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Marvin Gaye

Rating: NNN


The jacket of this somewhat misleadingly named collection of Marvin Gaye’s television appearances – it boasts “16 full-length performances” – might give you the impression that the DVD is a career-spanning visual document of the late Motown great’s best live performances. It actually contains mostly lip-synched appearances on American Bandstand, The New Lloyd Thaxton Show, Shivaree and Hollywood A-Go-Go.

Gaye stands or sits in place while mouthing the words to his pre-recorded hits as bored-looking teens feign interest in the charade taking place on behalf of the home viewing audience. The crazy P-Funk-inspired bit for 1979’s A Funky Space Reincarnation and the interpretive dance foolery for Ego Tripping Out are both wildly hilarious, however unintentionally.

There are a brief instances when Gaye makes uncomfortable small talk with the show host – around the release of What’s Going On, Dinah Shore asks him what’s meant by the idea of a “concept album” – and that’s about as close as you get to seeing anything real, with the exception of a genuinely live swing through What’s Going On and What’s Happening Brother at an Operation PUSH convention in Chicago in 1972.

For serious Motown fans, that one sequence offering a rare glimpse of bass boss James Jamerson in action with Eddie “Bongo” Brown and Earl Van Dyke might be worth the cost of the DVD. But this is not the collection of real live performance footage we’ve been waiting for.

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