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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Two timepieces, February 6, 2004
Gang of Four's Hard and Solid Gold chronicle a cool little corner of musical history. Solid Gold is a long-forgotten and underappreciated cornerstone of the ground floor of New Wave, while Hard helped set the standard for 808-inspired 80s eurotrash. The music may not be all that great, but you'll be way hipper if you own it.The Solid Gold half of this compilation is the real gem. The songs are droning, sinister, sparse but driving, and obviously incredibly influencial. "What We All Want" could take credit for the band Clinic's body of work as well as Rage Against the Machine's "Bulls on Parade." The Rapture's "out of the races and onto the tracks" is a thinly veiled cover of "Outside the Trains Don't Run On Time." "A Hole in the Wallet" has some of the Chemical Brothers block rockin' beats, and Fugazi ought to just send a thank you note. But as "important" as this album clearly is, it isn't as listenable as some of its contemporaries, such as Gang of Four's "Entertainment!," early works by the Talking Heads, and the Clash. It still kind of kicks ass, though, so if you like the harder side of the indie movement and you're curious where it all came from, this album is probably worth purchasing just for the Solid Gold half. Hard, on the other hand, captures Gang of Four riding the New Wave caboose into well-deserved obscurity. Like its better known contemporaries, Gang of Four succumbed to the temptation to add keyboards, drum machines and overproduced nasally vocals. Hard is listenable, but it could easily be a lost album by Erasure or Depeche Mode. The change experienced by Gang of Four is evident even in its song titles ("In The Ditch" from Solid Gold vs. "Silver Lining" from Hard). While Hard is pretty good (Andrew Gill's guitar riffing keeps things fresh, at least), it hardly compares to the raw vitality of Solid Gold. Let's just hope history is not destined to repeat itself... If you have respect for your elders, you'll go pick this one up. Of course, if you like your medicine with a spoonful of sugar, you might want to try the album Entertainment! instead. Gang of Four sounds a little more like their contemporaries on Entertainment!, which is to say, a little more palatable. Solid Gold has a little more energy and creative fuel, but Entertainment! is probably more fun for the whole family.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Hard is what it is, and is a quite good New Wave funk album, May 4, 2005
I find the reviews here to be somewhat revisionist in their take on this double lp CD. Hard WAS commercially viable, scoring a fairly big pop hit with "Is it Love". It is really a fun album with lots or classic ironic GO4 lyrics and a fair sprinkling of the now fully developed lacerating guitar sound (Gill took his guitar sound to the logical extreme on Songs of the Free). Nearly every british post-punk band went in this basic direction, Captain Sensible scored big pop hits with his funk-rap and pure pop, 999 was a seminal punk band that went farther into disco with "13th Floor madness", Japan began their career with the most unstoppable mix of disco and snarl perhaps ever in the late 70's. The list goes on and not all went to funk/soul, some just went pop. Take American bands like Bad Religion (Into the Unknown is folk pop) and TSOL (not sure what Beneath the Shadows is but I think they may have been trying to copy the Damned's Strawberries). By 1983 there was no where to go with post-punk in England and not much of an audience. With the rise of Hardcore and bands like Discharge and GBH, you would have to get harder to try to fit in and the kids would have laughed at it, seeing GO4 as posuer old men, like they did the Stranglers.
Let's remember that Solid Gold was probably the reason they turned more pop for Songs of the Free. It was not very successful and I did not know many folks that liked it back then. I find the Yellow EP to be the best of their early "darker" sound. Solid Gold almost has none of the melody and hooks that all 3 of their other lps have, including Entertainment. It was a tough listen in the early 80's with all that was coming out at the same time. Sure, now that the Ramone are considered heroes instead of the zeroes they were seen as at the time by the masses, Solid Gold deserves a listen. But when people say GO4 was a huge influence etc, they are usually talking about Entertainment and Songs of the Free, even though they may not admit it now. Why do you think it took so long to put it on CD in the US? It didn't sell! It was the truly failed experiment, sadly.
All in all, this is a great CD from start to end and worth having. Songs of the Free is an absolute must as well as the US pressing of Entertainment (if only for the 4 song Yellow EP included which has different recordings of the 2 songs that made it onto Solid Gold).
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
!!, March 7, 2003
By A Customer
solid gold is basically entertainment's unsociable brother. the same elements that made entertainment! great are still there, but they're hidden behind walls of reverb, dischord, and an overall darker approach. those qualities combine to make solid gold a sometimes uncomfortable listen, but an intriguing one when you're in the right mood. gill's guitar playing is more colorful than it ever was, the allen/burnham rhythm section is powerful & tight, and king sings with passion throughout. music like this can only come from the type of self analyzation where you realize that you don't like the world you're in, but there's not a thing you can do to change it...and then managing to find humor in the situation. a rewarding album that deserves as much attention as entertainment. (note:...i've never listened to hard & nothing i've heard from it on compilations would ever compel me to do so.)
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by Gang of Four 
