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1979 studio album by Gang of Four From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Entertainment! is the debut album by English post-punk band Gang of Four. It was released in September 1979 through EMI Records internationally and Warner Bros. Records in North America. Stylistically, it draws heavily on punk rock but also incorporates the influence of funk, reggae and dub. Its lyrics and artwork reflected the band's left-wing political concerns. Entertainment! became a seminal album in the post-punk movement.
| Entertainment! | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | 25 September 1979 | |||
| Recorded | 1979 | |||
| Studio | The Workhouse, Old Kent Road, London | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 39:53 | |||
| Label | ||||
| Producer | ||||
| Gang of Four chronology | ||||
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In 2020, Entertainment! was ranked at number 273 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
Entertainment! has been recognised as a seminal post-punk album,[1][2] and an example of dance-punk,[3] art punk[4] and funk-punk.[5] The album was co-produced by Jon King and Andy Gill along with Rob Warr, the band's manager at the time. King's lyrics were heavily influenced by Situationism, the work of philosophers Michel Foucault and Jacques Lacan,[6] feminism, and Marx's theory of alienation; a unifying notion is that "the personal is political". Topics include commodification ("Natural's Not in It", "Return the Gift"), proletarian life ("At Home He's a Tourist"), great man theory ("Not Great Men"), the treatment of Special Category Status prisoners at Long Kesh during The Troubles ("Ether"), and the impact of media reporting on acts of terrorism and Maoist guerrilla warfare in Latin America ("5.45"). A number of songs apply these themes to subvert love song tropes, challenging traditional concepts of love ("Anthrax", "Contract") and sex ("Damaged Goods", "I Found That Essence Rare"). In his 2014 monograph on the album, Kevin J. H. Dettmar likens the album to James Joyce's Ulysses, saying: "both are concerned with the importance of narrative, of storytelling, as a mode of experiencing the world... that the stories we tell ourselves about "the way things are"—a body of stories that in another context we might call ideology—profoundly shape our experiences of the world.[7]
The album's cover artwork, designed by King, shows the influence of the Situationist International, a left-wing organization which became famous for inspiring the events of May 68 in France. It depicts an "Indian" shaking hands with a "cowboy" in three heavily processed versions of the same image, based on a still from one of the Winnetou films starring Lex Barker and Pierre Brice, which had once been popular in East Germany as narratives critical of capitalism. Their faces are reduced to blobs of red and white: that is, to their stereotypical skin colours. A text that winds around the images reads: "The Indian smiles, he thinks that the cowboy is his friend. The cowboy smiles, he is glad the Indian is fooled. Now he can exploit him." In this way, it approaches themes of exploitation, but may also criticize simplistic popular depictions of ethnic, social or political conflicts as "cowboys and Indians".[citation needed]
The album's back cover depicts a family whose father says, "I spend most of our money on myself so that I can stay fat", while the mother and children declare, "We're grateful for his leftovers". On the album's inner sleeve, designed by Gill, small photographs depicting scenes shown on television are interlaced with text illustrating what the band suggests are the misleading subtexts of media presentation: "The facts are presented neutrally so that the public can make up its own mind"; "Men act heroically to defend their country"; "People are given what they want".
"At Home He's a Tourist" reached number 58 in the UK Singles Chart, the highest position of any Gang of Four song.[8] The band were originally asked to perform the song on Top of the Pops. However, when the show's producers heard the line "And the rubbers you hide in your top left pocket" they asked the group to change the word "rubbers" to "rubbish" for fear of causing offence; the band refused, and the appearance was cancelled.[9][10]
In 2005, the band performed the album live in its entirety as part of the All Tomorrow's Parties-curated Don't Look Back concert series. In 2009, King wrote a track-by-track commentary on the album for Clash.[6] Hugo Burnham's memories of making the album were published in 2014, on the 35th anniversary of its release.[11]
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |  [12] |
| Blender | [13] |
| Christgau's Record Guide | A[14] |
| Encyclopedia of Popular Music | [15] |
| Entertainment Weekly | A+[16] |
| Pitchfork | 9.5/10[17] |
| Q | [18] |
| Record Mirror | [19] |
| Rolling Stone |  [20] |
| The Rolling Stone Album Guide | [21] |
| Spin Alternative Record Guide | 10/10[22] |
Entertainment! was ranked the fifth best album of 1979 by NME.[23] Reviewing the album in Rolling Stone in 1980, David Fricke regarded Entertainment! as "the best debut album by a British band – punk or otherwise – since the original English release of The Clash in 1977".[24] Creem's RJ Smith, looking back on Entertainment! in 1984, found it to be "the most difficult Gang album, because it's so damn hard to find the front door to the thing. The ugly emotions Entertainment! dredges up are almost freakish, and all the more unsettling for the way they poke unexpectedly through the record's detached, architectonic front."[25]
In 2004, Pitchfork listed Entertainment! as the eighth best album of the 1970s.[26] In 2003, Rolling Stone ranked the album at number 490 on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, raising the album's rank to number 483 in their 2012 update of the list, saying that its "stiff, jerky aggression... invented a new style that influenced bands from the Minutemen to LCD Soundsystem".[27][28] In their 2020 reboot of the list, Rolling Stone ranked the album number 273. In March 2005, Q placed the track "At Home He's a Tourist" at number 52 on its list of the "100 Greatest Guitar Tracks". As of 2009, Entertainment! has sold more than 100,000 copies in the UK.[29] The album was also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.[30]
The album has also attracted praise from rock musicians. Kurt Cobain of Nirvana listed it as one of his 50 favourite albums of all time.[31] Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers stated that the first time he heard the record, "It completely changed the way [he] looked at rock music and sent [him] on [his] trip as a bass player."[32] Michael Stipe of R.E.M. has stated, "Gang of Four could really swing. I stole a lot from them."[33]
"Natural's Not in It" plays over the title sequence of the 2006 film Marie Antoinette. In 2010, Microsoft used it in advertisements for the Kinect.
"Anthrax" was used in the 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate and in the 1986 film Dogs in Space, which featured Michael Hutchence in the lead role; Hutchence cited Gang of Four as a major influence on his band INXS. In 2016, Frank Ocean would sample the song on "Futura Free" from the album Blonde.[34]
In 2014, Kevin J. H. Dettmar wrote a monograph on the album for Bloomsbury's 33⅓ series.[35]
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Ether" | 3:52 |
| 2. | "Natural's Not in It" | 3:09 |
| 3. | "Not Great Men" | 3:08 |
| 4. | "Damaged Goods" | 3:29 |
| 5. | "Return the Gift" | 3:08 |
| 6. | "Guns Before Butter" | 3:49 |
All tracks are written by Gang of Four (Dave Allen, Hugo Burnham, Andy Gill and Jon King).
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "I Found That Essence Rare" | 3:09 |
| 2. | "Glass" | 2:32 |
| 3. | "Contract" | 2:42 |
| 4. | "At Home He's a Tourist" | 3:33 |
| 5. | "5.45" | 3:48 |
| 6. | "Anthrax" | 4:23 |
| Total length: | 39:53 | |
1995 bonus tracks
EMI Records CD issue (mastered by Andy Gill and Jon King) includes the following tracks from the Yellow EP:
Infinite Zero Archive/American Recordings CD issue includes the remaining track from the Yellow EP:
2005 bonus tracks
In addition to the Yellow EP, the Rhino release adds four previously unissued tracks:
Gang of Four
Technical personnel
| Year | Single | Chart | Peak |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1979 | "At Home He's a Tourist" | UK Singles Chart[8] | 58 |
| 1980 | "Damaged Goods"/"I Found That Essence Rare" | US Billboard Dance Club Songs[38] | 39 |
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