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Aug 29, 2011 Marvin Gaye By Kenny S. McGuane

There isn’t much more that can be said about Marvin Gaye’s enduring masterpiece, What’s Going On, that hasn’t already been said. It truly is a perfect, transcendent record. Still, for the principled and discerning music consumer, having a record company try and sell you a third reissue of an album is pretty off-putting. They’ve made this one pretty tantalizing, though, playing up all the right angles and gimmicks; Motown/UMe is cashing in on the recent revival in vinyl fetishism by including a first-ever-vinyl copy of the ultra warm and dry original “Detroit-mix” of What’s Going On, which would later be sweetened up and soaked in reverb when Gaye followed Motown to Los Angeles and released the final version.

The 40th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition (yes, that’s really what it’s called) of What’s Going On comes with the aforementioned vinyl disc, plus two CDs, an LP-sized booklet with rare photos, lyrics, recording notes, and essays. Disc one includes the original album (evidently remastered again to deliver a “deeper, warmer sound than previous reissues”), several outtakes, the original demo version of “What’s Going On” (which was swiftly rejected by Motown’s quality control team), the mono cuts of the albums three momentous singles—“What’s Going On,” “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology), and “Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Haller)”—plus the original B-sides. Disc two is where things get interesting; it documents the album’s after effects with 18 tracks of mostly instrumental jam sessions recorded in Detroit while the reserved and bashful Gaye was holed up in the studio resisting the pressure to tour the album. Also included are three versions of what’s been called a sequel of sorts to What’s Going On, the soulful “You’re the Man,” which became an R&B Top 10 single in the spring of 1972.

Of the 28 bonus tracks on this reissue, only 16 of them have been previously unreleased. As a historical document of the era, the bonus material is intriguing enough, but like so many other reissues the extra content has a fairly low replay-ability factor. With a $55 price tag, this mega super-duper awesome anniversary deluxe special collector’s edition, like most others, is really only for fanatics, and fanatics with a turntable at that. For everyone else, there’s the 2001 What’s Going On reissue, which can probably be purchased used for under 10 bucks. (www.classic.motown.com)