Album Reviews

Record collectors are demented and sad-- obsessive- compulsive freaks that only have one thing on their minds; the next record they need. You see, "want" is only for the completely normal and well adjusted individual who went to the mall to pick up U2's latest but came home happily instead with a totally rippin' new shirt from Old Navy. Lucky shit- bet he even has a girlfriend and a cool car.

What I'd wager he doesn't have, however, is a mint copy of The Byrds'

Sweetheart Of The Rodeo with that yummy red Columbia label that has that slight depression in the vinyl so you know it's the real deal- an original pressing. Cool cars and girls can wait, because when you're on the hunt there's no time for such trivial triteness as horsepower and another's sweet caress.

One record that eluded me for many years was Entertainment! by the formidable Gang Of Four. I had had an original cassette I picked up in the early eighties that the Walkman gods decided to sacrifice at the altar of Akio, and while I was able to score a copy on CD in the nineties, its vinyl incarnation was conspicuous by its absence. Two years ago, an impulse purchase of Franz Ferdinand's eponymous debut got me thinking once again about the beloved Leeds lads. I hadn't even gotten through side one when my obsessive, demented, sad, and wholly compulsive (did you really think I wasn't one of you?) side kicked into overdrive. What was once only casual desire had become a full on mission. I needed Entertainment!

Then it happened. Four months ago I stopped into a joint I only frequent occasionally (and had snagged a copy of The Fall's This Nations Saving Grace only two weeks earlier), and after finding nothing of interest was heading out the door when I spotted a box on the floor by the counter. The usual Zeppelin and CCR didn't inspire confidence, but as I flipped through, some Clash and Ramones piqued my interest. A little Killing Joke and Julian Cope confirmed I was in the right era, then (and I swear, my heart stopped), a mint copy of Gang Of Four's Solid Gold for only eight bucks. Palms now moist, I pushed my luck and there it was, staring me in the face. I sat down right in the middle of the floor and laughed out loud for a good thirty seconds before dropping the best sixteen dollars I've ever spent.

Just knowing I owned it after “needing” it for so long was enough to satiate any desire to even enter a record store for a good month. I know, I know, I could have just taken my girlfriend's advice (see, there is hope for you after all) and gotten it on e-bay years ago, but that's cheating. Any record worth owning is worth searching for the good old-fashioned way. And besides, a little luck and faith never hurt anybody anyway.

So, leave it to the sadists at Rhino to ruin everything. I mean, even after Henry Rollins' Infinite Zero label took a woeful (yet admirable) stab at re-issuing it in the nineties, Entertainment! was one hard album to come by on any format. Now these cretins have gone too far. Not only has it been digitally remastered (feh!-Ed.)- they just had to expand the damn thing too while they were at it. Come on now, I've only had four months to enjoy the sacred record collector's vow to gloat endlessly to their friends about how cool they are because they own an album they don't. I know mine's on vinyl, but still, to hear them singing songs they didn't even know last week tears me up inside. Almost as much as having to re-buy an album (fourth time if you're keeping track-see, I really am one of you) because the marketing geniuses decided to add on a couple of tracks I don't own.

For those not in the know, Gang Of Four is post-punk personified. Four overeducated boys from Leeds, England, who, in the fall of '79 released a debut album that set off shock waves that only now are truly being felt. Politically radical lyrically with enough funk coming out of the rhythm section to make James Brown blush, and juxtaposed with some of the most gratingly shrill, frenetic, and choppy guitar work ever committed to tape, as the '80's loomed, it seemed the Gang Of Four could do no wrong.

The beauty of their overtly Marxist political stance, that eschewed any capitalistic endeavors like making money or buying name brand products was that they never let it get in the way of the groove. That, and the complete two-faced-hypocritical notion that anyone should take it all too seriously considering they were on Warner Bros.- who probably weren't giving the profits to Greenpeace or the workers local union.

But like no band before or since, lead singer Jon King could drop lines like, “Down on the disco floor/ They make their profit/ From the things they sell”, or “Down on the street assassinate/ All of them look so desperate/ Declared blood war on the bourgeois state” (from “At Home He's A Tourist” and “5.45,” respectively) and not sound preachy in the least, says a lot about how good they were. If you cared, you could listen closely or read the lyrics, but for the most part it doesn't, and didn't, matter one bit what was going on lyrically, because when they got it going, their music grabbed on to you with such muscle that you had to surrender yourself and your inhibitions to the whims of Andy Gill's scorching guitar, and Dave Allen's mesmerizing bass lines. They got the twitchy-funk thing down so cold, Jon King could be spouting off baseball stats and you wouldn't know the difference.

So, when you hear bands like Hot Hot Heat, The Strokes, The Rapture, and Bloc Party, to name but a few, you'll know where they're coping their licks from. Shit, lose the politics and add on the sex and partying, and the aforementioned Franz Ferdinand might as well be Gang Of Four. While imitation is flattery, there's nothing like the real thing, and Entertainment!, some twenty-five tears on, still has a sense of urgency and tension that, as close as some of the new bands come, just can't match what came out of Leeds in September '79.

Even though I'm still sore about having to buy this album again, the Rhino boys have done a top-notch job. The tinny, bright, thin sound of the original hasn't been cleaned up too much in the remastering process, but it hardly degrades the overall effect of the album. Some would even argue it compliments the bands formula and their ideals well (but those people have really big subwoofers). An excellent and well thought out booklet with rare photos and thoughtful liner notes by famed Nirvana biographer Michael Azzerad is a nice touch, giving a good sense of the historical impact of Entertainment. Way back before I scored my copy of Entertainmenton vinyl, the only black wax Gang Of Four I owned was the Yellow EP, a collectors item that is included in its entirety here, and which makes up four of the eight bonus tracks. Alternate versions of “Guns Before Butter” and “Contract,” and two live songs and your journey into post-punk euphoria is complete.

And oh yeah, one of the live numbers is a tasty cover of “Sweet Jane” by some little band I'll bet you never heard of.