Gang Of Four - Solid Gold & Another Day / Another Dollar (1996)

• Digitally remastered edition of the Gang of Four's second album. They were one of the most challenging and impressive bands to emerge from the British punk scene, railing against organized tools of politics and power disguised as entertainment media. They wanted to point this out to people, wanting to make listeners think about the world around them. They did this in a style of their own with a semi-violent delivery used to grab the listener's attention... and boy did it work. The music on "Solid Gold" is almost an almighty row coupled with their thought provoking lyrics. This unlikely combination actually crafted tunes that are often catchy and danceable. This special reissue includes the tracks that were released in between this and their third studio album, the "Another Day Another Dollar" EP that includes the hit "To Hell with Poverty" and live versions of "Cheesburger" and "What We All Want". The New Wave at it's highest brilliance.

• Gang of Four's existence had as much to do with Slave and Chic as it did the Sex Pistols and the Stooges, which is something Solid Gold demonstrates more than Entertainment! Any smartypants can point out the irony of a band on Warner Bros. railing against systematic tools of control disguised as entertainment media, but Gang of Four were more observational than condescending. True, 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. Reciting Solid Gold's lyrics on a local neighborhood corner might get a couple interested souls to pay attention. It isn't poetry, and it's no fun; most within earshot would just continue power-walking or tune out while buffing the SUV. Solid Gold has that unholy racket going on beneath the lyrics, an unlikely mutation of catchiness and atonality that made ears perk and (oddly) posteriors shake. 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. It's a form of release for paranoid accountants. Financial concerns form the basis of the subject matter; the hilarious but realistic "Cheeseburger" is a highlight with its thinly veiled snipe at America: "No classes in the U.S.A./Improve yourself, the choice is yours/Work at your job and make good pay/Make friends, great/Buy them a beer!" This is a nickel less spectacular than the debut, but owning one and not the other would be criminal. [Solid Gold was reissued in 1995 on Warner subsidiary Infinite Zero/American, with Another Day/Another Dollar appended.] ~ Andy Kellman