Album Reviews # 72 Gang of Four - Entertainment

I'm currently obsessed by Gang of Four's debut album Entertainment! for one reason or another. It's forty years since its initial release and hasn't dated a jot, in fact seems just as potent today as it must have been in 1979, both in terms of what it sounds like and what it says. Few bands have ever sounded more self-contained and poignant in terms of their opening statements. Nothing the band ever did since made quite the same mark but that does little to deny exactly how good 

                                                              Entertainment! is.

Esteemed American music critic Greil Marcus saw them as a continuation of The Sex Pistols. U2, R.E.M. Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Nirvana all took notes and sold a lot more records than Gang of Four ever did. Derided by Mark E. Smith as art students which they evidently were, (singer Jon King and guitarist Andy Gill first met growing up in Sevenoaks before studying together in Leeds). They gained greater acknowledgement from John Lydon, 'A little intellectual, which kinda muddied them up a bit, but their noises were so excrutiatingly, tortuously interesting, you could not but smile.'  

Entertainment! is twelve songs in all, which I've long thought the ideal length for a record, since I first heard Murmur in 1983. The record is an act of deconstruct, then reconstruct musically and lyrically. It's chock full of jarring and abrasive sound, and words which project slogans that are equally apt for political combatance, marketing campaigns, film dialogue, pop songs or military engagement. 

The band were well aware of the contradictions behind what they were doing. They signed to E.M.I. because they'd been ripped off by an indie but eventually lost the love of their major when Entertainment! failed to convert its obvious cultural currency into commercial paydirt. At which point E.M.I. shifted their attention to Duran Duran and the Eighties proceeded. The band would not have been surprised but perhaps hold the vaguest regret for being so hardline. Ultimately though Entertainment! is just too uncompromising a statement to ever expect a place in the high street shop window, (just look at the red-ness of its sleeve!). The passing of the decades has re-positioned it in the canon instead. Hardly a bad place to be.

In terms of its individual songs the record scores mighty high. I'd rate seven of its songs as classics by any definition: Ether, Natural's Not in it, Not Great Men, Damaged Goods, I Found that Essence Rare, At Home He's a Tourist and Love Like Anthrax. The other five are merely brilliant (they all start to catch up the more I listen to them). Recorded quickly in a studio on the Old Kent Road, which was seedy and depressed but still 'glamorous compared to the misery of Leeds,' according to singer Jon King.There's a sense throughout of a band who know exactly what they are and what they want to do. 'The songs were all nailed and road-tested.' , King again.

The band use Godard and Chandler, Goebbels, Augustus Pablo, Hendrix, Free, The Velvet Underground and the news spewing out of their televisions and the inky newspapers reporting contemporary events that were frightening and violent. It all feels like front row reportage of a world that seemed very much on the brink. Forty years on not much has changed except that there don't seem to be as many bands nowadays quite so acute and clear. At the time Gang of Four had plenty of company. The Specials, Joy Division, PiL, Wire, The Fall, The Au Pairs, The Clash, Dexys Midnight Runners,  The Raincoats, The Slits and many, many others were engaged on similar territory with slightly different agendas but similarly uncompromised vision. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were on the horizon preparing to re-establish a new, (if new is the word), World Order. We all know what happened next. At any rate the music got poorer until it got better again.

I Found That Essence Rare the first track on Side Two of Entertainment!  is the great hit single that never was. The band refused to countenance its release as a 45 because it was too commercial, 'Duh'  as Jon King now remarks. Ultimately they had long since chosen sides and were too committed to their cause to be built for any kind of long term commercial success. On the one occasion when they seemed to be on the cusp and were offered a slot on Top of the Pops on the release of At Home He's a Tourist they clashed with the producers of the programme went into negotiation for a slight change of lyrical content, refused to budge and were pulled or pulled themselves. Dire Straits took their place on the show and played Sultans of Swing.

Now I've got nothing against Dire Straits and Sultans of Swing is a fine song and deserves every inch of its commercial success but this small moment in pop history does say something to me about the way things are. Dire Straits will always sell more records than Gang of Four. There is always a Duran Duran waiting to supplant a band like this in their record company's affection. Kajagoogoo came next. Not even as good as Duran Duran.

For Gang of Four lots of American touring came next. They found it a similar experience to Britain but simpler, as guitarist Andy Gill reflects, 'Capitalism in Britain has more things obscuring the basic social and economic structures such as class and tradition. In America, you get more of the bare bones - the social relations and economic structures are more clear.' They were generally better accepted and understood in the way they wanted to be understood there than at home, made friends and laid down a definite legacy. Gill refutes the given cliche that Americans don't do irony which Entertainment! is deeply layered with. Pylon and R.E.M. both supported them, were both obviously inspired and picked up the baton. Michael Stipe said later, 'Gang of Four knew how to swing. I stole a lot from them.'

Gang of Four made more records, changed band members, split and reformed decades later. They were never as good as their original line up, (Gang of Four after all), and never put out anything as powerful and defining as Entertainment!. This detracts nothing. 

Entertainment! holds many of the fundamental contradictions of being alive in this day and age up to the light. Love and hate, marriage as contract, consumerist behaviour as loss. They claimed not to be Marxist but they certainly used plenty of Marxist ideas to construct their sound and the record is all the better for the thought that's been put in. Final track Love Like Anthrax is among the album's very best. It's a song that starkly denies the idea that pop music should be all about love songs and points a different way forward. Like so much of the album  it must have sounded staggeringly original when it first came out. In fact even though countless others have aped and stolen in the decades since, it and Entertainment! still do.