LETTER BOMB FOR TED BAXTER: GANG OF FOUR OUT OF UNIFORM

LETTER BOMB FOR TED BAXTER: GANG OF FOUR OUT OF UNIFORM

Laura Fissinger

Whatever it is that's doing a George Romero on the American Dream is finally starting to do it in such bastions of good life as Minneapolis, Minnesota. People used to sit around here and feel safe from everything but six-month winters. Not any more. Can you imagine Mary Tyler Moore living on unemployment, selling all her Air Supply records, and getting drunk with Lou because she's starting to get PISSED OFF?

Hang on, Mary. Here comes the Gang Of Four.

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Because they 1) have had no "hit" up until now, 2) do not "project personality," thus encouraging general public buzz among the hip and groovy, and 3) seem pretty goddamn SERIOUS, Gang Of Four's rep among the unconverted centers around oh-yeah-the-political-band-whoaren't the Clash. Even the Clash have had to wrestle with the edict that says political bands can't be any fun; after all, Nero wasn't taking stands while Rome burned, he was fiddling.

Politics is the expected first topic in interviews, and lead singer/songwriter Jon King gives a polite, articulate answer with undercurrents of road-bleary-exasperation running underneath. In a room down the hotel hall, guitarist/writer/singer Andrew Gill is sleeping off a high fever. It's almost the end of the tour. Upstairs fry out, too.

"I can understand why people think I'm a bit mad. -Jon King

"I think there's an idea about the band as politicians, which is less than accurate. Because we're not. Primarily, we are musicians. That's what we do for a living. But we don't sing about being on the road, which, as you can see"—he gives a sharp glance to his sagging co-workers and the horrifically decorated hotel room—"is fascinating. If you look over the '60s, the bands were pretty ambitious, and, using the corny old phrase, the old Jefferson Airplane or the Doors or the Stones or even the hippie bands, to reflect the times they lived in. I feel that if we'd been around in the '60s—now obviously we're not talking about our band being a revivalist thing—we wouldn't have that sort of fussy concentration which we've had from the press a lot—'what's all this? Aren't you really extreme and political??' If you propose that rock 'n' roll is about rebellion, you know, that kind of kickass Rolling Stones thing, obviously that's not what REO, Aerosmith and those bands are about; they're not about rebellion and having a good time. Funny enough—they defend it on the grounds that it's really good entertainment. But it's sort of like watching a Lassie movie on TV, know what I mean? It's got no excitement, no aggression about it. Like the Eagles—in the '70s, all those bands decided, let's talk about being on the road and the like. I'm not saying that that music is bad—I quite like some of the songs—it's just that it took over. So we're in the bizarre position of having to defend ourselves because we write something with a bit of meaning."

Some of what they've done in their three and a half public years has needed a little defending. Surrounded by a musical dazzle that no one with ears could rightly deny or dismiss, the four smart boys from Brit have, on occasion, been righteous and strident while taking western civilization to task. The music on 1980's Entertainment and 1981's Solid Gold caught a listener at an intersection where uncorked rage and complicated emotions took left turns and straightaways like ambulance chasers at the apocalypse. Lyrics that were polemical and didactic couldn't hope to match such a range of expression. Songs Of The Free goes a long way toward correcting that imbalance, as well as the one between the records and the love shows. Not since Iggy Pop or Stiv Bators (don't laugh!) has anyone seemed in more danger of a permanent maim or messy implosion via the kosmic kinetics of a sound. Gill and King say quite a good bit about their ideological convictions just by playing kamikaze bumper cars across a club stage. "People are quite frigntened or suspicious of tainting entertainment with any sort of serious thought," adds drummer Hugo Burnham. He's right. But Gang Of Four still runs the risk, at times, of tainting serious thought with entertainment. "For us, those two are inseparable," Burnham explains. "Of course we get fans who are very excited about one and don't much care for the other, but that's the way it goes. We cannot demand that everyone takes it the way it was intended." That doesn't stop the solemn-faced King for a minute: "You've got to get the intellectual substance into a record. And the physical energy. And the emotion. Got to have the emotion." In other words, everything. "That's what we set out to do."

"It's sort of like watching Lassie. -Jon King"

Songs Of The Free doesn't do everything, but it makes an excellent stab. According to Burnham and King, the creative juices were drying up around the time of its predecessor, Solid Gold. In the middle of the North American tour that followed the latter's release, bassist Dave Allen announced that he was having a physical and emotional breakdown and would have to leave. Immediately. Several "money making" dates were canceled while Gill, King and Burnhami psychologically regrouped And found player exfraordinaire Buster Jones, who proceeded to learn the whole show in one day and finish the tour with the Gang. Hugh: "The day after Dave left was the lowest the three of us have ever, ever been." Jon: "But after the tour, after we came back, we felt pretty good, actually. And we'd always wanted to get a woman involved in the band, so we found Sara Lee, from League Of Gentlemen, whom we'd known for a while and knew could do the material." Since then, they've been writing songs at an unprecedented rate and started to find new things in their sound, in part via Sara's bass style and singing. Whatever Lee's direct or indirect i part in the creative rejuvenation, Songs Of The Free has more melody in the melody, more sinuous contours in the trademark gang rhythm invasion* more invasion, more human doubts and dialogue and less diatribes in the libretto. King: "It's more commercial; that pleases us." This is, in fact, one of the few times when commercialization was the best thing that could have happened. The gin fizz is moving toward Mary Tyler Moore's scowling lips, kids; music like this can't be off in some bell jar anymore. (Excuse the diatribe.) As the tour's hired hand, background singer/percussionist Edi Reader puts it, "you can play parts of it while you're doing the hoover."

"When Entertainment was released," Burnham grins, "it was hailed in some quarters as the best thing since sliced bread and in others with a fair amount of confusion. But with Songs Of The Free it's like almost everyone says 'ah...'—for people who have previously been confused or not quite convinced, this is the one."

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"We really did want to get that excitement of the live show, because everyone had always said how different we were live as opposed to on record," says Jon. That, they might never be able to do.

Even on a middling night, there is a fifth dimension to the Gang Of Four that no slab of plastic could ever really collar (otherwise known e»s the Bruce Springsteen/New York Dolls syndrome). In Minneapolis, Gill looked (and acted) as sick as he felt for the first five or six songs of the set. The show was held in a converted Greyhound bus depot—great sightlines, great ambience, strange acoustics, the group was tired. And of course, this was Minneapolis—nouveau pauvre, sure, but still a big town for REO; also a big town for being as-hip-as-you-please-so-show-mesweety. Gang hadn't been here for several years, during which time Prince had leapt full grown out of a local snowbank and given this burg very heavy Credibility as per slapping one to attention.

Some slaps were needed. Gill's trouble warming up was contagious, and, as Burnham commented later, "we had to win those people. This crowd was not ours until we went out there and got them." At the interview he and King had been recounting all the rave live reviews in the last five years. Obviously these stoic, heartlanders hadn't read 'em or didn't care. "We started off with this lunatic Iggy Pop sort of thing on stage," Jon had remembered earlier. "Then for a long time I didn't move at all [author's note: hard to believe!]—I was feeling sort of uncomfortable and embarrassed by it. I wanted to be more serious [author's note: hard to believe.] I stood dead still, which a lot of people still do, these grey sort of post-punk kind of bands. We get lumped with that kind of Joy Division style. We've always been pretty stark and bizarre, but not like those groups. Actually, I can understand why people think I'm a bit mad. After gigs"— here comes his solo raised eyebrow and peer down the nose— "People don't tend to talk to me very much." [Author's note: easy to believe.]

The madness in Minneapolis, when it finally hit, was of a much more wonderfully pernicious brand than the all-out bass and smash choreography of the band's recent past. When King went into his pantomime of the cool jerk and Jesus on the cross,and Gill veered past him, slinging dischord chords on the crowd like he was recycling their own psychic refuse—WELL. MARY, PUT DOWN THAT DRINK! If there had been room to dance the mass probably would have trashed itself to death. Lyrics? Politics? What lyrics? Snatches here and there were quite sufficient; all of those beliefs were being melted down to pure viscera and the crowd GOT THE MESSAGE. The "hit" "I Love A Man In A Uniform" was the turning point. By the time the Gang encored with a 20-megaton version of "Damaged Goods," Mary had Lou by his sopping shirtfront and was plowing her way to the front, sweating her hair-do all to hell. SHE WAS PISSED. SHE WAS DANCING. AND—SHE WAS

THINKING! Just like a lot of us used to do before we grabbed REO and pulled them down the hole with us, right before we slammed the lid.