40 Years of 'Entertainment!' Back On: Punk Legends Gang of Four Bring Seminal Album to Beijing

Legendary post-punkers Gang of Four and China have been intertwined since the start. The militant purveyors of catchy, three-minute political manifestos even took their name from the historical quartet best known for fomenting the Cultural Revolution. Few acts before or since have so seamlessly melded the highbrow with the badass. Now the punk veterans – who originally formed in 1977 – are set to return to the capital at Tango on Nov 22, eight months after they were forced to cancel this same tour due to lead singer Andy Gill suffering from a serious chest infection. If all goes well between now and Friday, fans will be treated to GoF performing their seminal, first album Entertainment! in its entirety.

Sonically abrasive, socially incisive, and unabashedly radical, the four lads from Leeds took the elements of punk rock – the raw energy, brash attitude, and tear-it-all-down cultural critique – then raised the ante intellectually and added one more crucial ingredient: danceability. When Entertainment! dropped in 1979, it was a four-on-the-floor atomic blast in a scene of Molotov cocktails and mosh pits.

With drummer Hugo Burnham’s crisp beats, Dave Allen’s propulsive bass lines (the antecedent to Red Hot Chili Pepper's Flea and the Minutemen's Mike Watt), and Andy Gill’s jagged, air-raid guitar, Gang of Four forged soundtracks for the post-apocalyptic dance party. By the time Jon King’s deep, strident vocals kicked in, the re-education was complete; it was impossible to resist their message (part anti-capitalist polemic, part portents of nuclear doom) while you were shaking your booty and tapping your toes. As they sang in perhaps their best-known track "I Found That Essence Rare": "He doesn’t think so, but he’s dressed for the H-Bomb" – these guys were strutting down the catwalk to the background of a sun-blotting mushroom, and they well knew it.

Forty years on and Entertainment!’s legacy has only grown; the album continues to retain its lofty perch on nearly every significant music publication’s best-of list (Rolling Stone, NME, and Pitchfork, to name a few), and was even the subject of a recent volume in Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3 series, a collection dedicated to the critical appraisal of essential recordings. Then there's the whos-who of your favorite bands – Nirvana, LCD Soundsystem, The Liars, Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs – that cite the band as a major influence.

Gang of Four has continued to make music over the years in various incarnations (only Gill remains from the original line-up, pictured center at top), though their sound has gradually drifted away from punk and more towards disco, and only their second album, Solid Gold, ever approached the intensity of its groundbreaking predecessor. 

The Nov 22 show then, is more than a concert; it’s a birthday party for one of the counterculture’s seminal creations, the kind of showcase event that would take the main stage at Primavera or All Tomorrow’s Parties. As Entertainment! enters its fifth decade, it's still running rings around the kids coming up from behind – an album whose edge has only gotten sharper over time.

Catch Gang of Four at Tango on Friday, Nov 22. Tickets are RMB 280 advance or RMB 330 on the door. More information can be found here.

Never miss a gig: click here for a huge list of live shows in the city, updated daily.

A version of this article was first published in March.

Images: consequenceofsound.net, bbc.co.uk