Gang of 4 -- Live in LA 2005

What a party. Avalon on a Thursday night, packed room, killer sound system. Opening act "Morning Wood" delivered an interesting performance and great promotional posters strung up all around the joint. But no one was here for the openers...

Gang of 4 is one of those bands that you either caught the first time, or you didn't. I'm not talking about "catching them live" back in '79-'83; what I mean is, were you on the wavelength back in the day or did you miss their boat? After all, it's one thing to get into a band whose music is interesting but ultimately pretty minimal post-punk/pre-new-wave British bar-bandism; it's another to do so where the band is a handful of cats in their early 20's lyricizing philosophical about the romance of Marxism. Seriously doctrinaire stuff, and pretty amusing in retrospect. "Good to be young" and all that crap...

It's yet another thing again to bear witness to the same handful of cats, 25 years later in a large, posh venue, performing with the same unpolished degree of tuesday evening bar band musicianship, singing those Marxist lullabies. I mean jeezus, these guys are all probably in their 50's now: after the "End of History" a few years after their career peak, and the years of global prosperity that followed communism's collapse in the Soviet sphere, can these guys really still believe this bloat? I don't know, and frankly, that wasn't the problem, as the hordes of fans singing along with every song would surely attest!

The musicianship thing was more than a little annoying, though. All I ask for is the bare minimum competence on one's instrument, especially in a venue like that. Their set would've gone over much better in a place like the Whisky; not that I'm slamming the Whisky, but it has a rougher, dirtier edge that would've made things come together better, all things considered. As it stood, hearing the band butcher the riff on the only later-period song of the night (and their biggest hit), "I love a man in a uniform", I could only think, "What am I doing here?" and wish I'd stayed home, poured a drink and listened to their albums. At least they were recorded at a time when the band could claim at least a modest mastery of their instruments.

So, a couple of days ago I went to Tower Records to see about some new releases (why are records still released months apart in the UK and USA?) and saw a "new" Gang of 4 record, "Give back the Gift". Song listing is a bunch of their old material -- the set list of Thursday night's show, pretty much -- so I threw on some cans and had a go through the tracks at the listening post. It's not often you get a chance to hear the anthemic "To Hell With Poverty" anymore... All was well on that track, but when I checked the songs that I'm more familiar with, I realized that this album is a collection of newly re-recorded versions of their oldest material, thereby giving the listener the benefit of "let's just hang a single mic over here" production quality (v. their original records, the later of which are fairly well-produced and decent sounding) and the aforementioned deteriorated musicianship. C'mon guys, why bother?

At least Hugo Burnham can still lay down a beat like a metronome. He's like clockwork, he really is. As for the rest of them, even a broken clock is right twice a day.