Gang of Four US tour, 2005: May 6, Seattle, at the Showbox, TSA permitting.

For the uncertain, the first two records by the Gang of Four are at the root of the punk sound that can be heard in the work of Mission of Burma and to an extent the Minutemen. Later work by the band was very “dance-oriented” and therefore not nearly as interesting to me.

There’s a well-developed Wikipedia article on the band which may shed light on my excitement.

Man, I love Entertainment and Solid Gold more than nearly any of the other old stuff I have from back then, for what it sounds like and for how rare it was. I suppose that some of the band’s aggressively atonal political polemics must have inspired Crass, among others, but I just never really got into Crass in a musical sense, while I can still sing the words to several GoF songs. Really, no-one else ever sounded like this band, not even themselves.

Apparently Rhino is reissuing Entertainment on May 17, although CD Universe claims a one-day ship for an EMI ’95 reissue. I am wholly unsurprised to find that there is no GoF music available via the iTunes store.

However, a bandmember has made some killer tracks available here, including Anthrax, Not Great Men, and Return The Gift, although, sadly, they appear to be abbreviated samples.