Marvin Gaye - Live In Montreux

Review

In year 1980 the famous Jazz festival in Montreux Switzerland started growing and changing dramatically. Even though Jazz remained the main theme in the festival, wider range of other music styles and artists (like James Brown, Eric Clapton, Leonard Cohen...) were included. Even though Marvin Gaye might have been a bit out of scene in this jazz orientated festival he was given a really warm welcome from the audience.

Marvin starts his set with a great version of "Got to Give It up" and continues with "Funky Space Reincarnation". Before moving to great series of sixties oldies Marvin performs two songs from the "Let's Get it on" album. As a true gentleman Marvin also ask's someone from the audience to dance with him, while the band plays the song "After the dance". As a reply two women get on the stage and both of them will want to dance while Marvin tries to convict that he can only dance with one. Well as a ladies man he finally ends up dancing with both of them. During the series of sixties songs Marvin succees in making the swiss audience sing with him. Marvin also gives a good sample of his piano and drumming skills in the end of "How sweet it is" and after "Ain't that perculiar". After these old classics Marvin moves back to his 70's chart toppers with "Trouble man", "Distant Lover" and a series of songs from "What's Going on Album".

Video quality on this DVD is very good and I can't find any negative things from the sound either. Although in some points the video gets a bit blurred because of the MPEG encoding, but in overall the quality is really fine. I personally think that this is absolutely the best Marvin DVD around. The versions of all songs sound really great, some even better than on original albums. The band behind Marvin plays really fine and the humorous backround vocalists really give up everything. If you are interested in seeing Marvin Gaye perform live, I think this is the DVD you should buy.