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Adam Ant recommended What's Going On by Marvin Gaye in Music (curated)

 
What's Going On by Marvin Gaye
What's Going On by Marvin Gaye
1971 | Rhythm And Blues
8.2 (5 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"I would imagine many babies were conceived to this album. If you think you're a singer or you want to do a bit of singing, it's a must listen album. Even when he's just scatting the lyrics and singing along to a melody – which is the way he apparently used to write a lot of stuff, by just going to the mic and ad libbing – he's amazing. I'm not very interested in politics as a musician – never have been – but he managed to incorporate what was going on in US politics at that time in a highly poetic way. I got to meet him and perform on a show with him at the Motown 25 concert in 1983. That was Marvin's last performance. I did 'Where Did Our Love Go' and Diana Ross came on stage when I was doing it, which was quite an event. She just danced around me and then went off. There was a knock on my dressing room door before the show and I opened the door and he said, ""Hi I'm Marvin Gaye"" and I said, ""I know you are!"" He just came to say thanks for doing the show. He was a really nice guy. And when I came off the stage, him and Smokey Robinson were waiting for me and they put their arms round me and all that. It was nice to meet him; he was such a gentle soul. Berry Gordy's No 2 was a woman called Suzanne de Passe who was the MD of the company and she'd seen my videos and heard my stuff, and Berry liked it. The theme of the show was 'Yesterday, Today, Forever', and he wanted something that was in the future style. I think I performed with all my heroes and heroines that night. I'd been listening to their songs all my life. I had the unenviable task of following Michael Jackson. He sang 'Billie Jean' and did the moonwalk for the first time. I was ten feet away from him when he did that. It was quite a memorable evening."

Source
  
Two Women in Rome
Two Women in Rome
Elizabeth Buchan | 2021 | Fiction & Poetry
10
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Two Women in Rome is a truly captivating story set in two time periods. In the present day, Lottie is an archivist working in Rome who comes across a painting once owned by an English woman called Nina who died in the late 1970’s. The painting appears to be valuable, painted in the fifteenth century.

Lottie also finds Nina’s journal in her personal effects, and the more of it she reads, the more she wants to find out about her life.

I loved the details about Rome in both timelines - I’ve visited Rome and loved it. The strong female characters were also a big plus point for me. Lottie is a head archivist, she really knows what she’s doing and is confident in her abilities. Nina is also an assertive woman - she is often in new situations that many would find themselves floundering in (Ok, that sounds really vague, but I don’t want to give anything away!)

This is a book about secrets: about keeping them, and what happens when they are revealed - both good and bad. This isn’t a book that goes fast and hard in its revelations. Quite opposite in fact, and probably why I liked it so much. I love a well told story, and I really felt that I knew the women in this because of that feeling of not being rushed through the story.

There’s a fair amount of Italian politics in this, some of which I had never known about, so that was another plus point. I hadn’t realised that Italy had had quite such a tumultuous political life for so long after World War Two. The novel has a great mix of themes, actually: secrets, history, politics, life in Rome, betrayal, guilt. I think I’m becoming a bit of an Elizabeth Buchan fan because I really enjoyed her last book The Museum of Broken Promises, as well. Both books are set in Europe, with the aftereffects of great political upheavals, ostensibly going back to World War Two. This book is well worth reading - I’d definitely recommend it.

Many thanks to The Pigeonhole and NetGalley for my copy of this book.