RhoDeo 1123 Aetix

Hello, Aetix again, the weeks just fly by hmm , btw i just noticed that Sharebee has been down, i sure hope they get their act together soon. Ok todays artists recently released a new album, Content, after 15 years and they needed some financial help of fans to make that possible. It's true that after their burst on the scene with 1979 's Entertainment got mired when 3 years later they scored a semi-disco hit about loving a man in uniform obviously ironic but for real lovers of men in uniforms of which there are way too many, reason to pick up upon that track and subsequently driving the band into a slightly more commercial corner. Sadly when Hard was released their fate was sealed beforehand because many of their oldfans didnt like that they had been dancing besides "Annies" that was not as it should be (shortsightedness on each side of the political spectrum is a big problem). Thus Hard got snubbed hardly deservedly as you can check out here, it did the band in, and although in decades to come they tested themselves and the waters twice in 91, Mall and 96 Shrinkwrapped to no acclaim. Yet an artist has to eat too, and they've kept on touring the world and as mentioned earlier just released a new album, Content.

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Formed in 1977 by Leeds University students Jon King (vocals), Andy Gill (guitar), Dave Allen (bass), and Hugo Burnham (drums), Gang of Four produced some of the most exhilarating and lasting music of the early English post-punk era of 1978-1983. Gill and King, the creative forces in the band, brought together an eclectic array of influences, ranging from the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School of social criticism to the increasingly clear trans-Atlantic punk consensus. In fact the term "Gang of Four" refers to the "big four" Structuralist theorists: Claude Lévi-Strauss, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, and Jacques Lacan, not to be confused with the Maoist Gang of Four in China. Despite the fact that this sounds rife with the potential for being long on rhetoric and short on groove, such was not the case. What made Gang of Four's polemical clang'n'roll so compelling was that it worked as harsh, bracing, and ultimately liberating rock & roll.

The Gang's debut single, Damaged Goods b/w Love Like Anthrax & Armalite Rifle became a No.1 indie chart hit
This led to two outstanding Peel radio sessions, which, with their incendiary live performances, propelled the band to International attention and sold out shows across Europe and North America. They were then signed by EMI records. The group's début single with this label, "At Home He's a Tourist", charted in the British Top 40 in 1979. Invited to appear on top rated BBC music program Top of the Pops, the band walked off the show when the BBC told them that they must sing "packets" instead of "rubbers" as per the lyrics of the song, as the original was too subversive for this TV slot. The single was then banned by BBC Radio & TV, which lost the band support at record label EMI, who began to push another band instead - Duran Duran.

A later single, "I Love a Man in a Uniform", was banned by the BBC during the Falklands war in 1982. The music on their debut album "Entertainment 1 ' shows clearly the influence of punk, yet also incorporates funk and less-obvious influences of reggae and dub, similar to other bands at the time such as Public Image Ltd., Pere Ubu, and Au Pairs. As with these other influential post-punk bands, the bass is mixed much more prominently than it typically is in rock or punk.
The second album Solid Gold was released in 1981, a troubled American tour saw the departure of Allen (who later co-founded Shriekback) , he was replaced on bass by Sara Lee. Songs Of The Free followed in 1982, Hugo Burnham left (got sacked ?) after this album, while Gill, King and Sara Lee recorded the misguided "radical soul/R&B" album " Hard", it signalled that the end was nigh, the now "Gang of Two" released a so-so live album (At the Palace) and called it quits in 1984.

But legends die hard, and Gang of Four experienced a mini-renaissance in the early '90s with the release of two excellent collections (A Brief History of the Twentieth Century and The Peel Sessions Album). King and Gill put together a new Gang of Four and released the tepid but not disgraceful Mall in 1991. Another reunion, from 1995, yielded Shrinkwrapped. Three years later, a double-disc compilation -- 100 Flowers Bloom -- surfaced on Rhino, and the original lineup reconvened in 2004 to tour extensively and release 2005's Return the Gift, featuring re-recordings of their early material.

Hugo Burnham retired as drummer in December 2006 . Mark Heaney, who had recorded drums for "Return the Gift" and played a couple of European shows in the summer of 2006, replaced him full-time playing alongside Allen until, in May 2008, Allen also announced his departure, to be replaced by Thomas McNeice.

In January 2011, the band released a new album, Content, which was very well received. Andrew Perry , writing in Britain's Telegraph newspaper, gave it (21 January 2011) a 5-star rating and said that it was "their best record since the Seventies".

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With its slightly ironic title, Solid Gold is more rhythmically grounded than the fractured nature of Entertainment!, a politically charged, more Teutonic take on funk. Jon King and Andy Gill might have been hooting and hollering in a semiviolent and discordant fashion, but they were saying "think about it" more than "you lot are a bunch of mindless puppets." Abrasiveness was a means to grab the listener, and it worked. The album was issued in an CD expanded version by the EMI Records and Infinite Zero Archive/American Recordings labels in 1995, which added the songs from Another Day/Another Dollar EP.

Gang of Four - Solid Gold and Another Day, Another Dollar    (flac 386mb)

01 Paralysed 3:23
02 What We All Want 5:00
03 Why Theory? 2:34
04 If I Could Keep It For Myself 4:09
05 Outside The Trains Don't Run On Time 3:19
06 Cheeseburger 4:05
07 The Republic 3:22
08 In The Ditch 4:22
09 A Hole In The Wallet 4:05
10 He'd Send In The Army 4:28

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Caveats about live-version/album-available EP ripoffs don't apply to this product, which adds the militantly dialectical "History's Bunk!" and the U.K.-only outside-agitating "Capital (It Fails Us Now)" to the endlessly repeatable "To Hell With Poverty" on the all-studio Live concert versions of the undeniable "What We All Want" and the ineffable "Cheeseburger" complete the EP. Hungry Americans who find Solid Gold dry should taste-test these juicy, nutritious remakes

11 To Hell With Poverty 4:57
12 Capital (It Fails Us Now) 4:01
13 History's Bunk! 2:57
14 Cheeseburger 3:40
15 What We All Want 5:26

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The last studio album the band recorded before it disintegrated in 1984, Hard came under fire from critics and fans alike, both camps skewering this foray into lighter, more dance-oriented territory, screaming bloody sellouts and death-of-our-heroes up and down the streets (mobs). Yes, it's true that, by 1983, the band had abandoned the bite and saliva that drove its once politically fraught lyrics. It proved Jon King and Andy Gill had grown up a little, after the sexed-up disco of the preceding Songs of the Free's "I Love a Man in Uniform," which proved to be one of 1982's biggest club hits, where exactly did one go next ? Hard, of course. Packed with relatively fluffy dance songs -- "Woman Town," "A Man With a Good Car," and the hyper ballad "Is It Love" -- Gang of Four were not so much selling out as catering to a new breed of fans who had embraced Human League's switch to mainstream but neveer understood the liberal positions of the Gang Of Four.

Gang of Four - Hard (240mb)

01 Is It Love 4:41
02 I Fled 3:57
03 Silver Lining 3:56
04 Woman Town 5:18
05 A Man With A Good Car 3:45
06 It Don't Matter 3:55
07 Arabic 3:35
08 A Piece Of My Heart 3:23
09 Independence 4:06

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In later years, some bandmembers claimed that the best Gang of Four album of all was, in fact, this collection of three separate sessions from 1979 and 1981. It's little surprise why -- recorded with brisk, blunt immediacy, Peel Sessions is both a showcase for the band's sheer power and amazing transformation of funk and punk for its own virulent ends, with all three sessions featuring the full original lineup. Good production from Bob Sargeant, who produced all tracks except the last three, helps immensely, while there's no track repetition at all.

Gang of Four - The Peel Sessions Album ( flac 241mb)

01 I Found That Essence Rare 3:12
02 Return The Gift 3:16
03 5.45 3:11
04 At Home He's A Tourist 3:43
05 Natural's Not In It 3:20
06 Not Great Men 3:26
07 Ether 4:01
08 Guns Before Butter 4:28
09 Paralysed 3:20
10 History's Bunk 3:54
11 To Hell With Poverty 3:37


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elsewhere on this blog

from Rhotation 04 Aetix deleted page re-upped

Gang Of Four - Songs Of The Free (82 flac 241mb)

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