There are not many great Marxist/feminist rock bands, but Gang of Four have a strong claim of being among them. Entertainment was their first album, released in 1979, is innovative both musically and with its lyrics; it was a time of many great albums.  Wire had released Pink Flag in 1977, Chairs Missing in 1978, and 154 in 1979.  Magazine released Real Life in 1978 and Secondhand Daylight in 1979. Indeed, the list of the NME’s top albums of 1979 shows many great works:

1. Fear of Music – Talking Heads

2. Metal Box – Public Image Ltd.

3. Unknown Pleasures – Joy Division

4. Setting Sons – The Jam

5. Entertainment – Gang Of Four

6. Armed Forces – Elvis Costello

7. Do It Yourself – Ian Dury

8. London Calling – The Clash

9. Squeezing Out The Sparks – Graham Parker

10. The Specials – The Specials

11. Forces of Victory – Lintin Kwesi Johnson

12. The B52’s – The B52’s

13. Bop Till You Drop – Ry Cooder

14. The Raincoats – The Raincoats

15. Tom Verlaine – Tom Verlaine

16. I Am – Earth, Wind & Fire

17. The Undertones – The Undertones

18. 154 – Wire

19. Repeat When Necessary – Dave Edmunds

20. Drums & Wires – XTC

So Gang of Four were not unusual in exploring alienation, political oppression, popular culture, class, gender, and love; these were common themes among post-punk groups.  They stood out in achieving clarity in their message and combining it with a funk-inflexed muscular, stripped down sound.  They stand out for addressing issues of surprising abstraction. For example, their song  “Not Great Men” spells out the idea that history is made by social trends of movements of classes, rather than being subject to the individual choices of leaders – one can think of the adulation of Winston Churchill as their target here. 

Kevin Dettmar aims to address the power of the Gang of Four in his short book on their album Entertainment.  He is unusually qualified to write such a book, since he is an English professor who has specialized in understanding rock music. Chapters have both footnotes and endnotes.  The text refers to many different figures and ideas, including Emerson, Don Delillo, James Joyce and Engels.  Mostly, his approach is plausible and clever, although he is occasionally eccentric. He presses the idea of the importance of mishearing and misunderstanding the lyrics as part of the understanding of the album, when many of the words he misunderstood would have been easily recognized by young people in the UK in 1979. While the 33 1/3 series is variable in the quality of its books, this book is worthwhile.

 

© 2015 Christian Perring

 

Christian Perring, Professor of Philosophy, Dowling College, New York