Discography
Gang Of Four - A Brief History of the 20th Century (compilation) (1990)
This was the first compilation album release from Gang of Four. It featured tracks released on albums and EPs between 1979 and 1983 and was re-issued in January 2004 by EMI.
“Gill is the musician who communicates the value of form, of one-thing-leads-to-another…” – Greil Marcus in the album liner notes. Read the complete liner notes on Greil Marcus’s website HERE.
Album reviews:
“It’s one of the neat quirks of the post-punk era that four left-leaning Yorkshiremen have had a seismic impact on the past two decades of US rock. ‘Gang of Four is the first rock band I could truly relate to,’ wrote Flea in 1995, for the CD release of the Leeds radicals’ 1979 debut Entertainment! ‘The electricity and inventiveness of their first few records is something any group should grovel to attain’… It’s proof that punk doesn’t have to be a mohawked cliche, that this music can obliterate the line between primal and cerebral. Or, as Flea put it, ‘These limeys rocked my world’. 5 stars.” – Kerrang, January 10th, 2004 (for the 2004 re-issue).
“Indeed, in some ways, it’s hard to think of a purer embodiment of the punk ethos than Gang of Four. Gill and the singer Jon King adhered to punk’s year-zero aesthetic with intellectual rigour. ‘The idea,’ said Gill, ‘was to do away with all the cliches of song structure.’ Other guitarists played solos; he played what he called ‘anti-solos’. Body bands divide into melody and rhythm; in Gang of Four, Gill defected to the rhythm section, creating a sonic chasm between the groups tense funk clatter sand King’s treatises on the opiates of capitalism, well illustrated on What We All Want, on which Gill’s metronomic funk guitar comes with a Ready Brek glow of exhilarating feedback.” – Peter Paphides, The Times, Jan 17th, 2004 (for the 2004 re-issue).
“Simultaneously uncomfortable and accessible…..they rocked” – NME, Jan 24th, 2004 (for the 2004 re-issue).
“Only the Clash ever managed a similar fusion of molten instrumental attack and seething polemic, though the Gang’s harnessing of cod-academic methodology to deconstruct issues like social conditioning and media brainwashing put them in a class of their own.” – The Guardian, Jan 9th, 2004 (for the 2004 re-issue).
“It was to their credit that, unlike many politico-polemicists then and subsequently, they were able to covert the frantic pop-eyes anxiety of their lyrical concerns into music that was viscerally exciting, throbbing like a vein in the temple. They turned funk rhythms inside out, counterpointing them with Andy Gill’s volatile, pebbledash guitars, sputtering and exploding like hot oil on troubled waters, spilling incontinently across the rhythmical bed or strafing and serrating songs, as on Anthrax. For a group so often and so earnestly associated with the clipped spirit of post-punk, guitar-wise at least they were a throwback to the guitar excesses of Hendrix, as well as a harbinger for the late-80’s rediscovery of fretboard frenzy (Big Black, the Buttholes etc).” – David Stubbs, Uncut, February 2004 (for the 2004 re-issue).
“They’re one of the few bands worthy of the sociopolitical analysis that passed for rock criticism during the era, and represent a considered intellectual response to the unpleasantness of popular culture in the days before the maligned notion of political correctness briefly helped sweeten the air.” – Times Culture (for the 2004 re-issue).
“Gang of Four’s legacy lasted well into the ’90s. The anthology, A Brief History of the Twentieth Century, offers ample (77 minutes’ worth, to be exact) evidence of why. Besides the ability to build astonishing levels of tension and then release them in tidal waves of exhilarating noise and fury, the original Gang of Four had an uncanny grasp of the relationship between form and content – by subverting James Brown riffs, dub reggae and the skeletal rockitecture of Free, the band produced music that conveyed the subversive, neo-Marxist ideas in the lyrics. Besides selected EP tracks, A Brief History wisely leans heavily on the incendiary Entertainment! for such classics as At Home He’s a Tourist, Anthrax and Damaged Goods. Solid Gold provides the hair-raising Paralysed while the same album’s What We All Want appears in a pounding ’81 live version. The underrated Songs of the Free yields I Love a Man in Uniform, Call Me Up and We Live as We Dream, Alone. Amazingly, the music has lost none of its sting over time, and the lyrics – mainly concerned with the way capitalism has infiltrated every aspect of our lives – are more relevant than ever. (As an extra, the illuminating and insightful liner notes are by number-one Gang of Four fan, Greil Marcus.).” – Trouser Press (not dated).
“A gorgeous artifact.” – Robert Christgau.
Added on the page here is an unofficial video made of “At Home He’s A Tourist,” from 2021 that we liked and which we came across recently.
Discography
Gang Of Four - A Brief History of the 20th Century (compilation) (1990)
This was the first compilation album release from Gang of Four. It featured tracks released on albums and EPs between 1979 and 1983 and was re-issued in January 2004 by EMI.
“Gill is the musician who communicates the value of form, of one-thing-leads-to-another…” – Greil Marcus in the album liner notes. Read the complete liner notes on Greil Marcus’s website HERE.
Album reviews:
“It’s one of the neat quirks of the post-punk era that four left-leaning Yorkshiremen have had a seismic impact on the past two decades of US rock. ‘Gang of Four is the first rock band I could truly relate to,’ wrote Flea in 1995, for the CD release of the Leeds radicals’ 1979 debut Entertainment! ‘The electricity and inventiveness of their first few records is something any group should grovel to attain’… It’s proof that punk doesn’t have to be a mohawked cliche, that this music can obliterate the line between primal and cerebral. Or, as Flea put it, ‘These limeys rocked my world’. 5 stars.” – Kerrang, January 10th, 2004 (for the 2004 re-issue).
“Indeed, in some ways, it’s hard to think of a purer embodiment of the punk ethos than Gang of Four. Gill and the singer Jon King adhered to punk’s year-zero aesthetic with intellectual rigour. ‘The idea,’ said Gill, ‘was to do away with all the cliches of song structure.’ Other guitarists played solos; he played what he called ‘anti-solos’. Body bands divide into melody and rhythm; in Gang of Four, Gill defected to the rhythm section, creating a sonic chasm between the groups tense funk clatter sand King’s treatises on the opiates of capitalism, well illustrated on What We All Want, on which Gill’s metronomic funk guitar comes with a Ready Brek glow of exhilarating feedback.” – Peter Paphides, The Times, Jan 17th, 2004 (for the 2004 re-issue).
“Simultaneously uncomfortable and accessible…..they rocked” – NME, Jan 24th, 2004 (for the 2004 re-issue).
“Only the Clash ever managed a similar fusion of molten instrumental attack and seething polemic, though the Gang’s harnessing of cod-academic methodology to deconstruct issues like social conditioning and media brainwashing put them in a class of their own.” – The Guardian, Jan 9th, 2004 (for the 2004 re-issue).
“It was to their credit that, unlike many politico-polemicists then and subsequently, they were able to covert the frantic pop-eyes anxiety of their lyrical concerns into music that was viscerally exciting, throbbing like a vein in the temple. They turned funk rhythms inside out, counterpointing them with Andy Gill’s volatile, pebbledash guitars, sputtering and exploding like hot oil on troubled waters, spilling incontinently across the rhythmical bed or strafing and serrating songs, as on Anthrax. For a group so often and so earnestly associated with the clipped spirit of post-punk, guitar-wise at least they were a throwback to the guitar excesses of Hendrix, as well as a harbinger for the late-80’s rediscovery of fretboard frenzy (Big Black, the Buttholes etc).” – David Stubbs, Uncut, February 2004 (for the 2004 re-issue).
“They’re one of the few bands worthy of the sociopolitical analysis that passed for rock criticism during the era, and represent a considered intellectual response to the unpleasantness of popular culture in the days before the maligned notion of political correctness briefly helped sweeten the air.” – Times Culture (for the 2004 re-issue).
“Gang of Four’s legacy lasted well into the ’90s. The anthology, A Brief History of the Twentieth Century, offers ample (77 minutes’ worth, to be exact) evidence of why. Besides the ability to build astonishing levels of tension and then release them in tidal waves of exhilarating noise and fury, the original Gang of Four had an uncanny grasp of the relationship between form and content – by subverting James Brown riffs, dub reggae and the skeletal rockitecture of Free, the band produced music that conveyed the subversive, neo-Marxist ideas in the lyrics. Besides selected EP tracks, A Brief History wisely leans heavily on the incendiary Entertainment! for such classics as At Home He’s a Tourist, Anthrax and Damaged Goods. Solid Gold provides the hair-raising Paralysed while the same album’s What We All Want appears in a pounding ’81 live version. The underrated Songs of the Free yields I Love a Man in Uniform, Call Me Up and We Live as We Dream, Alone. Amazingly, the music has lost none of its sting over time, and the lyrics – mainly concerned with the way capitalism has infiltrated every aspect of our lives – are more relevant than ever. (As an extra, the illuminating and insightful liner notes are by number-one Gang of Four fan, Greil Marcus.).” – Trouser Press (not dated).
“A gorgeous artifact.” – Robert Christgau.
Added on the page here is an unofficial video made of “At Home He’s A Tourist,” from 2021 that we liked and which we came across recently.