FEATURE:
I Found That Essence Rare
Gang of Four’s Entertainment! at Forty-Five
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ONE of the…
most important albums of the late-'70s turns forty-five on 25th September. Gang of Four’s Entertainment! There are some features and reviews I want to bring in that discuss, dissect and celebrate the Post-Punk band’s incredible debut album. I want to start out with Pitchfork’s review of Entertainment! Spotlighting the album in 2005, it was after Rhino reissued the 1979 classic, adding the Yellow E.P. and four previously unreleased tracks:
“Gang of Four were a pop band. Their funk was no less stark or forbidding than, say, the more astringent Timbaland productions. They certainly weren't as twitchy, speedy, or noisy as James Brown at his most energized. Their great innovation-- Andy Gill's morse code guitar, as if playing a riff for more than a few bars caused him physical pain-- is post-punk's most ripped-off idea after badly played disco drums. They had attitude, energy, the big beat, skilled players funneling their virtuosity into the necessary notes, a handy way with a catch phrase, and sweaty live performances. Sounds like pop to me.
They formed in 1977 as part of a scene surrounding Leeds University's fine arts department that also included the Mekons and the Au Pairs. They were art students who named themselves after the Maoists that ran China until the leader's death in 1976. But they bonded over pub rockers Dr. Feelgood and 70s British blues band Free, exactly the sort of dinosaur hard rock post-punk was supposed to have purged in its own Cultural Revolution. The seeming contradiction, at least in terms of the Good Music Society the music press was constructing at the time, might have explained their sound, which critic Simon Reynolds described as a "checked and inhibited hard rock: cock rock [with] the cock lopped off."
Andy Gill kept his guitar chilly, without the blanket of fuzz provided by effects pedals and the agreeable tone of valve amps. Blues riffs do crop up, but it's almost as if Gill is playing against his technique, scattering them like fishes in a pond with a scrabble of notes. He rarely engages in anything like a solo, the ejaculation part of cock rock. Gill's playing approaches rock drama through dynamics. On "Return the Gift" he's a shrill S-O-S pattern underneath the weight of Dave Allen's bass on the choruses, a flinty, almost Derek Bailey-like anti-solo. On "(Love Like) Anthrax", he sounds like he's trying to split concrete with a garden spade on a congested street. The guitars on "Natural's Not In It" are actually kind of sexy, in an uncomfortable frottage sort of way.
The band says they were trying to get Allen to play a "quarter of the notes he was actually capable of playing," which must be a pretty alarming number given his busyness on tracks like "Damaged Goods". The bass is the only fluid part of Go4's sound, and even that's more croaky than bubbling. On "Ether" there's no bassline to speak of, just big bullfrog gulps as the guitar clangs, bell-like, and a sinister high-noon melodica whistles in the distance. Drummer Hugo Burnham played funk beats and disco snare crashes but with all the reverb stripped off so that they splashed like alcohol. He's the band's secret weapon, and stuff like the hard snare crack that sounds like a handclap on "Not Great Men" is often what makes a song. When they all locked in, as on "I Found That Essence Rare", the effect is like stuffing 10 pounds of funk into a five-pound bag.
Emotionally, however, Entertainment! is a brick. Like a black hole, no romanticism escapes it. Hints of black humor (especially in the artwork) creep into their aesthetic without overwhelming it. Relationships are reduced to "contract[s] in our mutual interest." Jon King often sings in the first person, implicating himself before anyone else: "I can't work/ I can't achieve"; "how can I sit and eat my tea with all that blood flowing from the television?" Out of one speaker, Gill drones the production details of the love song like a bored copywriter on "Anthrax", concluding "we just don't think what goes on between two people should be shrouded in mystery." Out of the other speaker, King moans that he "feel[s] like a beetle on its back/ And there's no way for me to get up".
I am going to move into an article from Post-Punk.com. They had some interesting things to say about Entertainment! In 2018. I only discovered the album a few years ago. Not knowing much about Gang of Four, it is an instantly intoxicating listen. Forty-five years after its release and you can sense the influence and impact of it in the modern scene. A work that has definitely resonate with many other artists through the years:
“On September 25th, 1979 Gang Of Four released their debut LP Entertainment!, a highly influential post-punk record that incorporates funk, dance music, reggae, and dub, with lyrics that permeates with left-wing ideology critical of capitalism, war, and the their alienating effects on society, while being influenced by the Situationist and feminist movements.
The album’s cover artwork was designed by singer Jon King and guitarist Andy Gill, and shows the influence of the Situationist International, through its reinterpretation of an “Indian” shaking hands with a “cowboy” based on a still from one of the Winnetou films starring Lex Barker and Pierre Brice. The Winnetou films were based on a German interpretation of the Wild West by Karl May (1842–1912), one of the best-selling German writers of all time, which were later repurposed by East Germany communists as critical narratives of capitalism.
The back sleeve to Entertainment! gives further socio-political commentary by depicting a family whose gluttonous patriarch says: “I spend most of our money on myself so that I can stay fat”, while his wife and child respond with: “We’re grateful for his leftovers”.
The commentary continues on the album’s inner sleeve, which features small photos of television screens juxtaposed with misleading platitudes such as: “The facts are presented neutrally so that the public can make up its own mind”; “Men act heroically to defend their country”; “People are given what they want”.
The album featured the band’s first two singles “Damaged Goods”, a Marxist critique of the transactional nature of everyday life, including romance and sexuality, illustrated through a breakup.
“Damaged Goods” was originally released as an EP, and the track “Love Like Anthrax” has its title shortened to “Anthrax” for the album, while “Armalite Rifle” is not included, but was later available on the Yellow EP, along with the b-side for “At Home He’s A Tourist”, which was “It’s Her Factory”
The album’s second single, “At Home He’s A Tourist”, is quite possibly a feminist song from both a male and female perspective about the alienation from the pressures of societal expectations and gender roles”.
I will end with another review of the album. To give another perspective. It brings me to this feature from The Quietus. In 2014, Houman Barekat pondered and reflected on Kevin J. H. Dettmar's insightful and passionate contribution to 33 1/3's series of books – that are dedicated to single albums -; a keen and informative study of Gang of Four's Entertainment! If you have never heard the album then I would recommend that you seek it out. Whilst it was very relevant in 1979, I think that it has not aged in that sense. One can apply so many of the themes and songs to the modern day:
“Entertainment!’s currency is the small-P politics of late capitalist banality, referencing commercials for Essence Rare perfume and timeshare holidays, and interrogating ‘the problem of leisure / what to do for pleasure’ (‘Natural’s Not In It’). Gang of Four were well versed in critical theory – they had cut their teeth on the Frankfurt School and the Situationists, they knew their Louis Althusser from their Raymond Williams – but, crucially and unlike so many other ‘political’ rock bands, they had the flair and the sense of fun to go with it. There’s a clue in the title: the cabaret exuberance of that punctuation mark anticipates the ironic fizz that makes Entertainment! so compelling. It is here that Dettmar’s literary grounding comes into its own, as he identifies the key ingredient that sets this album apart: it is, he writes, a question of ‘the difference between literature and propaganda …. valuing suggestive and provocative ambiguity over efficient certainty.’ Gang of Four raised a mirror to the insidious ideology of consumer society – its contamination of supposedly sacred spaces like the bedroom (‘Contract’, ‘Anthrax’) and every Englishman’s castle, home (‘At Home He’s a Tourist’). But they rarely preached. Their medium was ‘theatrical rather than confessional; narrative rather than lyric; ironic rather than sincere.’ They were, in short, storytellers.
None of which would have counted for anything were it not for the music. That Entertainment! sounds as fresh today as it did in 1979 – the same could hardly be said of many of Gang of Four’s contemporaries – is a testament to the band’s technical brilliance. As Dettmar points out, it’s the little touches that make it: the uncomfortably protracted intro to ‘I’ve Found that Essence Rare’, the chiming, circular four-note figure on Andy Gill’s guitar played 16 times rather than the usual 8; the instrumental dropouts borrowed from dub reggae – anti-solos where one instrument or another disappears from the mix for maybe 10 seconds or even 30 seconds at a time; the variations in the duration of the ‘gutters’, the silences between the songs. Call it Brechtian defamiliarisation or just messing with pop convention, Gang of Four’s unique sound was the perfect sonic complement to the ironic distance in their lyrics.
Whereas angrily ripping into the reigning monarch has a very finite shelf-life, the cultural moment so acerbically itemised by Entertainment! is very much ongoing. Long before the 24-hour stereo of today’s immersive digital fuckfest, Gang of Four were singing (on the album’s penultimate track, ‘5.45’) that ‘guerrilla war struggles are the new entertainment’. As I write this I’m watching a report on the fall of Kirkuk on the BBC website. The clip is three-and-a-half-minutes long, about the length of your average pop song; I daresay the warning that it contains some disturbing images only sharpens my attention. The report tells of Islamist militants seizing control of the city, going in all guns blazing. The story is of imminent humanitarian catastrophe, but all I can muster by way of response is to marvel, idiot-like, that it’s quite possibly the first time I’ve ever heard the expression ‘going in all guns blazing’ used non-figuratively. That’s entertainment”.
I am going to finish up with a review from AllMusic. One of the most acclaimed albums of the 1970s, the phenomenal Entertainment! turns forty-five on 25th September. I hope that it gets a lot of new words and features. Few debut albums of the decade were as essential and impactful as Gang of Four’s. Unlike so many bands of the 1970s, Gang of Four have enjoyed life beyond that time. Their latest album, Happy Now, was released in 2019:
“Entertainment! is one of those records where germs of influence can be traced through many genres and countless bands, both favorably and unfavorably. From groups whose awareness of genealogy spreads wide enough to openly acknowledge Gang of Four's influence (Fugazi, Rage Against the Machine), to those not in touch with their ancestry enough to realize it (rap-metal, some indie rock) -- all have appropriated elements of their forefathers' trailblazing contribution. Its vaguely funky rhythmic twitch, its pungent, pointillistic guitar stoccados, and its spoken/shouted vocals have all been picked up by many. Lyrically, the album was apart from many of the day, and it still is. The band rants at revisionist history in "Not Great Men" ("No weak men in the books at home"), self-serving media and politicians in "I Found That Essence Rare" ("The last thing they'll ever do?/Act in your interest"), and sexual politics in "Damaged Goods" ("You said you're cheap but you're too much"). Though the brilliance of the record thrives on the faster material -- especially the febrile first side -- a true highlight amongst highlights is the closing "Anthrax," full of barely controlled feedback squalls and moans. It's nearly psychedelic, something post-punk and new wave were never known for. With a slight death rattle and plodding bass rumble, Jon King equates love with disease and admits to feeling "like a beetle on its back." In the background, Andy Gill speaks in monotone of why Gang of Four doesn't do love songs. Subversive records of any ilk don't get any stronger, influential, or exciting than this”.
The brilliant Entertainment! is coming up to a big anniversary. On 25th September, we get to mark forty-five years of an album that won praise from Michael Stipe and Kurt Cobain. Both legends acknowledging the power of Gang of Four and their debut. Cobain especially. So many sites and sources have ranked Entertainment! among the best albums ever. In 2004, Pitchfork declared it! as the eighth-best album of the 1970s. In 2003, Rolling Stone placed Entertainment! at number 490 on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. Gang of Four’s acclaimed and tremendous debut is…
A seminal album.