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Entertainment! [Extra tracks, Original recording remastered]

Gang of FourAudio CD
4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (105 customer reviews)


Available from these sellers.


Formats

Amazon Price New from Used from
MP3 Music, 20 Songs, 2010 $11.49  
Audio CD, Import, Original recording remastered, 2001 $14.99  
Audio CD, Extra tracks, Original recording remastered, 2005 --  
Vinyl, 2005 $13.99  

Amazon's Gang of Four Store

Music

Image of album by Gang of Four

Photos

Image of Gang of Four

Videos

You'll Never Pay For The Farm
Visit Amazon's Gang of Four Store
for 21 albums, 3 photos, videos, and 1 full streaming song.


Product Details

  • Audio CD (May 17, 2005)
  • Number of Discs: 1
  • Format: Extra tracks, Original recording remastered
  • Label: Rhino
  • ASIN: B0007Z9R8Y
  • Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Music
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (105 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #102,410 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

1. Ether
2. Natural's Not In It
3. Not Great Men
4. Damaged Goods
5. Return the Gift
6. Guns Before Butter
7. I Found that Essence Rare
8. Glass
9. Contract
10. At Home He's A Tourist
11. 5-45
12. Anthrax
13. Outside the Trains Don't Run on Time (Bonus Tracks)
14. He'd Send in the Army (Bonus Tracks)
15. It's Her Factory (Bonus Tracks)
16. Armalite Rifle (Bonus Tracks)
17. Guns Before Butter (Alternate Version) (Bonus Tracks)
18. Contract (Alternate Version) (Bonus Tracks)
19. Blood Free (Live) (Bonus Tracks)
20. Sweet Jane (Live) (Bonus Tracks)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

The same year American college students and FM radio stations found hipness in the Clash's "Train in Vain," a quartet of students from England's Leeds University calling themselves Gang of Four released their debut album. Politically charged and pumped full of extremist theories and punk rock vehemence (and now out of print since 1997), Entertainment continues to rank among the most critically acclaimed and influential records of the post-punk epoch it helped to define. The record is funkified by stop-start rhythms and sharp vocals that mimic Joe Strummer's sing-to-shout shifts, a sound that has turned up in the music of a quarter-century of bands, from the Minutemen to Fugazi. The original 12-song track list--including the vehement slam on media and politics "I Found That Essence Rare" and the punk passion play "Damaged Goods"--is reinforced with all four songs from the band's 1980 EP Yellow, as well as four others never-before-released, including a live cover of the Velvet Underground's "Sweet Jane." --Scott Holter

Product Description

Some of the most powerful, energized, and memorable music of the U.K.'s potent post-punk era of the late '70s and early '80s came from the trailblazing band Gang of Four, and it all started with 1979's stellar Entertainment! Dave Allen, Hugo Burnham, Andy Gill, and Jon King fused punk, funk, explosive prog-rock, and literate and often incendiary lyrics into a signature, groundbreaking sound that would influence countless bands to come. The original album's brilliant 12 tracks are now remastered and bolstered with four tracks from the rare Yellow EP, plus four never-before-released-songs-making this watershed disc sound bigger and better than ever. Warner. 2005.

Customer Reviews

One of the best albums I have ever heard. Jason Ogden  |  21 reviewers made a similar statement
The distortion of the guitar and that funked up base!.... Every element is perfect. Dennis Schafer  |  13 reviewers made a similar statement
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
35 of 38 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Whatever might urge someone to give this album one star out of 5 cannot possibly be validated. This is a ground breaking record - countless bands since have completely ripped off the Gang Of Four's sound - which, by the way, was entirely innovative at the date of its release. If you don't find it so innovative now, chances are you don't have a clue about what was happening in 1979, which makes me wonder why you'd even bother with this album.

Entertainment! stands up with Pink Flag, London Calling, Unknown Pleasures, all those albums that emerged from the post-punk scene to redefine what music was, and to influence so many alternative bands throughout the next 25 some years.

The reissue of this album comes at a perfect time, when bands like the Futureheads and Bloc Party are flourishing, while borrowing heavily from the sound of Entertainment!
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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars GOF's Musical and Thematic Insight needs Rediscovery. January 11, 2002
Format:Audio CD
Take stripped-down punk, add some funky grooves, and top it off with some leftist proselytizing and you have GOF's, "Entertainment!". GOF took the urgent minimalism of Wire's first album ("Pink Flag", 1979) added tight, funky grooves (the guitars sometimes sounded like machine guns, the drums like artillery). This created the perfect environment for GOF's trenchant, oft funny songs describing the dehumanization of modern life. "Entertainment!" could have easily digressed into tedious rhetoric, but for all their ideals GOF swing and have fun; GOF recognize the irony of being part of the commercial system they're criticizing (if you haven't guessed, the album title is ironic).

GOF let you know right off that they're out to expose the myths promoted by commericalism. On the opener, 'Ether', vocalist Jon King knows there's no "happy ever after at the end of the rainbow", and endeavors to expose the "dirt behind the daydream". The choppy guitars and bomb-like drums let you know their inflammatory intentions. On 'Natural's Not in It', they pose the problem, "The problem of leisure, what to do for pleasure", then recognize the quandry of relationships; "Your relations are all power, we all have good intentions, but all with strings attached". On the bleakly comical 'Damaged Goods', King likens a relational break-up to receiving faulty merchandise, and berates his ex with lines like, "Open the till, give me the change you said would do me good, refund the cost, you said you're cheap, but you're too much". 'I Found That Essence Rare' has giddy, sing-along chorus to go along with a spiteful comments about relationships ("See the happy pair smiling close like they're monkeys, They wouldn't think so, but they're holding themselves down"). On the genuinely despairing, '5:45', King watches a military conflict on TV and laments how it becomes morosely enjoyable ("Watch new blood on the 18 inch screen, The corpse is a new personality... Guerilla war struggle is the new entertainment!"). Against post-psychadelic noise, on the closer "Anthrax" King equates love to being "like a beetle on it's back", while guitarist Andrew Gill speaks cynically (like Moe Tucker and Lou Reed) of how most groups use love to sell records.

"Entertainent!" was a profound influence (musically and ideologically) on artists such as REM, Rage Against the Machine, Fugazi, and Red Hot Chili Peppers. But, what makes a historic album is it's prescience: In 1979 GOF exposed the myths commercial culture was just starting to sell and also recognized that everything was becoming entertainment. Now, "Entertainment!" might seem less prescient and more like reportage, but that's a testment the record's brilliance. GOF's vision of a dystopia where everything (even war) is treated as entertainment has sadly become reality. If the record doesn't seem trenchant anymore it's because we've been engulfed by the world it describes. "Entertainment" might be the most cynical album ever made. And it's also one of the best (and most entertaining).

Comment | 
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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars their least likely fan writes... July 7, 2007
Format:Audio CD
i'm a vehement anti-communist loather of the Frankfurt School who think's Jean Luc Godard (GoF's primary inspiration) was the worst thing that happened to cinema, which means I hate pretty much everything these guys stand for ideology-wise, and yet I love this album. It absolutely rocks, even if their class analysis is for the birds. This just goes to show that in rock 'n roll, as with Italian opera, lyrical content counts for little, sound is more powerul than sense. GoF don't write lyrics, they write slogans, but they're as hooky and memorable as Andy Gill's scraping James Brown meets James Blood Ulmer guitar noises. Less like songs than funky ideological football cheers. And Hugo Burnham is an amazing drummer. If you really want to know what this band was all about, hunt down a copy of the video (don't think it's on DVD) "Urgh! A Music War," a multi-artist punk/new wave medley of concert footage from the very early '80's. GoF are utterly riveting, absolute madmen. Though The Cramps out-do them, as Lux's leather pants are only held on him by his member, and he sings an entire song with the mike stuck between his teeth. But that's for another review.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars I'm not really familiar with them.
I'm not really familiar with Gang of Four.I really like the song I love a man in Uniform.I would like to hear more songs like that.
Published 3 months ago by zeke
5.0 out of 5 stars It's just that good
Say what you will about it's politicking. The Ex made fun of them, the political theories are ripped from workers world daily and the like..But the record works. Read more
Published 18 months ago by Daniel E. Kost
5.0 out of 5 stars Great debut! Great album!
Within this debut vinyl (opps...Aged myself...CD!) by Gang Of Four is content as relevant and vital now as it was when it was first released by the band! In a word: Great!... Read more
Published 20 months ago by John F. Napier
1.0 out of 5 stars Wow!
This really REALLY sounds like my balls. Ohhhhhh my god its making me sick with its mediocrity. Its like Punk with musicians who can actually sorta play thier instruments BUT (A... Read more
Published 20 months ago by Robert Keith
5.0 out of 5 stars One of the most important early Punk albums
Especially on this classic album, Go4 played unforgettably edgy songs with hurricane force and deadly intelligence. Read more
Published on May 7, 2011 by Michael Mccormick
5.0 out of 5 stars 5 stars PLUS
How could anyone rate this record less than 5 stars?!

This music blew the lid off back in it's day. Incredible stuff. I saw them twice. Read more
Published on May 14, 2010 by A. Neal
4.0 out of 5 stars Only yesterday I said to MYSELF / somethings I'm doing aren't good for...
Back in the day, a budding hipser had to wade through thousands of vinyl discs to get to one that mattered. Read more
Published on January 12, 2010 by tierny
5.0 out of 5 stars Raging anger that is sonically beautiful
Entertainment by Gang of Four is one of my favorite albums of all time. While it would seem at first as if there was nothing subtle about the music, what with the guitars and... Read more
Published on January 25, 2009 by doctormanny
5.0 out of 5 stars Music that Defined a Time, a Genre, and a Band
At a time and in a genre that had its share of bad music, the release of Gang of Four's "Entertainment!" was one of the highlights of punk rock's early days. Read more
Published on December 25, 2008 by J. Anderson
5.0 out of 5 stars Lyrical & Musical Masterpiece
The scratch guitar funk of this band is the most compelling sound I have ever heard. Every song is infectious. Read more
Published on November 27, 2008 by XraySpex
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