July 1981 : That's When I Reach For My New ELO Album

Mission of Burma : That's When I Reach For My Revolver

 On July 4, 1981 Mission of Burma released their debut EP Signals, Calls and Marches on the Ace of Hearts label. Best known for “That’s When I Reach For My Revolver” and “ All World Cowboy Romance”, the “Marquee Moon” of post-punk, the EP’s intense, noisy, yet catchy punk rock sound nearly instantly transformed alternative rock and what we played on college rock radio. My favorite EP of the year, the CD version includes the first single “Academy Fight Song/Max Ernst” and other extra tracks.

Gang of Four : To Hell With Poverty

On July 3, 1981, Gang of Four released the single “To Hell With Poverty”, perfectly encapsulating the Reagan/Thatcher attitude towards people of lesser means. The punky funk number became a dance club hit in America where cheap wine comes in refrigerated boxes.

Foreigner : Urgent

As July of 1981 began, a new song topped FM rock station playlists.  Featuring synthesizers programmed and played by an unknown Thomas Dolby and a sax solo by the legendary Junior Walker, “Urgent” was one of the great booty call songs of the decade. The first single from 4, “Urgent” was a US#4 hit. The album is also a huge seller because most listeners aren't as annoyed as I am by Lou Gramm constantly pushing his vocal range to the breaking point (ie "He heard one guitar/juts blew him away" on "Juke Box Hero").

Electric Light Orchestra : Hold On Tight

Electric Light Orchestra : Yours Truly, 2095

Like a lot of fans I walked away from Electric Light Orchestra following the Xanadu soundtrack and I now realize that was a big mistake. For Time, released July 2, 1981, a concept album about time travel, Jeff Lynne traded his orchestra strings for the sounds of synth pop.  Gary Numan and OMD  are often mentioned as influences, but I hear a lot of New Musik. The album spent two weeks at the top of the UK charts. Its reputation has grown over the decades especially among science fiction fans. I'm posting "Hold On Tight" because it was the only American hit and the music video was the most expensive ever made at the time. But check out "Yours Truly, 2095" to hear why fans were originally baffled by the new ELO.

 

Gang of Four releases follow-up to Entertainment!

Gang Of Four : What We All Want

On March 1, 1981 Gang of Four released the ironically titled Solid Gold, their follow-up to the ironically titled  Entertainment. It's not half as fun as the debut, but just as influential. How many bands used the dark, echoing martial beat of " What We All Want" as a starting point ?

"Cheeseburger", which kicks off Side Two, is a brash swipe at Americans. In a recent Tim's Twitter Listening Party Jon King told the story :

Andy & I were shooting pool in Barney’s Beanery up from the Trop in Hollywood, winner stays on. A couple of half-drunk truckers take us on, they think they’re all that. Spilling their stories over cold Schlitzes, and, to make the game more interesting, place bets. They weren’t as good as they thought, and it was fun taking their money. Verse one & three are the bollocks I could remember the next day. As someone or other may have said, it's not enough to win, someone else must lose.

Though conspicuously absent from most Best of 1981 polls, Solid Gold finished 7th in Robert Christgau's list of the best albums of 1981. He wrote

Only when a jazz critic uttered the word "harmolodic" in conjunction with this music did I realize why I admired it so. Not for its politics, which unlike some of my more ideological comrades I find suspiciously lacking in charity. And not for its funk, which like some of my more funky comrades I find suspiciously lacking in on-the-one. And certainly not for its melodies. I admire it, and dig it to the nth, for its tensile contradictions, which are mostly a function of sprung harmony, a perfect model for the asynchronous union at the heart of their political (and rhythmic) message. Here Jimmy Douglass's production strategy is to cram everything together. Compare the more spacious versions of the two recorded songs on their 1980 EP, and dig those to the nth as well.

Solid Gold peaked at #52 on the UK album charts and at #190 in the US, where it was finally released in May.

 

Greil Marcus's Top Albums and Singles of 1980

Gang of Four : Natural's Not In It

[Purchase]

One of rock criticism's intellectuals, Greil Marcus gave four albums his highest possible score in the Village Voice critics poll. Gang of Four's Entertainment! shared the honor with a live album from Public Image Ltd, the sophomore album from a Pittsburgh bar band and London Calling. He was so blown away the first time he saw Gang Of Four he left the club before The Buzzcocks took the stage so the effect would last longer. On his website, you can read his take on Gang of Four:

In almost every song, you can hear a very specific struggle: the struggle of the person who has heard the bad news to love it. He always fails. He realizes everything he does is second-hand, a waking dream, a dream someone else has dreamed for him—when he walks into a pub and greets friends with a line he’s half-consciously lifted from last night’s sitcom, he’s an advertisement. He hears himself and he feels tricked, humiliated, so he smashes into his friends, into the other members of the band, as if he’s never seen them before but knows they mean him no good. Screaming, he insists that he’s happy.

ALBUMS

Gang of Four: Entertainment! (Warner Bros.) 15; 

Image Publique S.A.: Paris Au Printemps (Virgin import) 15; 

Iron City Houserockers: Have a Good Time (But Get Out Alive) (MCA) 15; 

The Clash: London Calling (Epic) 15; 

Carlene Carter: Musical Shapes (Warner Bros.) 15; 

X: Los Angeles (Slash) 5; 

Roxy Music: Flesh + Blood (Atco) 5; 

Black Uhuru: Sensimilla (Mango) 5; 

Robin Lane & the Chartbusters (Warner Bros.) 5; 

Dire Straits: Making Movies 5. 

SINGLES

The Beat: “Twist & Crawl” (Go-Feet import 12-inch); 

J. Geils Band: “Love Stinks” (EMI America); 

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: “Refugee” (Backstreet); 

Blondie: “Call Me” (Polydor 12-inch); 

The Clash: “Train in Vain” (Epic); 

Red Crayola: “Born in Flames” (Rough Trade import); 

The Beat: “Stand Down Margaret (Dub)” (Go-Feet import 12-inch); 

Delta 5: “You” (Rough Trade import); 

Tommy James: “Three Times In Love” (Millenium); 

Anemic Boyfriends: “Guys Are Not Proud” (Red Sweater).

 

Gang Of Four offer something yellow

Gang Of Four : He'd Send In The Army

[Purchase]

On October 22, 1980 Gang of Four released the Yellow EP, a collection of four previously released singles in the UK, including 1980's "Outside The Trains Don't Run On Time", He'd Send In The Army", Armalite Rifle" and "Its Her Factory". All four songs are now included on CDs of the band's staggering debut Entertainment!, even if they're not quite as good.

To help promote their first two releases Gang Of Four headed off on an America Tour where they were nearly given an opportunity to perform on Saturday Night Live. Instead, they spent night after night performing and day after day explaining their Marxist/Socialist views to music journalists. 

Here's drummer Hugo Burnham to Trouser Press, for instance:

None of us belongs to a political party. Our politics are socialist to differing degrees...Generally speaking, we try to encourage wider thought, appreciation of different attitudes --not just accepting the status quo of attitudes towards other people, be it your wife, your kids of The Russians.

 

That funky down home Leeds sound

Delta 5 : You

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In April of 1980 Leeds art schoolers provided the music world with two great singles. The first, "Anticipation" b/w "You",  came from Delta 5,  a punk-funk band made up of three women and two men ( and two bass players). The women wrote from a feminist perspective. They were aloof, self-assertive and funny. "You" is full of accusations: 

"Who left me behind at the baker's/You, You, You, You/

Who likes sex only on Sundays/ You, You, You, You." 

"Personal relationships are like a microcosm of the whole world and in that was we are commenting on things in general," argued one of the bassists , Bethan Peters, in Simon Reynolds' Rip It Up And Start Again.

Gang of Four : Outside the Trains Don't Run On Time

[Purchase]

April also saw the release of Gang of Four's "Outside The Trains Don't Run On Time" b/w "He'd Send in the Army", the band's first single in nearly a year. Both rock hard while ridiculing out of step beliefs. The first is about a fascist longing for a leader like Mussolini, who was famously credited with fixing the notoriously inefficient train system in Italy. ( He didn't really). "He'd Send in the Army" is about a firm believer in patriarchy who thinks men should rule the world and women should pay back the male breadwinner in the bedroom. The single did not chart.

This review for Smash Hits did not help with sales:

Usual spartan sound and tuneless vocals conspiring to be "hypnotic" or something. You can admire Gang of Four's attempts at forging their own style without finding them remotely attractive. I can't imagine this getting any repeated turntable exercise.

Best of 1979

1979 was a remarkable year for albums and singles. I don 't think we've witnessed a year like that since. In the same year we got The Clash's London Calling, Pink Floyd's The Wall, Gang of Four's Entertainment!, Talking Heads's Fear of Music, Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures and Armed Forces by Elvis Costello and the Attractions. Over the course of the year my admiration for some albums increased, especially Unknown Pleasures, Wire's 154, Pil's Metal Box, Fleetwood Mac's Tusk and The Beat's debut which I wasn't familiar with at the start of the year. Other great discoveries included Tangerine Dream's Force Majeure and Gary Numan's Pleasure Principle, Joe Egan's Out of Nowhere, and the Toms album. 

Fave Albums 1979

The Clash London Calling
Gang of Four Entertainment!
Talking Heads Fear of Music
Joy Division Unknown Pleasures
Elvis Costello Armed Forces

Wire 154
PiL Metal Box
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Damn the Torpedoes
Graham Parker Squeezing Out Sparks
Fleetwood Mac Tusk

XTC Drums and Wires
The Beat
Joe Jackson Look Sharp
The Specials
Sparks No 1 Song in Heaven

Tangerine Dream Force Majeure
Robert Fripp Exposure
The Cars Candy O
Gary Numan Pleasure Principle
The B 52's

Fave Singles

Joy Division Transmission
The Clash London Calling
Wire Outdoor Miner
The Cure Boys Don't Cry
Buzzcocks Everybody's Happy Nowadays/Why Can't I Touch It

XTC Making Plans for Nigel
The Specials Gangsters
Talking Heads Life During Wartime
The Pop Group She is Beyond Good and Evil
The Ruts Babylon's Burning

Undertones Teenage Kicks
Blondie Heart of Glass
Nick Lowe Cruel to be Kind
Prince I Wanna Be Your Lover
Squeeze Up the Junction

Gary Numan Cars
Michael Jackson Don't Stop Til You Get Enough
Chic Good Times
Sugarhill Gang Rappers Delight
Sparks The Number One Song in Heaven

    On Social Media

Promoting this page on Twitter has been fun this year with retweets, likes and responses from Graham Parker, Eric Idle, The Mekons, Gang of Four, Bebe Buell, Mark Stewart of The Pop Group and these two, from Cher and Feargal Sharkey.

Paul Weller's All Time Top Ten

The Jam : Burning Sky

[Purchase]

While promoting Setting Sons, The Jam's Paul Weller took a moment to provide his all time Top 10 song list to a December 1979 edition of Smash Hits. 

Among the bands featured is The Nips, the first band of future Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan

Fellow Mod revivalists Purple Hearts get a nod. They hit the scene just a bit to be as big as they deserved.

Gang of Four's "Waiting For My Elevator" is performed below with members of the Mekons. I don't believe they ever recorded the song. Let me know if I'm wrong.

Anticipating the Stray Cats, Whirlwind's "Boppin' High School Baby" was actually released in 1977.

I still think "Transmission" might be the best song of 1979 though Weller didn't consult me. Almost never does. 

The Problem of Leisure

“When I was putting together the music for Entertainment! I said that what we were doing was going to be hugely influential. Everybody in the band pissed themselves at my pretentiousness."
- Andy Gill

Gang of Four : Natural's Not In It

[Purchase]

On September 25, 1979 Gang of Four released Entertainment!, the band's debut album and one of the five most important of the year. So important that I just spent the past half hour combing through all of the CDs in my basement looking for my copy because it has great liner notes in which Michael Stipe of REM and Flea of Red Hot Chili Peppers talk about how the album changed their lives. 

And I can't find it. Did I leave it in my car and have it stolen? Seriously, where the hell is this album?

We've touched on Gang of Four before. Formed in Leeds in 1977, vocalist Jon King, guitarist Andy Gill, bassist Dave Allen and drummer Hugo Burnham named themselves after the Chinese political faction associated with Mao Tse-tung's widow.  Almost from the start, they had a groundbreaking sound, punk played to a funky beat and lyrics that castigated Thatcherism, consumerism and sexism.

That they would sign with EMI to release their debut album raised some eyebrows.

"We could have hidden away on Rough Trade, say, but we wanted people to hear our music," Gill would explain in an interview that appears in The Mojo Collection. "EMI gave us money and let us get on with it. The sessions were pretty fraught  as were were a very argumentative band . I would try to impose certain syncopated drum patterns on Hugo, and he'd throw his sticks at me  and storm off. We didn't know much about studio techniques, but I knew I wanted a dry sound. We used transistor amps as an anti-rockist gesture--trying to get away from that warm Marshall feel".

Gill would go on to describe the band's lyrics as "a simplistic view of modern capitalism", but there are many lines in the album that have withstood the test of time. 

The problem of leisure What to do for pleasure 
Sometimes I'm thinking that I love you But I know it's only lust 
The worst thing in 1954 was the bikini 
How can I sit and eat my tea, with all that blood flowing from the television.
Love'll get you like a case of Anthrax And that's something I don't want to catch 

The album would finish #5 on NME's year-end list, and #3 on Melody Maker's. It's power has only grown. Sez Pitchfork who names the #8 best album of the 1970's: 

Entertainment! may have been a sarcastic title, but it wasn’t inaccurate. The album is caustic and bursting with disgust for unethical capitalism, opportunist politicians, and consumer society, among other things, but it’s also crafted with amazing pop sensibility—and is, of course, remarkably danceable. 

Still haven't found the Entertainment! cd but here's the Michael Stipe quote :

"Entertainment! shredded everything that came before it. I stole a lot from them."

And the Rubbers You Hide

Gang of Four : At Home He's A Tourist

[Purchase]

On June 7 1979 Gang of Four released  their debut single with EMI, "At Home He's a Tourist" b/w "It's Her Factory". One part punk anthem ( that extraordinary jagged Andy Gill guitar introduction!) , one part dance floor filler, the single would only peak at U.K.#58. Had Holden Caulfield been a character written in 1979 instead of the mid 1940's, he might have shared the alienated viewpoint here. Imagine Caulfield seeking meaning to his existence on a disco floor, with rubbers hidden in his top left pocket. Two steps forward; six steps back.

"It's Her Factory" is the "woke"  melodica driven B side. I hear criticism of  the way the media patronizingly portrays women. All together, one of the best and most essential singles of 1979

Dressed for the H-Bomb

Gang of Four : I Found That Essence Rare (Peel Session)

[Purchase]

On January 18, 1979 BBC Radio 1 aired Gang of Four's sessions for the John Peel Show, giving listeners a preview of four songs from the band's debut album Entertainment!, which wouldn't be released until September. The performances are rawer and raunchier than the ones that would appear on the album. In fact, at the time, the band was still seeking out a record deal. Regarding their sound, Andy Gill told Sounds Magazine "The avant-garde way is to reject everything so that you can be seen as totally different. Cutting out everything that sounds like anything else and losing all rhythm and beat along the way." Not sure what that means, but this needs to be played LOUD!

Fits into a Pram

Gang of Four : Armalite Rifles

[Purchase]

On October 12, 1978 Leeds rockers Gang of Four released its Damaged Goods EP, featuring the title track and "Love Like Anthrax", both of which would appear on the Entertainment album and the anti-violence "Armalite Rifle", about the American designed weapon used by the provisional IRA during 'The Troubles" and nicknamed "the widowmaker".

Armalite rifle use it everyday

 It'll do you damage it'll do you harm 

Blow your legs off blow your guts out 

I disapprove of it so does Dave (Allen, bass player for Gang of Four)

The band's appeal wasn't just in its political statements. It was the music. Dave Allen explained what Gang of Four was doing musically in an interview with Stereo Embers:

The four of us in a rehearsal room deconstructing rock music was a joy for me. If you dig deep, you’ll find influences everywhere, from Wilko Johnson in Andy’s guitar work, repetitive drum patterns that could have been crafted by Can– or, as Hugo has put it, as simply as Charlie Watts – and bass lines inspired by dub reggae and Bootsy Collins.