The Gang of Four - BBC Sessions (1979-1982)

The Gang of Four are the next musical act to get the BBC treatment. I'm interested mainly in their original years together, 1978 to 1982. (Like so many musical groups, there were various reunions later.) As far as I know, they didn't do any BBC concerts in that time frame, and this one album is all there is.

The first 11 songs here have been officially released as "The Peel Sessions Album." If that was all there was, I wouldn't be posting this, since the official album took care of things perfectly. But that's not the case. Those 11 tracks just happen to be all the BBC sessions with DJ John Peel. They also did two appearances on the BBC TV show "The Old Grey Whistle Test" (tracks 12 to 14), and another BBC session with DJ Kid Jensen (tracks 15 to 18). All of those are unreleased, so I figure that's enough to justify putting them all together here.

The sound quality is excellent all the way through, for both the released and unreleased tracks. Two of the Old Grey Whistle Test songs were done before a studio audience, but it was a small one, and there's only a bit of clapping at the ends of those.

This album is an hour and six minutes long.

01 I Found That Essence Rare (Gang of Four)
02 Return the Gift (Gang of Four)
03 5.45 (Gang of Four)
04 At Home He's a Tourist (Gang of Four)
05 Natural's Not in It (Gang of Four)
06 Not Great Men (Gang of Four)
07 Ether (Gang of Four)
08 Guns Before Butter (Gang of Four)
09 Paralysed (Gang of Four)
10 History's Bunk (Gang of Four)
11 To Hell with Poverty (Gang of Four)
12 He'd Send in the Army (Gang of Four)
13 Call Me Up (Gang of Four)
14 I Love a Man in a Uniform (Gang of Four)
15 The World at Fault (Gang of Four)
16 I Will Be a Good Boy (Gang of Four)
17 History of the World (Gang of Four)
18 We Live as We Dream, Alone (Gang of Four)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/WdKgyHdN

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/vxXxH6NUndQ0UVF/file

I had fun making this particular album cover. I was searching the Internet for a good photo of the band, and came across one where the band members were posing dramatically, with their fists in the air. That reminded me of the dramatic statues of Communist countries like Russia and China. Perhaps that was intentional in the photo session, since the band is named after four political leaders from Communist China. But in any case, I found a photo of two giant bronze statues in North Korea. I used Photoshop to get rid of those, and then pasted in the band, and colorized them to look bronze.

The Gang of Four - Nashville Ballroom, London, Britain, 2-24-1979

In my opinion, the Gang of Four peaked early, around the time of their classic 1979 album "Entertainment!" It would have been nice to have a live album from then around then. But, for decades, the only live album was from 1984, after personnel and style changes, and was known for its surprisingly poor sound quality. 

Then, in 2020, the situation radically changed, with the release of 15 live albums all at once, most of them from the band's early years. Now the problem in my opinion was too much stuff instead of not enough. I did some research and found that fans think this Nashville Ballroom album has the best sound from their peak year. But unfortunately the band typically played short sets at the time, and this one was only 40 minutes long. That wasn't enough to include all of their key songs they played in concert at the time. 

So I found another one of those 2020 releases of a concert later in 1979 that has five songs that weren't played in the Nashville Ballroom show. These are from The Edge in Toronto, Canada. I've added them in. The result is probably the best sounding and most complete 1979 concert recording from them you're ever likely to hear.

However, there was a problem: the Toronto songs didn't sound as good as the others. In particular, the vocals were low in the mix. So I used the audio editing program X-Minus to boost the vocals for all five of those songs. While doing that, I also noticed the vocals on one section of the song "At Home He's a Tourist" from the Nashville Ballroom were unusually low. (It's a section with a second vocalist, and those vocals were the problem.) So I used the same process to boost those vocals too. 

This album is 53 minutes long.

01 I Found That Essence Rare (Gang of Four)
02 5.45 (Gang of Four)
03 Anthrax (Gang of Four)
04 Elevator (Gang of Four)
05 Hold Up My Weekend (Gang of Four)
06 Armalite Rifle (Gang of Four)
07 It's Her Factory (Gang of Four)
08 Glass (Gang of Four)
09 Damaged Goods (Gang of Four)
10 Ether (Gang of Four)
11 At Home He's a Tourist [Edit] (Gang of Four)
12 Return the Gift (Gang of Four)
13 Contract [Edit] (Gang of Four)
14 Not Great Men [Edit] (Gang of Four)
15 Guns Before Butter [Edit] (Gang of Four)
16 Rosanne [Edit] (Gang of Four)
17 Can't Stand My Baby [Edit] (Gang of Four)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15117977/Gango4_1979_NshvilleBallroomLondon__2-24-1979_atse.zip.html

I couldn't find any good color photos of the band in concert in 1979. However, I did find one I liked from 1980, so I used that. The band's personnel was still the same.

The Gang of Four - To Hell with Poverty - Non-Album Tracks (1978-1982)

If you're not familiar with the Gang of Four, you should check them out. They didn't sell a lot of records back in their 1970s and 1980s heyday (except for their fluke hit single "I Love a Man in a Uniform"), but their musical style has been highly influential. Their first two albums, 1979's "Entertainment!" and 1981's "Solid Gold" are considered classics, and their third album, "Songs of the Free," is pretty good as well. Rolling Stone Magazine lists "Entertainment!" as one of the 500 best albums of all time. But they had a bunch of excellent songs that didn't get on any of those albums. So here's a stray tracks collection gathering up all their worthy songs that didn't make it on their albums from their classic years, 1978 to 1982.

In my opinion, there are two things that make the band stand out. One is the guitar playing of Andy Gill, which was somehow simultaneously abrasive and melodic. The other is the political nature of their lyrics, which was very unusual at that time. One Rolling Stone Magazine writer called them "probably the best politically motivated band in rock and roll."

Seven of the songs here are from EPs or singles that were released back in those years. They contain some exceptional songs, like "To Hell with Poverty" and "Capital (It Fails Us Now)." Some other songs were released as singles and such, but I haven't included those if versions appeared on their studio albums, even if those versions were somewhat different. However, I have included an alternate version of "Contract," a song on the "Entertainment!" album, because this version is significantly different, with most of the lyrics in particular being changed. 

I've also included a bunch of rarer songs. Most of these were taken from the 2021 box sex "77-81." That contains lots of demos and rare tracks, but frankly in my opinion, most of those are only of marginal interest. Some suffer from poor sound quality, while others are embryonic versions of songs the band improved upon later. But the songs I considered worthy are included here. Two are covers done in concert ("Rosanne" by the Mekons and "Sweet Jane" by the Velvet Underground). 

The first five songs here are all originals that weren't released at the time. For two of those, "Information" and "Blood Free," plus the cover of "Rosanne," the vocals were recorded quite low in the mix. So I used the sound editing program Spleeter to separate the songs into tracks and then boost the vocals. (Note by the way that the "77-81" box set calls "Information" "Song One" and "Blood Free" "Song Two," but their correct names are known from other versions that were played in concert.) There are a few other rare songs that I didn't include here, because the sound quality was too low, or the songs themselves simply weren't that good.

PJ over at his blog "Albums I Wish Existed" posted an album of Gang of Four rarities that's very similar to this one. Due to that effort, I wasn't going to post anything. But thanks to the release of the box set mentioned above, some material has come to light that makes that different enough from PJ's version to merit interest, I think.

I've included three bonus tracks. All three sound pretty good. I've included a live version of "Blood Free" because this is a rare original by the band, and this version sounds about as good as the studio version I've included. I had a hard time deciding which one to include, so I've added both. The other two bonus tracks are live songs included on the 1982 EP "Another Day / Another Dollar." I don't think they're essential stray tracks, but they're here for anyone who wants everything from that EP that wasn't put on one of the band's albums.

This album is 48 minutes long, not counting the bonus tracks.

01 Elevator (Gang of Four)
02 Silence Is Not Useful (Gang of Four)
03 Information [Edit] (Gang of Four)
04 Blood Free [Edit] (Gang of Four)
05 Hold Up My Weekend (Gang of Four)
06 Contract [Alternate Version] (Gang of Four)
07 It's Her Factory (Gang of Four)
08 Armalite Rifle (Gang of Four)
09 Rosanne [Edit] (Gang of Four)
10 Sweet Jane (Gang of Four)
11 To Hell with Poverty (Gang of Four)
12 Capital [It Fails Us Now] (Gang of Four)
13 History's Bunk (Gang of Four)
14 Lord Make Me a Cowboy (Gang of Four)
15 The World at Fault (Gang of Four)

Blood Free [Live] (Gang of Four)
Cheeseburger [Live] (Gang of Four)
What We All Want [Live] (Gang of Four)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15602713/Gango4_1978-1982_ToHllwithPovrty_atse.zip.html

The cover art is simply the original cover of the "To Hell with Poverty" single. (It was released as a single in some countries as well as part of an EP.) However, I made some changes. For one thing, I erased the name of the B-side, which was written near the bottom of the cover. I also could only find a low-res version of the original cover, so I used some Photoshop tricks to sharpen the picture and generally clean it up.