Gang Of Four : Spring 2022 North American Tour

October 18th, 2021 at 10:00 am by The Management

This spring, Gang of Four will embark on a North American tour. Tickets will go on sale Friday October 22nd, 2021. Performances will feature songs from the band’s releases between 1977-1983, including 'Entertainment!' (1979), 'Solid Gold' (1981), and 'Songs of the Free' (1982).

The touring line-up features founding members Jon King (lead vocals) and Hugo Burnham (drums) alongside returning bassist Sara Lee and new guitarist David Pajo (Slint, Aerial M, Papa M). Founding member Dave Allen will not tour with Gang of Four due to personal reasons but remains an essential and vital part of the band.

"I am excited to be back out next Spring with two of my dearest Gangsters and a new one. Jon, Sara, and I cannot wait to make stylin’ loud noises with the fierce and fabulous David Pajo. Bring your hearts and your ear-plugs."– Hugo Burnham

"It's been too long, can't wait to get back at it, be positive, agitate for the good. Getting back together with Sara & Hugo will be wonderful and working with David P will be a blast. A chance to bring light into the darkness." - Jon King


stream / purchase : 'Entertainment!'
stream / purchase : 'Solid Gold'
stream / purchase 'Gang of Four '77-'81'

Tuesday, March 1 Varsity Minneapolis MN
Wednesday, March 2 Bottom Lounge, Chicago IL
Thursday, March 3 Magic Bag, Detroit MI
Friday, March 4 Horseshoe, Toronto ON
Sunday, March 6 Crystal Ballroom, Somerville MA
Monday, March 7 Brooklyn Made, Brooklyn NY
Tuesday, March 8 Underground Arts, Philadelphia PA
Wednesday, March 9 Black Cat, Washington DC
Friday, March 11 Masquerade Hall, Atlanta GA
Saturday, March 12 Exit/In, Nashville TN
Monday, March 14 Mohawk, Austin TX
Tuesday, March 15 Warehouse Live Studio, Houston TX
Wednesday, March 16 Granada, Dallas TX
Friday, March 18 Last Exit Live, Phoenix AZ
Saturday, March 19 Roxy, Los Angeles CA
Sunday, March 20 Casbah, San Diego CA
Monday, March 21 Independent, San Francisco CA
Wednesday, March 23 Neumos, Seattle WA
Thursday, March 24 Rev Hall, Portland OR
Friday, March 25 Fortune Sound Club, Vancouver BC

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Matador Revisionist History Podcast - Episode 3: Gang of Four and Mission of Burma

August 18th, 2021 at 9:58 am by Malcolm

Today, we are thrilled to present the third episode of the Matador Revisionist History podcast, which pairs artists and collaborators to discuss a Matador album celebrating a noteworthy anniversary.

In honor of the 40th anniversaries of Gang of Four’s Solid Gold and Mission of Burma’s Signals, Calls and Marches, we had Jon King and Hugo Burnham sit down with Clint Conley and Roger Miller. Now labelmates on Matador, the two bands met in 1979 when they shared a bill at Boston’s Rat Club. “They were really loud,” recalls Burnham. “We thought we were loud. And wanted to be loud. And were loud. But it’s like, “We’ve got competition here.”



Featuring a theme song by The New Pornographers’ A.C. Newman and new host Matt Sweeney (Superwolves, Chavez), this one-hour conversation traces the origins of the four-decade friendship between two of the most iconic bands in rock history and comes sprinkled with never-before-heard anecdotes, musings on their greatest artistic influences, and deep takes on Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle.

The Matador Revisionist History podcast is available to stream exclusively via Spotify. Listen to episode 3 HERE.

Solid Gold is now available to purchase and stream HERE and Signals, Calls and Marches is now available to purchase and stream HERE.

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Gang Of Four - 'Entertainment!' and 'Solid Gold' Remastered LP/CD Editions Out Today

April 23rd, 2021 at 12:02 pm by The Management

 

Two of Gang of Four’s critical early works, 'Entertainment! '(1979) and 'Solid Gold' (1981),  emastered from the original analog tapes are available today on LP and compact disc.





'Entertainment!'and 'Solid Gold' are also collected in 'GANG OF FOUR: 77-81',  available today on for the first time as a CD box set.

(The CD version of the box will not include the badges or the C90 cassette included in the LP edition. The demo recordings will instead be made available through a download code.)

stream / purchase : 'Entertainment!'
stream / purchase : 'Solid Gold'
stream / purchase 'Gang of Four '77-'81'

A new tribute album, 'The Problem of Leisure: A Celebration of Andy Gill and Gang of Four', will be released in May via Gill Music and features contributions from Flea and John Frusciante, Warpaint, La Roux, and more.

 



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Out Today : Gang Of Four - 77-81 Box Set

March 12th, 2021 at 10:54 am by Gerard

After some manufacturing delays, the long-anticipated Gang Of Four 77-81 box set is available in stores today.   A compact disc edition will be available on May 8.

In addition, remastered version of 'Entertainment!' and 'Solid Gold' are available on streaming services starting today.

At 1opm eastern today (Friday, March 12)  Tim Burgess' "Tim's Twitter Listening Party" turns the program's attention to 'Entertainment!'



In addition, at 2pm eastern, Jon King and Hugo Burnham will take part in an Reddit AMA.

77-81 Tracklist

Entertainment!
A1. Ether
A2. Natural’s Not In It
A3. Not Great Men
A4. Damaged Goods
A5. Return The Gift
A6. Guns Before Butter
B1. I Found That Essence Rare
B2. Glass
B3. Contract
B4. At Home He’s A Tourist
B5. 5.45
B6. Love Like Anthrax
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Gang of Four - 'Entertainment!' and 'Solid Gold' LP & CD Reissues

March 1st, 2021 at 10:00 am by The Management

"Gang of Four, in a way, were the great missing link that led us all down a road of austerity of sound, and discipline of method.
You could be fooled into thinking they are minimalist, but these are keenly arranged tracks that trade on the currency of suspense, and the power of reduction. The lyrical layer is poetic, passionate and painfully human." - Brendan Canty, Fugazi

“When I was 14, no album gave me more excitement than Entertainment! It was the first album that I wore out the vinyl grooves on. I learned the words and could "sing" along with it. Songs Of The Free and Solid Gold followed suit. Gill and King, along with Boon, McCulloch and Stipe, were rock gods for me. "
Bob Nastanovich, Pavement

On April 23, Matador Records will reissue two of Gang of Four’s critical early works, 'Entertainment! '(1979) and 'Solid Gold' (1981). Both have been remastered from the original analog tapes and will be made available on LP and CD.

Gang of Four’s debut record, 'Entertainment!', remains one of the most beloved and influential works of its era (or any era, really) – an unparalleled collection of songs that has left an indelible mark on generations of bands, producers, and artists.

The group’s second album, 'Solid Gold', celebrates its 40th anniversary today.

It boasts a much deeper, bass heavy sound and contains the singles "Outside the Trains Don't Run On Time" and "He'd Send In The Army."





'Entertainment!'and 'Solid Gold' are also collected in 'GANG OF FOUR: 77-81', due out March 12 on LP and April 23 on CD.

This stunning limited-edition box set gathers Gang of Four’s influential early work – the two aforementioned full-lengths, an exclusive singles LP, and an exclusive double LP of the never officially released 'Live at American Indian Center 1980'. Additionally, the package includes two new badges, a C90 cassette tape compiling 26 never-before-issued outtakes, rarities and studio demos from 'Entertainment!' and 'Solid Gold', and an epic 100-page, full-color hardbound book.

The book details the history and legacy of the original Gang of Four with never-before-seen photos, contributions from surviving original band members, rare posters, ephemera, flyers, essays, artwork, liner notes and more. It also marks the first official publication of their lyrics.

The CD version of the box will not include the badges or the C90. The demo recordings will instead be made available through a download code.

stream / purchase : 'Entertainment!'
stream / purchase :  'Solid Gold'
stream / purchase 'Gang of Four '77-'81'

A new tribute album, 'The Problem of Leisure: A Celebration of Andy Gill and Gang of Four', will be released in May via Gill Music and features contributions from Flea and John Frusciante, Warpaint, La Roux, and more.

This month, 'Solid Gold' and 'Entertainment!' will be featured on #timstwitterlisteningparty, where Dave Allen, Hugo Burnham, and Jon King will comment on the songs throughout playback. Tune in for those at 6pm GMT on 3/1 and 3/12 respectively.



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Gang of Four - "Elevator" Premiere, "Damaged Goods" Lyric Video, New Release Date For '77-'81' Box (Now Available On CD)

February 2nd, 2021 at 10:03 am by The Management

(photo : Jay Schwartz)



"Elevator" (demo)
Motion design by Michael Speed



("Damaged Goods" lyric video
Motion design by Michael Speed Original concept by Craig McNeil)

Initially scheduled for release last year, but delayed due to production issues, we are pleased to announce that 'GANG OF FOUR: 77-81' will now be out March 12 and available in LP and CD editions.

This stunning limited-edition box set gathers Gang of Four’s influential early work – including 'Entertainment!' and 'Solid Gold' (both remastered from the original analog tapes), an exclusive singles LP, and an exclusive double LP of the never officially released 'Live at American Indian Center' 1980. Additionally, the package includes two new badges, a C90 cassette tape compiling 26 never-before-issued outtakes, rarities and studio demos from 'Entertainment!' and 'Solid Gold', and an epic 100-page, full-color hardbound book.

The book details the history and legacy of the original Gang of Four with never-before-seen photos, contributions from surviving original band members, rare posters, ephemera, flyers, essays, artwork, liner notes and more. It also marks the first official publication of their lyrics.

The CD version of the box will be out April 23rd. It will not include the badges or the C90. The demo recordings will instead be made available through a download code.

Today, you can watch a lyric video for the song “Damaged Goods” and listen to the demo of the unreleased song “Elevator,” which is included on the cassette.



Gang of Four’s Jon King on “Elevator”:

Andy & I both lived in a shitty house in Leeds where we used to sing The Band or Muddy Waters songs, chugging disgusting homebrew beer that I fermented in a dustbin. We started writing songs - mostly homages to Dr. Feelgood or the Velvets - recording them on a crappy cassette player. Inspired by the New York scene and with UK punk rock on a thrilling rampage, Hugo, Gill, and I formed a band.

The first couple of gigs were those early songs and a fast Beatles cover. Dave joining us raised the bar. He was really good, and we quickly came up with new material we all wrote together, built on grooves from Dave & Hugo, over which Andy and I would improvise until we’d got somewhere.

“Elevator” always worked well live. It was a keeper until it wasn’t. By the time we got into the Workhouse studio to record ‘Entertainment', it was in the dumper. I’d forgotten ever writing it until it was dug up for the box set cassette. I like it: the jangly riff, propulsive rhythm, and dopey lyrics take me right back to the day.

 



Yesterday marks the one-year anniversary of Andy Gill’s passing. A new tribute album, 'The Problem of Leisure: A Celebration of Andy Gill and Gang of Four', will be released in May via Gill Music and features contributions from Flea and John Frusciante, Warpaint, La Roux, and more.





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Coming December 11 : Gang Of Four 77-81 Box Set

October 28th, 2020 at 9:58 am by The Management

(photo : Andy Corrigan)







"He'd Send In The Army" (live, 1981)

preorder Gang Of Four 77-81

"As a kid, I stumbled upon a copy of Gang of Four’s Entertainment! accidentally and it went on to become one of the most influential records of my life as a producer, lyricist and fan of music in general. Their sparse, unorthodox, riff heavy guitars and nasty, funky, in-the-pocket rhythm section drew me in, but it was their questioning of the world that kept me listening as I grew. I consider them a seminal band, whose influence and effect permeates the music world in a deeper way than many realize. Thank you, Gang of Four, for existing." - EL-P

On December 11th, Matador will release GANG OF FOUR: '77-81'', a stunning, limited edition box set gathering Gang of Four’s influential early work.

The box set contains Entertainment!' and 'Solid Gold' (both remastered from the original analog tapes), an exclusive singles LP, and an exclusive double LP of the never officially released 'Live at American Indian Center 1980'. Additionally, the package includes two new badges, a C90 cassette tape compiling 26 never-before-issued outtakes, rarities and studio demos from 'Entertainment!' and 'Solid Gold', and an epic 100-page, full-color hardbound book.

The book details the history and legacy of the original Gang of Four with never before seen photos, contributions from surviving original band members, rare posters, ephemera, flyers, essays, artwork, liner notes and more. It also marks the first official publication of their lyrics.

Gang of Four was formed in Leeds in 1976 by bassist Dave Allen, drummer Hugo Burnham, guitarist Andy Gill, and singer Jon King. The band pioneered a style of music that inverted punk’s blunt and explosive energies — favoring tense rhythms, percussive guitars, and lyrics that traded in Marxist theory and situationism. They put every element of the traditional “rock band” format to question, from notions of harmony and rhythm to presentation and performance.

This original lineup of the band released two monumental albums, 'Entertainment!' (1979) and 'Solid Gold '(1981). A third, 'Songs of the Free' (1982), was recorded with bassist Sara Lee replacing Dave Allen. After 'Songs Of The Free', Burnham departed the band and Andy Gill and Jon King continued on to release Hard in 1983. After this release, the band broke up. In 2004, the original quartet reformed for tour dates and released 'Return The Gift' (2005).

Gill’s untimely death in February 2020 was cause for many to once again re-examine the group’s catalog and the legacy of these early releases was widely cited. Not only did Gang of Four’s music speak to the generation of musicians, activists, writers, and visual artists that emerged in the group’s immediate wake, but the generation after that. And the generation after that, even.

In the last few years, their songs have continued to resonate with and been sampled by artists far afield including Run the Jewels (“The Ground Below”) and Frank Ocean (“Futura Free”). Now forty years since the original release of 'Entertainment!', Gang of Four’s legacy cannot be overstated.

(Please note this boxset is ony available in the United States. If you would like to order the boxset from outside of the US please send an email to: [email protected] with your name and email address with the subject line ‘Gang of Four Boxset’ to get the first news about ordering)

At Home We Feel Like Purists

Music, specifically pop music, is as much of a commodity as pork bellies. It's bought, packaged, sold, traded and has as little to do with the Platonic triad of beauty, goodness and truth as, well, pork bellies. And it hasn't just become this way. It's been this way. From its inception to now, its value is what's made it significant in the marketplace. But pressed against a wooden stage in New York at Hurrah's in the late 1970s, what stepped out on stage had nothing to do with any kind of commercial calculus. That I could see.

See, in 1979, after a steady diet of The Ramones, the New York Dolls, Klaus Nomi, fer chrissakes, and on the strength of the name alone, a single, the press and the locale, the Gang of Four was a must see. But wrapped in the earlier vaudevillian aspect of punk rock, new wave, no wave, and a sort of well-meaning but very extant schtick, expectations were in keeping with what had already been seen. But what had been seen would in no way prepare you for what you were about to see.

Four Brits, no leather jackets, no make-up, and outside of an opening song with about two minutes of unremitting feedback, no schtick.

"We all grew up around vaudeville. It was part of the zeitgeist," said drummer Hugo Burnham, from outside of Boston where he toils in academia and presently makes his home. But Gang of Four? "It was anti-schtick. And it was somewhat deliberate because we were serious about what we were doing but we weren't dour. We didn't go as far as the shoegazing thing."

Which is almost right. Gone was the clever art school quirk of Talking Heads or the mordant rumble of a Joy Division, musicians framing what we were understanding about new music at the time. Replaced instead with something that was equal parts both cool and hot, and when they tore into their set that night it was with a life-changing brio.

No "Hello Cleveland!" No foot on the front wedge rock god posturing, just songs and songs played like those that were playing them meant it. It, here, being coruscating takes on very precisely what it was we were doing while we were doing it. Again: not by accident. But very specifically, deliberately.

"We sat in pubs and talked about it," Burnham said. Right down to things like, "No fucking feet on the monitors."

What Burnham fails to mention and this is an amusing Rashomonesque feature of chatting with the three members still living – Burnham, singer/lyricist Jon King, and bassist Dave Allen – is that the no-feet-on-the-monitors "chat" didn't happen in a pub. King, in a call from London, offers an alternate scenario.

"It happened backstage after a show in what used to be Yugoslavia," King laughs. "And it involved a fistfight." So Gill and Allen settled things the old-fashioned way and while it's unknown who won, at the Hurrah's show there were no feet on monitors.

What there was though after the generalized sexlessness of punk rock -- from Johnny Rotten declaring sex "boring" and for "hippies" and Minor Threat's Ian MacKaye singing that he didn't fuck – was music and performance of said music that was as somatic as all get out and that very directly addressed love, sex, the politics of both, and their wider intersection with politics in total.

But first a little historical political perspective and a sense of the tableau upon which whatever Gang of Four was, was created. In the late 1970s in the U.K., there was 14 percent inflation, 18 percent in 1980, one in five adult males were out of work, interest rates were 14 percent, and there was massive industrial unrest.

"In '78 and '79 it was called the Winter of Discontent," King said of the hellscape that England had been even before Thatcher dug in. "There were piles of garbage four meters high in the street, people weren't going to be buried because there was a strike of mortuary workers and grave diggers, there were dozens of IRA terror attacks in mainland UK, there were plotters looking to pull a coup d'etat, plus Russian SCUD missiles in eastern Europe and Americans sending Pershing missiles to NATO, so threats of nuclear attack. Songs like 'In the Ditch' on Solid Gold? That was the context we were working with."

And given that context, a steadfast mark of Gang of Four's genius that they didn't zig into what was a popular pose at the time (and still really) and try to pull off the working class hero crap that had smart people dumbing down in the name of some sort of shopworn idea of what was authentic. That is, the Gang of Four were driven and obsessed with what middle class art school students should be obsessed with: making great music and art in and of the times they are living, fully realizing that you can't fake authenticity.

Which is when King zags and contemporizes it all. Like he does. Like Gang of Four did. "What's interesting is buying a cup of coffee now: they ask you 'what's your name?' and they insist on knowing what it is. These fake relationships masquerading as real relationships when we all know it's a masquerade."

"Look, in looking back I have decided I really like this sort of troublesome 21-year-old me who wrote these totally un-commercial songs," said King. But the charm, at least for the creator, is that "there's nothing in it that is an attempt to pander to people. And it may sound kind of stupid but I kind of thought of us as like a blues band."

"So I tried to avoid cliché, but it's quite difficult trying to not write about things that everyone else was writing about," King explains." But there's a reason hip-hop is the biggest genre in the world now and that's because it's got some authenticity about it; it talks about things that are actually happening. The world is a shit show now. To not write about it is a remarkable evasion of responsibility."

Something that wasn't missed in 1979 New York either with crime at an all-time high and the city collapsing financially. So mid-set when King dragged a metal crate on stage – "we later switched to a microwave," Burnham said – and started blasting it with a drum stick it was both the sound of the city and the times all at once.

Adding percussive elements in and from trash, well in advance of Einsturzende Neubaten and even Stan Ridgway from Wall of Voodoo who Burnham initially thought they had lifted it from ("No," corrects King), this was a perfect sweat-drenched statement of intent: Gang of Four absolutely were not fucking around.

And it was perhaps this quality specifically that drew the heavy. "We were political with a small P," said bassist Dave Allen who followed a post-Gang of Four career with music tech gigs at both Apple and Intel, which is how he ended up in Portland. "But we were fighting Nazis. The fascists that came to the shows. They would jump onstage when we were playing in London, skinheads, and they had knives." Allen, in general soft spoken, neither laughs nor smiles in the retelling. "The security guards would all run away. Having a big heavy bass in this instance helped quite a bit."

But before reforming in 2005, Allen was the first to leave Gang of Four, in 1981, and his leaving was part of that whole not fucking around piece and almost perfectly Gang of Four-ish. "EMI were always pushing us. They wanted us to make 'hits'. Be on the radio. Top of the Pops," Allen sighs. "That's not what we do. We don't make pop songs. But they had all of these pretty boys. Duran Duran…so I just felt like I had done enough."

And despite the fact though that 25 percent of the band is dead, 25 percent is talking to me via video chat, and 50 percent of the band is in America, the claim that there are no second acts in American lives? Clearly bullshit and so not a surprise at all when Allen says, "we need to find a guitarist."

The 2005 reunion only lasted a few years, but Andy Gill continued with replacement musicians and died right in the midst of touring with them. He left giant shoes to fill. But even considering trying to fill them? A straight-up damn the torpedoes move. To which they are well matched.

"When you try to audition a guitar player they just can't do it," Allen winds up. "They come in blasting thinking it is punk, but we were post-punk. It was us and Wire…"

It certainly was.

And in 1979 when the show at Hurrahs concluded, and they stood on stage for the briefest of moments, drenched in sweat, not smiling as they regarded us the audience, also drenched in sweat, and said "goodnight", it felt like marching orders. And they were.

For? For a murderer's row of people whose music not only kills but lives on in our cars, houses, phones, heads: The Pixies, Nirvana, Shellac, REM, Mission of Burma, Bush Tetras, Savage Republic, 10,000 Maniacs, Mark Stewart, Henry Rollins, Steve Shelley, Sofia Coppola, and more too numerous to name but no less deserving.

Now draw a family tree that across the past 40 years of influencing just about anyone making music, film, or art who proudly claims and proclaims some sort of spiritual connection to the Gang of Four and what have you? A veritable bildungsroman of the greatest things to just about ever happen to your fucking ears. Believe me. I know.

– Eugene S. Robinson (Oxbow)

Tracklist

Entertainment!
A1. Ether
A2. Natural’s Not In It
A3. Not Great Men
A4. Damaged Goods
A5. Return The Gift
A6. Guns Before Butter
B1. I Found That Essence Rare
B2. Glass
B3. Contract
B4. At Home He’s A Tourist
B5. 5.45
B6. Love Like Anthrax
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Gang Of Four - First 3 Albums, 14 Concert Recordings Now Streaming

July 15th, 2020 at 10:08 am by The Management

(photo : Andrew Corrigan)

We are pleased to announce that Matador Records will now oversee a number of key catalog titles by the legendary Leeds band Gang of Four, including the classic albums 'Entertainment!' (1979), 'Solid Gold' (1981), and 'Songs of the Free' (1982).



These records are once again available across streaming services and are joined by 14 live releases capturing performances between 1979 and 1984. Find a curated playlist of highlights from the live tapes here.

Gang of Four was formed in 1976 by bassist Dave Allen, drummer Hugo Burnham, guitarist Andy Gill, and singer Jon King. The band pioneered a style of music that inverted punk's blunt and explosive energies — favoring tense rhythms, percussive guitars, and lyrics that traded in Marxist theory and situationism. This first lineup of the group released two monumental albums, 'Entertainment!' (1979) and 'Solid Gold '(1981). A third, 'Songs of the Free' (1982), was recorded with Sara Lee replacing Allen. These records have endured as a formative influence, not only to subsequent generations of musicians, but also activists, writers, and visual artists.



“Ether,” the introductory track on 'Entertainment!', was recently sampled by Run The Jewels, who used the song’s core riff to form the backbone of their track “the ground below” on the  newly released 'RTJ4'.

More to come.

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