Global gathering is world class

In 1971, there were a limited number of options for a soul singer like Marvin Gaye.

The most perfect suite of music recorded in my lifetime.

Raphael Saadiq and his band have just come out to play their encore and we should all be grateful that they are back on stage – not just because their performance has been brilliant, but because there would have been a stampede had they failed to return.

As I think I might have mentioned before, I come from a trades union family, and while my dad had the theory down and wasn't above a bit of secondary picketing, my mother lived and breathed the struggle for workers' rights. Or, as we call it today, Going Off On One Big Time.

A biopic of Marvin Gaye is set for the screen, but the singer's family are not happy about it, discovers Geoffrey Macnab

It is a measure of how far voice-control technology has come that you have just read this sentence. The original idea was that your correspondent would speak a line into a machine that turns what you say into text and then open with the gobbledygook the machine had "recognised". Sadly, the ugly facts rather killed the beautiful theory (or, as the machine, still not quite perfect, would have it, "the beautiful scenery").

Teena Marie wasn't the first white female singer signed to Berry Gordy Jr's legendary Motown label – the Californian Chris Clark and British vocalist Kiki Dee preceded her in the 1960s – but she certainly had the most impact, blazing a trail for many of the crossover R&B to pop artists who followed.

Marvin Gaye once said "I'm hot just like an oven, I need some lovin'". And with that, went to find some sexual healing.

"I wanna bring love songs back to the radio," oozes R Kelly at one point here, making you wonder which station he's tuned to, so rarely does radio's gaze stray from that subject.

Since succumbing to lupus in 2006, producer J Dilla has become a revered figure in the hip-hop community, while his estate became the subject of dispute between business acquaintances and family.

To celebrate the 40th anniversary re-release of The Who Live at Leeds, Elisa Bray looks at the history of one of the greatest live albums ever, while musicians choose the albums that define the genre for them