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.