When the Gang Of Four appeared on the post-punk landscape 25 years ago, earnest young men in Oxfam raincoats and Anti-Nazi League button-badges would gather round their record players in squats and student unions. Arguments would rage late into the night about the meaning of these songs - a blue print for their protesting, anti-capitalist, non-sexist, not-for-profit lives… Did they f*ck!
No, we danced, we shouted along and we felt slightly superior for our love of the Gang Of Four. Funky as anything, in a strictly white boy sense, GO4 were middle class graduates from Thatcher-era, Leeds University who designed their own artwork, sang about the capitalist system but signed to EMI. Hmmm.
Most importantly, they made a great noise, one which won't be too unfamiliar to a new generation of indie clubbers because bands such as
The Rapture seem to have been bottle-fed the band’s debut 'Entertainment' album, from which the best music here is taken.
Indeed,
The Rapture's own 'House Of Jealous Lovers' features not only a Jon King soundalike vocal but a decent crib of that trademark, razor-sharp, guitar stab that Andy Gill made his own. He teased the feedback from his guitar like a punk rock Hendrix and adopted the blues lesson that 'less is usually more'. Add in the tightest of rhythm sections, courtesy of Hugo Burnham and Dave Allen, and the band’s music alone was a highlight of the era.
The lyrics on 'Anthrax' - "Love will get you like a case of..." and 'At Home He's A Tourist' - "down on the disco floor they make their profit..." singled out the GO4 as something different, something worth pursuing, even if we weren't quite sure what it was all about at the time. These guys wanted to change the system, but they wanted to get laid while doing it. You'll have even less idea of their meaning if you read the Greil Marcus 'essay' that comes with this collection in the shape of some preposterously pretentious sleeve notes.
The band only occasionally matched their initial, vital, burst but continued to record and tour their powerful music until 1983. They even grazed the charts, complete with 'chicks'' backing vocals, once more with 'I Love A Man In A Uniform' in '82, before Allen left to set-up the even funkier Shriekback and Leeds passed the baton on to Sheffield to keep kids dancing badly in the union bar.
An essential introduction to an essential band.
