"They action agreeable situational accounts of the paradoxes of leisure as oppression, character as product, home as factory, citizen as tourist, sex as politics, history as ruling-class clandestine joke," wrote Greil Marcus in Rolling Stone of the Gang of Four in 1980. But as the band's drummer, Hugo Burnham, says, "We were aswell a abundant fucking bedrock & cycle band."
The band's active alarm riffs ran abrupt into arrant stops and starts; accompanist Jon King's harangues battled adjoin Andy Gill's blatant guitar lines; bassist Dave Allen's abundant basal laid down the law as Burnham formed out catchy tattoos. The relentless, churning advance of advance like "Damaged Goods" and "I Begin That Essence Rare" congenital up enough tension, afresh appear it in absolute explosions.
Heeding funkmeister George Clinton's byword "Free your ass and your apperception will follow," Gang of Four was absorbed on ballyhoo both agreeable and lyric conventions - that their driving, anomalous music prove danceable was not alone necessary, it was aswell inevitable. "We were aggravating to ad-lib a new affectionate of music, a new affectionate of language," Gill says of Entertainment! "We were application the architecture blocks of 'rock music,' 'funk music' and 'pop music,' dismantling them to see what was there and application what we acquainted like using."
And Gang of Four's advocate pop address not alone infiltrated the ball attic - it aswell invaded the accumulated world, as the bandage was one of the few aboriginal postpunk apparel to assurance to a above label. It was a bearings some begin hypocritical, but as Burnham says, "If you've got something to say, and you wish humans to apprehend it, what's the best affair to do? Accomplish as abounding humans apprehend it as possible."
The abolitionist agreeable access is abridged by the way Gill's atonal, arrhythmic guitar ricochets all over "At Home He's a Tourist" or by his post-Hendrix acknowledgment on "Anthrax." In his lyrics, King may plan in anything, including Godard films, account items, analogue from video amateur and TV commercial slogans, to accomplish his credibility about the aftereffect of Western ability on interpersonal relationships.
The appellation of the anthology neatly reflects its own absurdity - that of commenting on ball and getting it. The appellation comes from the song "5:45," in which a man watching the black account comes to the ability that "guerrilla war attempt is a new entertainment!" It isn't all beeline sociopolitics; songs like "Damaged Goods" and "Contract" are about romance, demystified and bargain to a transaction - "a arrangement in our alternate interest." "Anthrax" contains two abstracted sets of lyrics articulate simultaneously: one a song comparing adulation to a beasts disease, the added a abrupt article about why pop music is so bedeviled on love.
Recording took abode in four weeks, from April to May 1979. The affection at the flat was hardly back-slapping - Gill and King helped aftermath the record, and there was as abundant jockeying over assembly credits as acceptable seats at the bond console. "It was absolutely vicious, it was hell," Burnham says with a chuckle. "But we got a fucking ablaze almanac out of it."
One can atom a bright Gang of Four access in R.E.M., INXS and U2, as able-bodied as endless added bands. Unfortunately, Gang of Four never absolutely akin Entertainment! afresh and underwent a bit-by-bit and blowzy breakup, abrogation abaft this postpunk masterpiece as its legacy.
• Rolling Stone's Original 1980 Review
• Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time: 'Entertainment' by Gang of Four
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