Gang Of Four - Solid Gold (1981)@flac

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. (AMG)

Those not hip to buying non-LP releases missed out on this piece of Gang of Four product, which contains one of their hottest, funkiest songs. "To Hell With Poverty" includes one of the thickest grooves laid down by Hugo Burnham and Dave Allen -- with Andy Gill's charging guitar along for the ride -- as well as one of the band's sharpest lines of sarcastic wit ("To hell with poverty/We'll get drunk on cheap wine"). Taken as a whole the song makes the Red Hot Chili Peppers seem about as funky as Andy Williams and as brainy as -- well, never mind.
"Capital (It Fails Us Now)" and "History's Bunk," though containing decent rhythms, are table scraps. Decent, panicked versions of "Cheeseburger" and "What We All Want" close out the EP, with Gill and Jon King trading lines effectively on the former.
[Another Day/Another Dollar was appended to the 1995 Infinite Zero/American reissue of Solid Gold.] (AMG)