at its core, a soul record. A soul record best performed on a space station with a few visits from Barbarella thrown in, but a soul record nonetheless.
Best tracks: Sanctified Lady, Masochistic Beauty
No comments:
Post a Comment