Episode 68: Gang of Four's "Entertainment!"

Episode Transcript
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Cliff (00:00):
Today I am excited to talk about Entertainment by Gang of Four.
Entertainment!
Pronounced like Haha Business, the meme.
Speaking of Haha Business, lemme takethis opportunity to reach out to the
people listening to our episodes andremind you to be grateful that we're
fun and talk to each other in cool ways.

(00:23):
Because if you were to ask an AIto try to describe this record.
You would get some dumb bullshit.
So let me give you an example of this.
Let me give you, so let me give youan example and then you're gonna
spend the rest of this episode going,they really are some strange dudes
who like talking to each other.
And maybe this will create a nice foil.
'cause a lot of what we'regonna talk about today for sure

(00:44):
is, uh, here's a cool thing.
And then if you strip all of the coolstuff out of it, you end up with this
husk that makes you feel very weird.
And so here's what an AI thinks weought to say to start this episode.
Welcome to the podcast, where todaywe're diving deep into an album
that didn't just break the mold.
It shattered into a millionangular abrasive pieces.

(01:06):
And that's Gang of Four's,1979 Debut Entertainment.
One More Line released 45 years ago.
This record remains, quote, ablistering debut and a revolutionary
mix of abrasive guitar andsubversive societal expectations that
continues to resonate powerfully.
Proving its creators.
Were as much profits as rock stars.

Kyle (01:28):
I feel some type of way about all of that, obviously.
Particularly the meta levelof engaging with AI technology
for this particular album.
it's kind of like turtles all the waydown, which I know you sent me the

(01:50):
meme before this, of the, you know,we should improve society somewhat.
there's also that Rick and Morty episodewhere they go to hell raiser planet and
they just keep, they do the doom loop ofbad things are good, good things are bad.

Cliff (02:08):
Uh.

Kyle (02:10):
we're gonna have a whole HBO hour of Marxist nihilist

Cliff (02:14):
Mm-hmm.

Kyle (02:15):
comedy by the end of this thing.
and I keep.
At the end of it all thinkingof entertainment as a
punchline, like the aristocrats.
And I know that's kindof how they meant it.
and so just the fact that we have,we just dug a hole, a Wiley coyote
hole, right into the fucking groundright at the start of this thing.
And intellectually, is like,is a preview of exactly why you

(02:40):
should listen to this record.
and, and once you get past the reptilebrain part where you just like it
and the way that it sounds and youfeel cool from how cool, it sounds
like really engaging with it deeply.
and then letting, letting the angularabrasion carve new angles in your
mind or whatever the fuck they said.

(03:02):
I will say mea culpa, I took, onaverage, we pull from 30 to 50 sources,
articles, podcasts, documentaries,YouTube videos, we spend extensive
time absorbing and internalizingthe record, the artist, everything.

(03:23):
Like we sort of make it our missionto see the world through their lens.

Cliff (03:27):
Yep.

Kyle (03:28):
I took all those sources and I did an even worse thing than you.
I had it AI generate an audio podcastwith the simulacra of two people talking
like human people, and it did a 15minute primer and it was, I just laid
down in the middle of the road in theuncanny valley and waited for a truck

(03:49):
to run over me for a little while.

Cliff (03:53):
Yeah, the, particular subject matter of this record sitting on top of
a style of music that in modern timeswe like kind of don't know how to look
back through the right way, is what topme off to like, let me just see what the
computer says about this record that isnot just implicitly or ostensibly, but

(04:16):
literally political Marxist in nature.
Very specific, direct, straightforward.
There's really no question about it.
And like as many times as we.
Take all of that understanding we haveabout an album, and then talk about how
you can never escape a pretty commonseries of, historical things that happen,

(04:37):
or concepts that need to be discussed.
Things get mapped back in surprisingways, and we do that with nearly every
record because every record still comesout of that same collective history
and general terribleness of the past.
but specifically this one man, if yourline of sight to gang of four only goes

(04:58):
through Brandon Flowers like you'regonna miss this by a nautical mile.
Like it, it's not gonna make enoughsense, and you're gonna end up thinking
about it the way that this AI just triedto get you to think about it, which is
like, think about how exciting it isthat you're listening to this record.
Don't you feel smart?

(05:19):
No.
Stop.
Shut up.
Listen.
Like everything that's happeninghere is specific and precise from the
instrumentation to production, to theway that they made these songs, to the
lyrics that are being written, to theway that they still think and perform
them today, nearly 50 years later.
this is a, take a deep breath and startremoving as much stuff as you possibly can

(05:43):
to try to get to the root of the thing.
And I really do hope that we helppeople do that in particular today,
because even just for me, this wasyet again, another one of those.
Yeah, I know about that record.
Yeah, that record fucks.
Yeah, I know.
Yeah.
No, yeah.
Oh shit.
I have not listened to this enough.

(06:03):
Still and then I, oh, I love it.
Oh, this is really good.
Oh, this is teaching me things.
Oh, I understand new things now.
get to go on that whole journey again.
That only happens when you getthe combination of a particularly
impactful record with a very goodrecord with artists, with intention.
And we get a lot of that here,straight out of the end of the

Kyle (06:24):
We, we've been on a, a heater this year of familiarity to fandom
and sort of being astounded that wecan still, unlock new closets behind
new doors and new rooms with albums.
We kind of thought we already got thegist of, I will say as somebody that
like, again, almost every episode I feellike we have to be like fuck genres.

(06:48):
but post-punk or whatever is,is kind of a helpful signifier.
Shorthand for at least what's happeningsonically, if not stylistically, it's
one of my favorite types of music.
If I walked into make an album.
Like I don't even care what thesongs sound like structurally.
Like if I was gonna make a countryalbum, I'd still be like, but I want

(07:11):
the drums to sound like gang of four.
You know what I mean?
I love this type of music so much, andI, for my money like this and Black
Sabbath are the two things that stillsound the greatest in the world to me.
I think the two worst things that you cando at the end of this episode, you know,
if God willing you make it to the end,or if you hit stop right now and just

(07:34):
say, okay, I need to go listen to this.
The two worst things youcan do is an outcome.
After you have finished the recordand decided to make it part of your
personality or on two ends of a spectrum.
One is you do the thing where youstart carrying around the book that
you want to conspicuously be noticedwith at the coffee shop or whatever.

(07:55):
I'm in the gang of four.
Have you heard Gang ofFour's Entertainment?

Cliff (07:59):
This is MA's Little Red Book.
Thank you for

Kyle (08:02):
that's right.
Or you know, in the spirit of thisband, like Marxist Capital, right?
Or Cormack McCarthy or,right, that's right.
Yeah.
Lemme tell you about the Panopticon.
Um, but then the other way that youcan go is to sort of let the world

(08:23):
of this album pass you by to justbe like, yes, this album fucks yes.
It hit me in my reptile brain.
Yes, it makes me want to dance.
Oh my God, these are great baselines.
What a rhythm section and.
You miss the subversion, you miss theopportunity to engage and grow as a
result of some, like very intentionalthis is like a sniper shot from a mile

(08:46):
out in terms of artistic intent becauseit's not trying to be too cerebral and
it's not trying to be too reptilianand there's more head and feet in this
thing At the same time, they've justcrafted an impossible balance here
and almost nobody can pull that off.
you know, I, I was thinkingabout like Dua Lipa's book club.

(09:10):
She sells out Wimbley with her dancesongs and her song in the Barbie movie,
and then she engages people on thePalestinian genocide in her book club.
that broadcast to over 10 millionInstagram followers or whatever.
There's just so little of that,that understands that human
nature doesn't want to be scolded.
Or too logically appealed to,but it also doesn't wanna be

(09:32):
treated like an idiot either.
Like there is a human capacity forflourishing, that you can bring out,
not by yelling, but by grooving.
And there's a real genius inthe way that these guys did it.
it's a great record and it can make youa better person legitimately if you just
like, kind of get into it and don't be,don't be a prick about it along the way.

Cliff (09:55):
Yep.
And it's not thankfully.
Like it manages to institute that level ofseriousness without devolving into like a
Sarah McLaughlin song form of the message.
I'm like, and now we're very sad.
Like, well, we're not sad somuch as we're fucked heads up.

(10:17):
here are all the ways, hereare all the things happening.
And uh, I mean, lyrically speaking,one thing that's cool about this
record is it runs the gamut from,vague, situational, contextual points.
Yes.
But also speaks to specifichistorical moments.
Moments directly, plays with specifichistorical moments and like calls

(10:38):
them things for the first time andkind of plays around with that.
And then even in onespecific instance for told.
A moment of Britain annexing somethingas a form of what they would go on to
call eco colonialism in its first form.
And they straight up like called a shotin a song from 1979 for something that

(11:00):
would end up happening in like 2007

Kyle (11:04):
Yeah.

Cliff (11:04):
at just so, so when you're talking about a mile long sniper
shot uhhuh, like maybe eventhrough a wormhole to some degree.
and for me, Stylistically, this ismaybe an unexpected cliff loves this
record because normally this styleis associated with some dumb shit

(11:24):
that I'm not really interested in.
Okay.
Somebody told me that you had a boyfriendwho looked like a girlfriend or something.
Um, like neat, cool man.
That is a catchy song,I say, you don't know.
Take me out Fun.
O okay, cool.
I don't give a shit aboutany of that, honestly.
It's a cool song.

(11:44):
I like the riffs.
It's fun to shake around to, but like,personally, like my, my being, my
existence as a person, cannot communewith the, with over amounts of stupidity
music, of which this podcast has becomea testament of whatever part of me is
broken that causes this to be true.

Kyle (12:04):
you're, you're given a lot of grace to a band that pulled
the gang of four move of namingthemselves, Franz fucking Ferdinand,
and then had the audacity to put out thesongs that they put out, which are fine

Cliff (12:18):
Yeah,

Kyle (12:18):
if you don't try to assign any kind of

Cliff (12:21):
Yeah, we got it.
Yeah.

Kyle (12:23):
I fall a little more on the side of Carrie Brownstein from Sleeter
Kinney in Portlandia who said in2005, these new bands sound like
Gang of Four if Gang of Four sucked.
in a positive spin, there are lots ofbands now that you know, aren't anywhere
near as popular as the Killers, but doeither sonically or ideologically or both.

(12:49):
A lot of the cool things about Gang ofFour, we, had to slog through a generation
of bands who didn't really get it.
Uh, and now we're back aroundVery cool post-punk bands.
It's a great time for that typeof music, because, you know, we're
living in similar times to thelate seventies, unfortunately.
so the, the form lends itself well,but, you know, we'll, we'll get to that.

(13:11):
All things in time.
What do you know, what, what's thefive minute primer on Gang of four?
What do folks need to know aboutthe people, the circumstances,
how things came to be?

Cliff (13:23):
a five minute primary you could probably do.
Three or four different versions of it.
I think there are several ways tosort of back your way into this deal.
but I think like with a lot of albumsthat we touch on, sometimes the time
and placeness of the band and thenthe relative time and placeness of

(13:43):
the particular album and how earlythey are in their career has sort
of an outsized effect on things.
And so I think that's an for example.
I think this is a case where that is true.
So Yang of four formedin leads, uh, in 1976.
This record entertainmentcomes out in, in 1979.
and they said.

(14:05):
Like I, when we talk aboutleads, so I, I have not spent
a lot of time in leads England.
Okay.
But the way that they talk about itspecifically is so visceral related
to that time that I think it'scontextually helpful without even
starting to go into then like thelarger political or social things that
are even happening in that moment.
Just the like kind of specificlocality of the whole thing.

(14:28):
they said, uh, in one interview wemade entertainment in the workhouse,
a studio, an old Kent Road then aseedy highway through a depressed
South London, but still glamorouscompared to the misery of leads.
We'd routine the songs for a weekor so in a residential farmhouse
with a rehearsal room attachedwhere we also wrote Great Men.

(14:50):
so there's this like middleof nowhere wearness to this
group of folks already, which.
Feels like it stands in contrastto the seriousness and directness
of the message that they come outwith, pretty directly on this record.
Like it feels like a band who'sonly been together for a few years
from the middle of nowhere, has nobusiness making a record this good.

(15:13):
And they did.
And on top of it, once we now knowthat that's true, listening to
them talk about the way that theymade that record sort of connects
these dots in an even more fun way.
and so they said in that same interview,after talking about the location
of things going into the studio,we knew exactly what we would do.
All the songs were nailed, road tested.

(15:33):
We recorded 'em fast just as they were.
And they talked a lot about,we will maybe touch on these
specifically in some of the songs.
You know, several of them, they justsort of like hammered through takes
until they went, yep, check that one off.
Let's move on to the next one.
Uh, and then there was one in particularthat's just like a one shot basically,
that they captured in the studio.
But they talked specifically about that.

(15:55):
They argued a lot about not using anyoutboard effect that might color the
performance in a misleading way, quote.
So that what we did was real quote whenwe finished it sounded like itself.
and we'll touch more on this, but thereason I feel like it's worth including
sort of in this moment of like, what'sthe primer on gang of four is like that

(16:18):
starts to give you a nice overview ofhow it seems like they look at this,
they have an intentionality that's wayeasier to draw out than most artists.
I think that we even talk about and wetend to talk about intentional artists.
and so I, I think you'llcontinue to hear that

Kyle (16:35):
Yeah.
But like, not on the level of missionstatement of knowing what noise goes
where, when, so that it feels likethis for the sustained amount of time.
And the sounds go withthe words and all that.
Yeah.
I mean, having talked aboutBrooks and Dunn, where it was
just like, we're from the country,we're gonna play country music.
are the topics of observationin our immediate purview.

(16:59):
We're like, I'm not saying leadsis country, but it's a bit of like,
that's also another option, just sortof like reflecting the conditions
of where you are, but doing itin a militant and political way.
Like I, I think Brooks and Dunn reallythe three, you know, the three hop
thing of Umo Sangre, who is really alot like Gang of four, like a total of

(17:25):
its time phenomenon that became massiveis inherently political, is sonically
beautiful and representative of tryingto do a certain and intentional thing.
Then you look at Brooks and Dunn whoare kind of the inverse it's a triangle
that nobody asks for, but I think ifyou're listening to these episodes
chronologically, being able to dothat, to like sort of rub the worlds

(17:47):
of these artists right up againsteach other and feel the friction.
makes them all a little bitmore interesting and they're all
interesting of their own volition.

Cliff (17:55):
I love anew each episode, the challenge of connecting a dot back to the
previous episode with an artist that isfundamentally disconnected from whichever
one that we're talking about, it's gettingeasier all the time to find those ways.
To me, using what you just talkedabout in the Brooks and Dunn episode,
we talked about that group of studiomusicians and how they sort of,

(18:17):
first of all, they were all basicallyall stars but had sort of an, uh.
An approach to how the music shouldfeel and sound all together and
ended up sort of jamming theirway to the thing that feels right.
And similarly here when we talk about the,the intentionality of things when they

(18:37):
talk about doing takes in the recording.
So in contrast, they'renot doing unique takes.
They're not soloing 18 times andthen picking their favorite solo.
They are just shooting through thisone, this one, this one, this one.
Okay.
That was the one.
Got it.
Move on to the next, but like the.
The intentionality that they speakabout gang of Force specifically is

(19:01):
that they, I mean, they present it likethey argue with each other all the time.
A actually another, I guess, uh,similarity to Brooks and Dunn, like
famously not necessarily best budsbehind the scenes, and yet found a way
to appreciate the artistry that comes outas a group and invested in that instead.
But you'll notice the more you listento any of these folks talk in interviews

(19:22):
from Gang of Four, like they talkabout arguing with each other all
the time, like yelling, fighting,striving against all this stuff.
but most of what they're talking aboutwhen they say that is that they're like.
They're fighting eachother to put 'em in a vibe.
Like everyone has this little feelingin their head about how this should

(19:42):
feel once it's done, and they're gonnakeep pushing on everybody else to get
it into whatever shape that actually is.
And they're not using refined wordsor like super planned out strategy
to make all that work or record allthe individual pieces in the studio
and then assemble them together.
That it's not a grand plan, it's a,this is how this song should feel

(20:07):
and we're gonna hammer it out untilwe get there and then we're happy
with it, and then we move on from it.
And I think one quick encapsulationof that mentality from them as
well was they talked about when.
They recorded this, the EMI, the recordlabel basically left them completely
alone and quote, when we'd finished theplayback for EMI, after that playback

(20:30):
EMI said, only in a mystified way.
Is this the demo?
To which we said, no, it's the albumto the record company's credit.
That was that.
And it was put out withoutany further polishing.
Like, that's it.
Is this a demo?
No, it isn't.
Right.
Is this record about Marxism?
Yes.
It's Any questions

Kyle (20:51):
Nope, I'm gonna go grab some cigarettes.
I will be back.

Cliff (20:55):
and we'll, we'll, probably for what it's worth too, use Marxism as
a proxy for a lot of ideas, uh, andthings that are probably even hard to
express conceptually now that we're,you know, a. A particular grouping of
philosophy in the late seventies thatwe might think of differently now.
So I do wanna like get outin front of that little bit.

(21:16):
But yes, in general, like thisis a record about being people

Kyle (21:21):
Yeah.
Two,

Cliff (21:23):
of things.

Kyle (21:23):
two things I could easily and will do my best to avoid making this
whole episode about the criticaltheory aspects of this, of which they
were deep students and has alwaysbeen, an intellectual pursuit of mine.
Like I showed you Cliff.
Uh, like I've kept the syllabusfrom my intro to critical

(21:45):
theories class in grad school.
you know, reading Derrida andFoucault and Lacan and like talking
about semiotics and stuff like that.
One thing that I love about Gangof four that, you know, I'm only
now connecting more explicitly is.
That stuff, at the risk of making aMarxist pun a Marxist pun is alienating.

(22:08):
Like it's hard to get into becauseit's just so full of jargon and
terminology and concepts where theword kind of feels like it means one
thing, but it actually means anotherin the context of all the literature.
And you gotta slog back through, you know,this person building on this person's
idea, building on this person's idea.

(22:28):
And this cuts through that intowhat they called small-p politics,
like the politics of everyday life.
And I like I, not to be high-minded, butI kind of see that as our job on the,
like in the times when we get political,I always want us to be small-p political.
And I feel like we've done thatwith things like Friday Heavy, where
it's like, sure, we're against theconcept of, Children going hungry

(22:53):
or austerity measures or whatever.
But I don't wanna talkabout it in the abstract.
I know there's 50 hungry kids at theschool down the road for me in my
district, I'd rather just feed those kids.
and like that's, As twoSouthern country boys.
I feel like small-p politicsare the only real politics.
There is.
And in 2025 on this hell planetof discourse that goes nowhere.

(23:15):
there's a capital-L lessonto learn from lowercase-p
politics as an approach to life.
and there's, there's a lot to takefrom gang of four in that regard.
Back to the music and the arguingbit, there are some really funny,
John King and Andy Gill interviews,Andy Gill, rest in peace.

(23:38):
really interesting.
Truly idiosyncraticapproach to the guitar.
and in one interview he said a thingthat sort of like reset my basis
for how to listen to this stuff.
He talked about disliking guitarhierarchy and wanting to be equalized
with the other parts of the quartet.

(23:59):
So it's like it's four people recordinglive together all the time because
anything else is sort of disingenuousand performative and not in like a
Stooges way, not in a like let's be asraw and energetic as we can, in a, like
you can only achieve the right gestaltif you all just get in there and do it.
but he said in gang of four, thevocals work around the guitar.

(24:21):
The guitar works around the bass drums.
It's a horizontal line where everythingrelates to everything else, which I
think is an interesting, if, if we'retalking about the first cold, listen.
Think about how these are all horizontallines relating to everything else.
It's very easy to pick everythingout because it's very well recorded.
But, his follow up statementindicates how to differentiate a bit.

(24:43):
He said the guitar isn't the instrument,the band is the instrument being played.
Many of the guitar parts in oursongs, if you try to play it on
its own, for the most part, itdoesn't make a whole heap of sense.
So it's not exactly an interestingcandidate for like a YouTube play through.
So devoting a role for what is, in rockmusic, which is their origin, the primary

(25:07):
instrument, guitar, sort of the scenestealer, melodically, sonically whatever.
And just saying For prettymuch half this record.
It's gonna do fuck around stufflike noise and texture and whatever.
But that's the role that it plays.
'cause the melody is gonna come fromthe base and the groove is going
to come from the rhythm section.
And that's kind of the front of whatyou're gonna get, because it's gonna lock

(25:30):
you in to then be ready for the message.
And then the guitar is for like freak out.
It's just to create imagesin your mind and whatever.
It's not the source of melody throughout,so you almost have to like invert
your thinking, looking for performers.
it is truly a bit socialistin that way and I love it.
he did also say.

(25:52):
Pulling this off.
He didn't say that.
The author of this article said,pulling this off meant brutal rehearsals
and enforced minimalism, basis.
Dave Allen was told to stop playing somany notes Drummer Hugo Burnham with
Row his Sticks at Gill and Frustration.
The result, however, was aband wired to respond to each
other's slightest movements, soTLDR locked in, which I love.

Cliff (26:14):
I think we'll draw this out as we talk about some particular songs too.
But one of the ways that they lockin that causes the guitar parts
to not be consistently interestingis verbalizing this will be fun.
The different instruments takeon different kind of roles,
rhythmically and team up with eachother in songs in different ways.

(26:36):
So like, one of the things you canlisten for, for sure we always try
to give people things you can focuson if you wanna do an active listen.
I do think this one is pretty fun, despiteit also being a really good just like
party record that you can put on and soundfucking cool to anybody at any point.
This is kind of an unimpeachablerecord to put on, in nearly
any context now that I think

Kyle (26:57):
Totally agree.

Cliff (26:59):
But as you choose to listen to the choices that are being made
musically here, you'll hear things likethe guitar's rhythm begins to align very
specifically with vocals in verse one.
And then verse two, it's specificallydoesn't align rhythmically,
but aligns melodically instead.

(27:20):
And like they do a lot of this likelittle flipping around of association.
And to me it creates a musical sensationthat we've tried to talk about before.
That's one of my favorite things,my favorite band to site, who does
this is between the Buried and Me.
They are taking component parts and.

(27:42):
A lot of times they'll just play a riffonce, but then a lot of times they'll
grab that riff or parts of that riffand spread it out and put it in a
different part of the song or reverse itor put it in a different song entirely.
in all of a sudden you are rewarded withpaying attention to the music in the same
way that people talk about video gamesthat reward you for going loot hunting

(28:06):
or like movies that reward you for likepausing and paying really close attention
to cinematography and things like that.
Like you, you get an a whole extralike a RG type experience from paying
attention to the music in that degree.
And this one is a great sortof introduction to that concept

(28:26):
without it ever being overwhelminglycomplex, musically nothing is being.
Done.
That's difficult to understand here.
It's simply interesting and haslike a frenzy to it in a good way.
Like that I think is the feelingthat you get from the shifting

(28:47):
that we're talking about.
But like, it's not like shift itthis way for every verse and then
do the same shift for every chorus.
Every little part has a slightdifference to it, and it makes the whole
record sound like it goes on forever,despite it basically being a half hour

Kyle (29:02):
Yeah.
Quite lean.

Cliff (29:03):
Yeah.

Kyle (29:04):
Yeah.
specifically, my favorite song on therecord love, like Anthrax, the closing
track is only like four minutes long,four and a half minutes long, and it.
Easily feels like 10 minutes and everytime it ends, I'm like, shit, that
should have been twice as long as it was.
I always want it to be so much more.

(29:25):
and I mean that it's such acomplimentary way to, to understate
your welcome on an album is such a gift.
I attribute some of that tightnessto their influences, which, all
make sense when they say them, butI wouldn't have guessed on my own.
and I think one of the things thatmakes 'em really smart is they're

(29:45):
not always literal and sonic.
So like, James Brown, they talkabout the influence of James Brown.
But as much ideologically and like in theapproach to being a live band as anything
else, where all the parts add up to a holelocking into a groove for a long time.

(30:07):
they play funky baselines, but they'renot like a funk band necessarily.
They're funky for a punk band

Cliff (30:14):
Thank God.

Kyle (30:15):
Yeah.
there is a clear dub influence, but it'snot overtly, you know, it's not John
Leiden starting Public Image Limited afterbeing so influenced by Augustus Pablo.
this record does have a melodica, which

Cliff (30:37):
I was gonna say that's the most on the mo on the nose
moment in the whole record.
Yes.
We are influenced, here is a melodica.

Kyle (30:44):
And you can see, especially on the back half of the record.
Where it gets spacey,it could easily dub out.
Like they could be obnoxious andthrow in delays and do whatever.
But that would be againstthe ethos of cold, raw,
transistorized, honest, you know?
And like first and foremost, theway is the way is the way for this

(31:07):
band, at least on this record.
And then a band that I've listenedto some, but not a lot, uh, who was
a huge influence is Dr. Feelgood.
and there's an interesting bridgewith this band between Dr. Feelgood
commonly referred to as like a pubrock band, kind of punky kinda riffy

(31:29):
in the classic Keith Richards eSense.
but like startedincorporating some room for.
Getting a little bit freaky.
There's some interesting Dr.Feelgood songs that I would
encourage folks to go listen to.
Like she does it right or the more Igive, they also do some like straight

(31:50):
ahead blue stuff like, boom, boom.
Or I Don't Mind, which has a Bo Diddlybeat, or that ain't the way to behave.
if you're like me and you feel like,where the hell did the sound come from?
Like Marvin Berry backstage atthe Under the Sea Prom in 1955.
You kind of want to know.

(32:10):
So like Dr. Feelgood's interestingbecause you can see the propensity
for Angularity or Abrasiveness readyto like pop out with somebody else
to take it in another direction.
But also Andy Gill talked abouthow I Can't Get No Satisfaction
by The Stones was the first songthat he ever learned on guitar.
And it was the first song that henormally teaches people on guitar.

(32:33):
And there's some like interestingclass discussion elements in that
it's actually like kind of a bit of asubversive song on Mick Jagger's part.
and I think that's further reinforcedby that being one of DeVos first
big singles and they bring out thedadism and the absurdity in the
premise of the song Satisfaction.

(32:56):
Like Devo another great band in thespirit of this band in many ways,
sort of like the in inverted sneering.
Smiley face Cousins.
If this is Rick and Morty andthis is cynical, then that's
Tim and Eric being like, whoa.
Hey, check it out.
Steve Brule.

Cliff (33:14):
Tune in next week as we map adult swim shows to bands.

Kyle (33:18):
we honestly should do, we should do the Buzzfeed quiz for which, which
adult swim show slash punk album are

Cliff (33:24):
This is the Eric Andre show of punk bands.

Kyle (33:28):
That's probably like discharge or some shit.
The one that's accidentally very, verysmart but doesn't want you to know it.
if there were a smart GG Allenrecord, that would 100% be Eric Andre.

Cliff (33:41):
It is pretty wild that you're having to dig for where the sound came
from when, you know, I alluded to thisa second ago, but to say it directly,
this is the debut album from this group.

Kyle (33:53):
Yeah.

Cliff (33:54):
it's not like they spent 10 years refining this slight variation
of a sound and then this was the mostmemorable one or most popular one.
things aren't necessarily true.
This is the first recordthey came out with.
And then, like many cult classic esquethings only became really important in
retrospect, where now in modern times,everyone writing a top albums of whatever

(34:20):
is gonna include this one because they seethe importance of it, uh, and how much it,
impacted and changed things downstream.
And to that end, I do appreciateand acknowledge maybe that.
Light can happen when a musicalfad pops up and it can inversely
point back at some bands that cool.

(34:40):
People can discover that were sortof the foundation of sounds great.
So if we had to go through the earlyaughts in order for a handful of
people to go back to gang of four.
Okay.
Neat.
But another example still of, you know,whether we're talking about a band like
Led Zeppelin, like there are things thatwe think of now as obviously good that

(35:03):
we're not considered seminal and greatand enticing in that particular moment.
and we get to now kind of look back acrosstime and understand or try to understand
what happened across 50 years that madeus realize, oh shit, whatever they did
here we're using words like angular now.
But they wouldn't have calledit angular then they wouldn't.

(35:25):
But I mean, they certainly wouldn'thave thought like, oh, this sounds
like a botch record slowed down 20%on occasion, or something like that.
Like, so it's cool to be ableto kind of go back and try to
reverse engineer it to some degree.
Um, which I think we can dokind of at a couple of fronts.
I'm excited about.

Kyle (35:42):
I will quickly say, I think the coming out so fully formed bit,
I likened to the cramps backstory aswell, where it was measured twice.
Cut once, you know, theyhad a statement of purpose.
They had a world thatthey wanted to build.
I think they did 10 yearsworth of lift on the band.

(36:03):
They wanted to be by the scenarioin which they were formed.
So like they were art schoolkids at Leeds University.
So they were thinking about, theywere critiquing art all the time.
They were making art.
They were thinking about the why behindmaking art, which not every band does.
The anti Dave Grohlapproach where you just.

(36:24):
Pick up a thing and start making noise.
most bands don't really do that.
They just start playing songsthat they like and they figure
it out and they go from there.
So you have them talking about, thinkingabout the kind of art they wanna make,
and Source said, talked about how theywould meet, their haunt around school

(36:47):
was the Fenton pub, where they wouldmeet and discuss ways to end capitalism.

Cliff (36:52):
Don't let your kids listen to gang of four parents.

Kyle (36:56):
mamas don't let your babies grow up to be capitalist.
so yeah, I, there's somethingthat I really love about.
Just the, the purposefulness, but not,not saying it's gonna be the, you know,
we're gonna make a concept record aboutthe end of capitalism or whatever.

Cliff (37:14):
Exactly.
Well said.

Kyle (37:16):
they, just said, we like these things.
We want to incorporatesome of these methods.
Doism, you know, know situationisttype art, bian alienation where we, you
know, we deconstruct, we don't allowpeople to passively take in this art.

(37:36):
it's meant to confront you somewhat.
We're gonna take these sounds we like,and we're gonna take some techniques,
you know, like the having, not justintention, but techniques to do them.
The way we're gonna do it.
It's going to be this, but not this.
So it's not too overt, you know,we're not gonna scream it at people
through a megaphone, being formed atour school, like sort of compressed.

(37:59):
The time period for their developmentbecause it's a nurturing environment in
that way, and it gave them techniquesto do X, but not Y. with that said,
what were your first impressions?
How does a cold listen work with this?
What jumped out at you?

Cliff (38:17):
I'm gonna preed myself 'cause this one was another.
oh shit.
Every new track.

Kyle (38:24):
Mm-hmm.

Cliff (38:24):
Like the more, the more I put my brain on it, the
more interesting it became.
That doesn't always work on record.
Sometimes you have to put a differentway to lay your brain into it.
This one just point itstraightforward, it works.
And I think one example, evenof a surprise, I'm just jump out
in front of this the remastersounds fantastically different

Kyle (38:49):
Yeah.
Yeah.

Cliff (38:51):
in a way that caught me off guard from the very first moment, which

Kyle (38:57):
prefer one to the other,

Cliff (38:59):
I think I prefer the remaster.
And I I don't know if we've talkedabout it a ton on this podcast.
I sort of like, uh, infamouslyhate remasters for the most part,

Kyle (39:08):
other than Jimmy Pages?

Cliff (39:10):
uh huh Yes.
Led Zeppelin is one example.
Um, but there are

Kyle (39:13):
Congratulations on keeping your, um, episode streak of
Led Zeppelin mentions alive.
Good luck doing it with Charles Mingus.

Cliff (39:20):
Yes.
Although I do like that, even withthe rema you're talking about, they
are acknowledged as so differentfrom the original that the album
art is inverted from the original.
Right.
Uh, and so this one feels worldsapart from the original, uh,
in a pretty surprising way.
Normally that's not worth reallypointing out even if there's

(39:42):
like four versions on streaming.
But in this one, yeah, I think you mightas well get out in front of it now and
might as well pick the one that soundsright for however you're listening to it.
'cause they definitely bring outdifferent aspects of the music itself.
But

Kyle (39:56):
Okay.
Say, say more about that too.
which one's better for what context?

Cliff (40:01):
so

Kyle (40:02):
that's a, like, before you get into songs, you need
to know which one to cue up.

Cliff (40:06):
Yep.
So I'd say this part'sprobably pretty expected.
The remaster is gonnahave a lot better low end.
So if you are on probably any musicalthing that's been made in the last 20
to 30 years, you're probably good togo with that remaster and you're gonna
draw some of that extra stuff out.
the original is gonna have more of that.

(40:27):
It's gonna feel more like it wasmade in the late seventies, I think.
And it collects more in the mid range.
And to that end though is is stillpretty good on headphones, like
the ones that we're wearing rightnow, like good quality headphones.
I always love to send people back tothat method of listening when they're
listening to something from sixtiesand seventies and eighties 'cause like.

(40:51):
That's how people listen to music, man.
That's how you need to you need tostraight up, like lay on your bed in
an exasperated fashion by yourself atthe beginning of a montage to really
feel what it was like to listen tomusic back then in headphones probably
connected to your record player fromsome weird wire or something like that.
So I think they can be used indifferent ways like that, but it's

(41:15):
also good if you're gonna really dorkout and try to identify instruments.
Comparing the two masters here willdraw some of that out to, cause again,
like the range of it's really different,not just like slightly improved, but
like a pretty different sound entirely.
So then dialing straight in the firstlike 10 seconds of ether, which I

(41:39):
didn't expect to surprise me becauseI already knew what that sounded like.
Once I put my brain on it, onceagain, we are making jokes today.
Uh, you know, the, the Twittermeme or whatever of like, oddly
specific playlists with like twoor three example songs on it.
And once again, ether now joinsthe club for Cliff of Track one on

(42:03):
albums that have Killer Five notesnare hits that go into a heavy part.
This intro right at the beginning does it.
Uh, and it joins, uh,concubine by Converge.
And the entire world is counting on meand they don't even know it by Norma Jean.
And I've just come the more that ithappens, like now I can't not hear

(42:24):
of five notes snare hit right beforeit goes into another part, no matter
where it happens on any record.
It's like a, it's like Pavlov's Bellor whatever for me now, I think just.
Having the experience of the first timeI try to pay close enough attention
to this record, it blows me back inmy chair already and goes like, all

(42:44):
this stuff you like comes from this.
oh shit.
Okay.
And so I would say from there on out,um, and we can, we, we can literally
do sort of track level stuff, not onlybecause the tracks are interesting,
but because the complimentary way toexperience these, I think, and what
continued to surprise me were all thetrack by track level interviews that

(43:06):
some of the members did and like gettingto plug in how they talked about it.
Was itself a pretty surprising andinteresting way to consume this record?
with due respect to all ofthe people who make incredible
art that we love and admire.
Some of them don't have a lotto add as individual people.

(43:26):
Once the art's been made,their cup has been emptied.
Um, and we appreciate it, butlike, I really don't need to
hear you talk about it now.
Every bit that I heard from themadded something and made the
track more interesting and mademe wanna go back and listen again.
and in hearing that not only from theband generically, but then specifically

(43:46):
different members of the band talkingabout their experience of it, really
just made the whole thing an interestinghistorical document and like in a
medicines, that was my biggest surprise.
It's like I expected to not wantto think about this record, and
instead I caught myself not takingit the right amount of serious.
And once I calibrated, it sort oftook off and then this became like the

(44:07):
easiest thing to put on repeat that Ithink I've experienced in a long time.

Kyle (44:11):
Yeah, they do a really good job in those interviews of not, I'm gonna
say the thing that you said offhand onetime that continues to stick with me.
Uh, they never turn the lightson in Space Mountain, you know,
sometimes it'll be about thecontext that gave rise to a thing.
Sometimes it'll be about how theywrote the part, you know this into

(44:33):
two instances of this, into whatever.
but it's never, it's never boring.
And they never pick the thingthat I think they're going to, if
it's a song that I think about thelyrics, they talk about the music.
If it's a song where I think aboutthe drums, they talk about the guitar.
if it's a song where.
I think they're going toremark on the politics.

(44:55):
They talk about how it wasinfluenced by the split screens
of Jean-Luc Godard's films.
And it's just always like,okay, you know, just constantly
surfacing unknown unknowns for me.
my favorite one was for surethe, the Clash Music one.
they really like gave it their all.
And I think also it speaks to how potentthis record is and how interesting a group

(45:19):
gang of four is that it's their debut.
It's 50 years old, 79, 80,

Cliff (45:27):
almost,

Kyle (45:28):
almost, yeah, go 45 years old.
they've never gottentired of talking about it.
They've moved on from it completely.
they did a lot of records that don'tsound anything like this record jarringly.
So, their late eighties and early ninetiesstuff, it's like not even the same band.
I mean, it's like the firstsugar ray record versus all the

(45:49):
sugar ray stuff on the radio.
And I'm sorry to invoke that comparison,but it's, it's just that jarringly
different, they just have such ahealthy relationship with this record.
It's a record they should be reallyproud of as a debut or otherwise.
and yet they went on toexperiment and kind of do things
their own way the whole time.
And then they did a victory lapmostly around this record on the

(46:12):
anniversary of it after Andy Gilpassed and then called it today.
Just another signal for you,the listener about how smart.
And thoughtful this band is that theywere sort of unimpeachable in the way
that they handled the early success ofthis record and went on to be artful,
but maintain their relationship with it.

Cliff (46:33):
Watching them perform this record on that last kind of farewell
tour that they've done this year.
I mean, it, we talked about it some'cause I went ahead and sent it to you,
but like it, it really gave me life, man.
Watching to extend what youwere just saying, right?
Watching people.
Have a healthy admiration forsomething good that they did in

(46:54):
their own life and be proud of it.
And then be willing to like, as likelegitimately older people at this point,
I, I think it's okay to say they expressedjoy and energy and intentionality once
again in the performance of these songs.
They sounded cool.

(47:14):
this was not a, band goes out and playsthe record that people know and they
sort of just get through it and we go,yes, that's sort of what it sounded like.
And I was there neat.
No, they, the guitartone sounds real good.
It's sharp and precise.
The rhythm is really precise.
the lyrical delivery from an an olderperson is like, energized, pumped, And,

(47:38):
you know, it's hard to imagine thatyou'd still feel super comfortable with
anything you wrote 45 years ago, no matterhow long ago that was or when, or how
old you are now, or then, or anything.
That's a long time to agree with yourself.
I barely want to eat thething that I decided to eat
before I started cooking it.

(48:00):
So I like, so the thought ofthen performing these like really
straightforward lyrics, thinkwithout assuming too much, I think
we can see that there's a respectfor whatever that they created and
there is still an alignment there.
They, they don't seem in oppositionto anything they're sharing here.

(48:22):
And to a point you made earlier, andwe make repeatedly on this podcast.
We are in hell.
So everything that'sbeen said still applies.
And you can just now Wikipedia thereferences instead of wondering what they
mean abstractly, like you might have hadto do reading a lyrics jacket back then.

Kyle (48:40):
Yeah, I hate to have missed them on this tour.
Fontaine's dc Were in town the samenight as were Kendrick Lamar and Soza,
selling out 70,000 tickets or whatever.
And so I, I'm glad that I at leastgot to live a bit vicariously through
some of the videos, seeing it, youknow, my fresh eared impressions of

(49:05):
the record are also sort of meta.
I think because of the honesty and the,the sort of visceralness of the recording
document, it's gonna get you immediately.
It's a bit like umu in her voice,where it's like you're either
gonna get it or you're not.
And if you don't like it sonically,then just shut the shit off and

(49:27):
wait for next month's episode.
but I suspect on some level, ifyou're a music fan of some level
of devotion, you're gonna findan inroad for this and like it.
Franken sampled it for God's sake.
The meta level that I love isfirst in the artwork, which is,

(49:48):
situationist International 1 0 1.
I'll just read about it quickly.
Like we talk about the artwork forthe record sometimes, but I think that
like, especially Bears calling outfor this group depicts native American
or, depicts a cowboy and an Indian.
Basically in the Western sense of the twowords, in three heavily processed versions

(50:12):
of the same image, based on a, stillfrom one of the one of two films starring
Lex Barker and Pierre Bryce, which hadonce been popular in East Germany as
narratives cri critical of capitalism.
Their faces are reduced to blobsof red and white, that is to
their stereotypical skin colors.
A text winds around the imagethat reads the Indian smiles.
He thinks that the cowboy is his friend.
The cowboy smiles, he'sglad the Indian is fooled.

(50:35):
Now he can exploit him in this way.
It approaches themes of exploitation,but may also criticize simplistic popular
de depictions of ethnic, social, orpolitical complex as cowboys and Indians.
So there's a bit of that breanlike forcing you to engage.
and you can see where that spins out intocliche when like sneering, jeering, Lead

(50:58):
singery types in skinny ties go to do it.
but there was a viscerally originalthing to the way that they did it.
if you've groan, 'cause you feellike this sort of hit terminal
velocity with Seattle, like withthe Melvins and with Nirvana, this
being one of Kurt Cobain's 50 seminalrecords, you're absolutely right.

(51:23):
but again, there wasn't reallysmall p politics in those.
They just took the absurdity of theperformance and the presentation and they
made it more about the theater of theabsurd, where these guys were always kind
of like standing on business, about it.
Um, so I think if you can getyour hands on a physical copy and

(51:44):
see the gate full, see the back.
Like really sit with it in the corner.
The artwork is very rewarding, but alsothe meta layer of a lot of these songs.
To your point, there's somethingto Wikipedia on like every
fucking one of these songs.
And the two that I would call out areguns Before Butter, where you learn

(52:08):
about the, like political and even ifyou know about the, the sort of political
shorthand of guns or butter for socialwelfare versus warfare for capitalistic,
advancing capitalistic games.
And the idea of the peace dividend, whichis a, you know, a piece of vocabulary

(52:29):
that helps inform better talk aroundpolitics and how we spend our tax dollars.
That feels heavy handed, right?
You have a song, guns BeforeButter and you're like, shit,
that's like capital P. Politics.
That's big stuff.
but then they're like funny andthey're taking the piss in it.
the track by track was so good on thisbecause he said, Gerber said, when I hear

(52:54):
the word culture, I reach for my revolver.
The inspiration was JohnHartfields wonderful photo
montages, uh, that undermined thevicious Nazi nonsense like this.
Here's a little guy, Gerber's quakingin his boots at the lust for blood and
iron and order and control, and wondershow he ever got sucked up in this evil
sung over the relentless machine-likenoise that will never end except in hurt.

(53:17):
So just sucking the wind outof Nazi rhetoric by saying
Bels was a little bitch.
Herman Goring was a little bitch.
Steven Miller's a little bitch.
Any one of them are welcome tocome see me at the show is like,
delicious, delicious small p politics.

(53:39):
Are you in my town?
Come and find me, little bitch boy.
Get off Elon Musk Twitterand come and see about me.
Uh, the other one being 5 45, which,uh, was in reaction a bit to left wing
political violence in the UK in theseventies, where, you know, their politics
were largely aligned with, but they drewthe line at political assassination.

(54:04):
you know, organizations like the Red ArmyFaction and the Red Brigades in Italy.
Whose politics theythought were spectacular.
They were more for thespectacle than the outcome.
And ultimately that approachonly served, played into the
hand of the capitalist regime.
'cause they didn't genuinely challengethe political or economic system.
They just provided sensational materialfor Fox News or Newsmax, you know,

(54:27):
the, the media industry of the time.
and became nothing morethan pop culture fodder.
So 5 45 is a double entendre.
if you read it with a colon, it's thetime at which primetime television begins.
And you can see that in the lyrics.
Like, I, how can I eat my teawith all this blood on the screen?

Cliff (54:44):
What a killer line.
It

Kyle (54:47):
a killer line.
What a killer line.
Yeah.
on par with the quality of, ofartisanship craftsmanship of watch
your broken dreams dance in andoutta the beams of a neon moon.
the mediated image of our broken dreams.
read with a period, however, it is the5.4 5 39 millimeter cartridge used in

(55:08):
the AK 74 rifle just recently issuedand circulated by the Soviet Union.
the other thing that I love about 545 is, that it's like a reggae song
about war, which is, is kind of aperfect choice to your point about
like what kind of song does this needto be stylistically to suit the thing?
And they said reggae music inthe late seventies was the most

(55:31):
innovative pop music around pushingthe latest technology, playing with
form and talking about daily life.
It just owned guitarchords on the offbeat.
So just brilliant choices.
And again, there's something tolearn like full week of a college
class, amount of things to learn inlyrics that come across as like kind

(55:56):
of primitive in a lot of places.
Certainly very minimalist, right?
Everything is, there's an economyto the words on every song, which
I was thinking about you the wholetime I was listening to the lyrics.
I think I thought you'd get a kick out ofAndy Gill's, like director's commentary

(56:16):
approach to lyrics, deconstructing king's,you know, melody quote unquote stuff.
The pop character voice.
I thought you would either love or hatethat, but then I thought you would also
appreciate the often highly structured.
Not a word or syllable morethan we need at any given moment

(56:36):
approach to king's lyrics.
Hard to make it look easy type stuff.

Cliff (56:40):
I, the famous lyric hater, enjoy the lyrics on this album

Kyle (56:45):
I feel like it's

Cliff (56:47):
and not just because I agree with them philosophically in many ways.
You
know what I mean?

Kyle (56:52):
yeah.
I mean, we joked in the lead up tothis while we were talking about this
episode that in many ways they feel likethe band that we would've been if you
and I had ever had a band, creatively,they made a lot of the choices,
that we feel like we would've made.
easy for us to say too assholeswith microphones right now.

(57:12):
we admire and identify with a lot of thechoices that they have made creatively.
I'll, I'll say that.
The kind of writer and speaker thatyou are, there's a lot of what King
does that feels like you would workto get it down to brutal economy.
You'd be like, by God, if it has tohave words, it's, it's going to have
the minimum fucking amount and I'm gonnamake every single one of them count.

(57:36):
I will be a spite lyricist.

Cliff (57:38):
But I do appreciate, especially the moves that they do that creatively,
I would never think to do either.
Like Love, like anthrax.
So the lyrics in that song, likethey, first of all, they come across
straight up to me as like, this iswhat my internal monologue sounds like.

Kyle (57:55):
Yeah.

Cliff (57:56):
100%, this is what my brain sounds like to me the majority of the time, uh,
especially when we're buds and chilling.
but like they also then do, theytalked about how they did the vocals,
which, you know, implements the lyrics.
I know this is obvious, but like,sometimes you just like, you have
the words and then this is thestyle of vocals that you do, and

(58:18):
then that's how it gets delivered.
They like take approacheswith it and try to do things
with voice like an instrument.
And so here they had two vocalsections where, Certain specific
words were sung, like normal.
But then Andy would comment on thewords or wherever we were quote or

(58:41):
whatever we were doing or whatever wewere thinking about this sort of like,
okay, what if we wrote a punk song?
But also Gil Scott Heron did averse.
And it's like, oh shit.
Okay dude, sure.
Why not?

Kyle (58:54):
Simultaneously.

Cliff (58:55):
Yeah.
just the kind of confidencedoesn't do enough there.
But just like the, the willingness tobe like, this is very straightforward.
We're just going to tell a story.
Like we're going to use basic storymechanisms, which is the majority of what
they do lyrically anyway, which is likewe're going to sort of position you like

(59:17):
relative to the thing we're talking about.
And a lot of it, and maybe this isKyle, what's making you think that?
It sounds like me, but a lot ofthe lyrics are just sort of like.
Wouldn't it be betterif it weren't this way?

Kyle (59:28):
Mm-hmm.

Cliff (59:29):
Wouldn't you like it more if capitalism wasn't your

Kyle (59:32):
very chat pile.
Why do people have to live outside?

Cliff (59:36):
Yeah.
Ex, yeah.

Kyle (59:38):
Yeah.

Cliff (59:39):
Would've never drawn that line, but Exactly, yes.
Just like y from chat
pile.

Kyle (59:45):
king is doing shitty pop love song, like inverting
it, being farcical about it.
Like love is like anthrax, butGil is deconstructing the form of
how dumb and vapa love songs are.
he's not commenting on love being dad.

(01:00:05):
In fact, it's the opposite.
It's that love songs doa disservice to love.
It's brilliant.
It's brilliant.
My favorite part of it is when hebreaks out of the monologue to join
in on king singing, like he, he'ddo da da da, piss down a drain.
and then said to myself, like,both, just after the two minute

(01:00:28):
mark, it's like effortlessly cool.
I know there are cooler examples, butit, it was like in the other guys,
when they're at the Irish pub and WillFerrell is telling him the stories.
Like Will Ferrell, the big joke isthat he listens to Little River Band
and he's square and he's like kindof a shitty cop and a pencil pusher.
but he, he has this like crazy,he would, like, he was a pimp.

(01:00:50):
He's married to Eva Mendez.
he is like kind of a hard no psycho,but he, he buries it all down inside.
So there's like a richness under thesurface that makes him effortlessly cool.
And there's that scene in the Irishpub where he will stand up to sing
the old Irish, like sad songs orwhatever the, the traditional songs.

(01:01:12):
And then he'll go rightback down mid-sentence and
keep going with his story.
And it's that sort of thing like.
How do you even thinkto do that with a song?
And it's sonically the coolest song on therecord to me, like also very cliff in that
it's just guitar feedback for most of it.

(01:01:35):
And like strongly encourage you towatch live video of this song, if any.
where you can see Gill or whomever,like walking around the stage and
hitting the guitar on things toproduce different kinds of feedback.
And it's its own kind of performance.
And it's my favoritebass line on the record.
The do do do do do do do, do do.

(01:01:58):
It's a green onions level strut.
To me.
it's in the t Dig Hall of Fame, thissong, like if I had to make a playlist of
top 20 or 25 songs from all the recordsthat we've covered, love, like anthrax
would be on the playlist for sure.

Cliff (01:02:11):
And to your point about the guitar work like that, it sounds like Kurt
Ballou to me, like this, this could be

Kyle (01:02:17):
Yeah, it's harsh.
Yeah, for sure.
And it, and it goes on for like a minuteand a half or a full two minutes before
anything else happens in the song.
That's a choice, man.

Cliff (01:02:28):
So good.
So I think one of the things we cantalk about so as to talk about why
we don't need to talk about it, wouldbe the approach to, like, recording
here, this particular record.
there may be some details we can draw,but like we've sort of talked about.
Already the approach seems tohave been, yeah, we know what

(01:02:51):
the song is gonna sound like.
So now we're gonna use a recording studioto record what the song sounds like.
And now we are done like, not alot of just like, let's sit and
let a thousand flowers bloom.
Let's get in and out and do the thingand take the takes until we feel
good about it and then we're done.
if there are, you know, exceptions oryou disagree, for sure, let me know.

(01:03:14):
But I thought that in lieu of then a lotof the sort of interesting or fascinating
bits that we can usually get out of arecording place or time or studio sessions
or who was involved instead movingfurther into, you know, another thing
we'd like to discuss about every album,like things that you can pay attention to.

(01:03:34):
I'd like to sort of back that out alittle bit, if you don't mind, and just
talk specifically then about Andy Gill,which we've already done some, but like.
you are looking for a razor in thephilosophical sense to like cut this
band open and try to sort of see theparts and understand a bit more of it.

(01:03:56):
We've mostly hinted at this, butlike Andy Gill is the way to do that.
the music is cool.
Yes, we have established neat, but likeas a guitarist and now we're gonna go into
the mode that Cliff goes into sometimeswhere he goes to a deep place and talks
about some nerd dork shit about guitar.
But Kyle is nodding alongsilently so we all know that it's

Kyle (01:04:17):
Uh, I mean, I, I'm the one that made you do a whole monologue
on Telecaster last episode, solike, I'm, I'm always here to learn
to, for a guitar, guitar lesson.

Cliff (01:04:26):
so then in this instance, like what Andy Gill does and is doing.
As a guitarist is fundamentallydifferent than most people have
done guitar up until that point.
And here's what I mean,like in a specific sense.
Tom Morello actually from Rage Againstthe Machine, which has a heck in
a lot of crossover with this band.

(01:04:48):
Once you open your eyes to theangles that are there, we've
talked about some of them.

Kyle (01:04:51):
and they've, they've cited them as an influence

Cliff (01:04:54):
Yeah, yeah.
Um, I mean, it it is, it is direct, uh,the more you look at it, but Tom Morell
specifically said quote, Andy Gill wasone of a handful of artists in history who
changed the way that guitars are played.
And like, I think that that's areally specific and important.
Little nugget out of this bit too.

(01:05:14):
'cause first of all, c carryfor the context that this is
a debut record once again.
to use the phrasing of just like theband really had no business being
this good at this particular point intheir career, um, and certainly had no
business being so good at guitar thatyou change an aspect of an instrument
that's probably at its peak of popularityalready by this moment in time.

(01:05:40):
and so sort of what I mean by that,especially for, folks like kind of
less familiar with guitar in generalor thinking about it like influencing
the technique of how guitars areplayed is a way wilder thing to
impact than the tone of guitars.
So an example of what I mean here.

(01:06:01):
most people would know who slash isslash is an incredible guitarist.
He has interesting fashion and personalitychoices, but he's an incredible guitarist.
No one would really disagree.
He sounds really good.
He plays a Les Paulplays through a Marshall.
This is how it sounds like noone after hearing slash went.
I need to rethink of the waythat my hands work on a guitar.

(01:06:25):
Like it sounds cool.
It's incredible, He kind of establishesand maintains a portion of guitar soloing,
uh, almost front man esque guitar style.
But like he doesn't playguitar in a different way.
He's famous because he is a reallygood guitarist who consistently
has cool tone, who played on coolrecords, and therefore, you know him.

(01:06:48):
Andy Gill, though, on this record,is using the guitar to make sounds
and make their production sound in aspecific way that people were literally
not doing up until this point and thenbegan to discover after he did it.
And so in contrast to like slash forinstance, what we're talking about here is

(01:07:10):
much more in the vein of in we can reachback to a recent discussion in episode
two or in a recent episode as well.
a better modern equivalent would beShuga or even a band like Pia, who is.
Impacting the way that guitariststhink about how many fucking strings

(01:07:30):
are on a guitar, first of all,then how you tune those strings.
Then like with Shuga, not only did they,arguably popularize the eight string
guitar, but the way that they playguitar is actually different than how
most people play guitar to begin with.
They use pull offs in like bassesque techniques on their strings

(01:07:52):
in different ways than most peoplehad ever used on guitar before.
To the degree that the sound of thetechnique is the name of the genre gent,
like that is the through line of thelevel of shift that's happening with
Andy Gill, except as opposed to mga, who,has a huge influence for sure, but like.

(01:08:14):
Compared to Andy Gil, like Andy Gilchanged a phenomenal amount of what would
come afterwards in the following 45 yearsof what guitar sounds like to begin with.
The kind of dance punk stuff thatwe've lightly mocked, uh, a bit is
only one of the places and ways, uh,that guitar technique has changed as

(01:08:36):
a result of Andy Gill and the way thathe, honestly, like he has kind of on
record philosophies, like he hatesguitar solos, and he says things like,
once the sound has made its point Idoesn't necessarily need repeating.
Oh.
Oh, okay.
So like he wants to make a guitar sound.

(01:08:58):
Exactly.
One time.
And the more that you listen to iton this record, the more that you can
actually hear, like, the rhythmic natureof the guitar is a style of playing in a
technique of playing that's really hard.
and you know, in, in sort of modern metaltechnique too, you get things like tralo
picking and stuff where, you know, webasically took Dick Dale and surf rock

(01:09:20):
shit and piped it into different tones.
And now we, now we know howto play guitar really fast.
That's how guitar gets played now,especially in technical realms.
But like, that is not how people thoughtabout guitar in this particular moment
in time, and especially not in the sortof eventual genre that Gang of four
would start occupying at this point.

Kyle (01:09:42):
So when I think of the.
Other people on that level of therewas before them and after them I
think of Hendricks and Eddie VanHalen, clear technique changed.
I think it's easy for people to wantto say Steve v or Ying, we Malte,
or even Stevie Ray Vaughn or fuckingJacob Collier or whatever, or dude

(01:10:05):
from Animals as Leaders where it's justlike, okay, they're really good, but a
million people aren't necessarily goingoff in another direction, technique and
song structure wise because of this.
Like, it, it didn't have theground shaking popular resignation
like an Eddie Van Halen.

(01:10:26):
are there other examples though?
'cause like, I would've never thought thatabout Andy Gill, but I, I think you are
right and it's made its way all the way upto an arena rock band, like The Killers.
Are there other examples likethat that come to your mind?

Cliff (01:10:41):
Maybe, but let me use the examples you gave and then get specific
with them to help people understandand may, maybe this is what you were
thinking or not, but I can thinkof a technique from each of those.
So Jimi Hendrix,

Kyle (01:10:54):
Who was an influence on Andy Gill, by the way.
And if you listen to like anthraxspecifically, um, somebody compared
that to Hendrix at Rainbow Bridgeusing the guitar for, texture rather
than for melody or drive of the song.

Cliff (01:11:10):
Yes.
So Hendricks, you know, somebody who'sobviously very important, like he did
have actual impact in tone and style.
Those things are still true.
In addition to that, though, JimiHendrix mapping it back to this idea
of changing the way that people playthe instrument and think about it.
So, among other things, likeHendricks was left-handed, but

(01:11:31):
played a right-handed guitar.
With a flipped headstock,strung the other way.
I literally give a public presentationwhere I get to talk about this shit
'cause I figured out how to launder it in.
But like that changes the nature of howthe guitar not only sounds, but plays.
Then to the degree that I would arguewhat Jimmy Hendrix changed most wise

(01:11:53):
is Bending Hendricks changed the waythat like bending a string worked,
sounded got applied, got used.
you know, Jimmy Page and others were like,bending strings is a part of the blues.
The more that electric guitar evolved,the more that became a part of it.
But like Hendrix would

Kyle (01:12:11):
Billy Gibbons would be another one with interesting Bens, but
but also influenced by Hendricks.

Cliff (01:12:16):
Yeah.
But like, you know, Hendrix couldtake you seemingly six or seven
notes up a scale from a single bend.
And that not only had to do again withhow he played, but also what he was
playing and how he ensured that all ofthat was set up to actually work for him.
And then similarly, you mentioned EddieVan Halen, like that is King Tap, right?

(01:12:38):
you know, the jump solo eruption.
I'm gonna find new ways to integratereally high gain sounds using, you
know, finger tapping on the fretboardand all that stuff like that is,
you know, just a really place cleardivisions around all this stuff.
Like Hendricks didn't take outhis guitar and then like spend

(01:13:00):
a bunch of time tapping the sameway that Eddie Van Halen did.
They played guitar in fundamentallydifferent ways, and that's sort of
almost separate from the tone and thestyle that they each had, uh, and the
way that they impacted those things.
So like, just trying to thinkthrough all of these other examples
of people who do change the waythat you play or what you play.

(01:13:24):
Two other examples I canthink of off the top.
One's, one's easy.
And in fact, he's gotten a, a mentionor two on this podcast before.
But in the same vein of actually Shugaand then Pia, Josh from Little Tbe

Kyle (01:13:39):
Yeah.

Cliff (01:13:40):
fundamentally approaches the guitar in a different way
than the majority of people do.
and, uh, to connect some various dots.
Like he's often using an eight stringguitar again, which, you know, MGA helped
popularize, but he is using a tappingtechnique that's a lot closer to what
Eddie Van Halen was popularizing, exceptnow he's doing like a full hand, like he's

(01:14:01):
doing multiple strings all at one time.
He's experimenting with differenttunings to sort of make the ability
to use your fingers sort of anywhereyou want on the board and make this
harmonious, resonant sound that you'renot gonna get otherwise unless you
tune a particular guitar that way.
He's always a reallycool person to follow.
I, I sincerely encourage you tocheck out Josh Martin and his stuff.

(01:14:24):
but another example, going backto the quote is Tom Morello,
I would say this to his face.
I don't think Tom Morellois that good of a guitarist.
And that's okay.
But he plays guitar in adifferent way than most people
ever tried to play guitar.
Like watching.
I mean, he's got an entire solowith just like the kill switch.

Kyle (01:14:44):
Not many people have a move associated with them and pulling out
the plug and playing it, using it as apick on the strings to do a solo like
nobody else is associated with that for

Cliff (01:14:56):
Exactly.
Yeah.
So like those sorts of things.
And even though that's not some sortof like hyper sophisticated technique,
it is itself a technique that impactsthe way you play your instrument,
that changes the way you set it up.
He can't, you know, just goingall the way down the rabbit hole.
You can't play a solo using the switch,pickup toggle on your guitar unless you

(01:15:19):
have actually reinforced that puppy.
Um, because if you're gonna sit there anddo a toggle back and forth for an entire
live solo every day for years on end,you're gonna break that fucking guitar
in half or, or at least that switch.
Right?
so that's sort of whatI mean by all of it.
Like, it's, it's as if someone was playingpiano, but they went inside of the thing

(01:15:42):
and said, I want the hammers to hit thestrings differently and that's how I'm
gonna change the way that we play piano.
And so like, that's sortof like, like low key.
That's the type of shit that's happeningon this record that Andy Gill's just sort
of piping in, which, you know, it, italways feels like people talk about it.
Like it's so obvious when people do aninnovative thing when it first starts.

(01:16:06):
but it's.
So much more impressive to be 50 yearson and still go back and say yes.
Not only was he generically changingthe way that people approached guitar
technique and guitars in general, butthen the sort of domino effect of that
change would not only create some prettyweird sounding guitar genres, but, you

(01:16:28):
know, we mentioned bands like Botchand Converge and all that earlier.
Like there's an entire genre of likemathy influence to music that arguably
has much of its genesis in what's beingdone here and in not only the guitar
technique, but then going back, like wetalked about the, the different pairings
of instruments on this record and, how.

(01:16:53):
The vocalist is willing to let thismusic sort of breathe and be creative
and interact with it like heavy,weird, angular music doesn't work
for the most part without a vocalistwho's onboard for the journey.
It just makes it sound bad if they'renot willing to get in there and figure
out the groove of the whole thing,and they do that here incredibly well.

Kyle (01:17:16):
Yeah, I totally agree.
I mean, there were differentconfigurations of this band, but this
sound doesn't happen without these fourguys bringing sort of a signature thing.
And maybe that's whythey didn't really try.
I, you know, I don't, I don't know, Ihaven't dug into the later stuff other
than experiencing the body shock ofhow different the records felt again.

(01:17:40):
Really good playing,really interesting stuff.
It's still cool.
And, above average, above expectations.
just didn't grab me in the sameway, but it had different personnel.
So there's a real lightning in a bottlequality to four people who locked in
together and seemed uncannily aware ofhow locked in together they were, and

(01:18:05):
clearly like fought and bled for it.
A little argued about it.
but only because they were clearly awarethat they were onto something, which is
a very cool feeling that I think mostpeople never experience in their lives.
And so you get a, you get a bit ofa transportive thing to try to put
yourself in that moment, a flower growingfrom concrete, this little thing that

(01:18:29):
has come from the dystopia of it all.
Are there guitar moments on therecord if you want to be like
motherfucking Andy Gill, man?
Are there like two orthree timestamp moments?

Cliff (01:18:41):
Not great men.
The guitar tone and the reallyspecific playing there is a
really good example of the kind ofprecision that I'm talking about.
The that, that rhythmic frenzythat is exactly on time, it works
to great effect in not great men.
And in that song also I think helps you.

(01:19:02):
Hear the contrast between intentionalguitar tone and then what it
sounds like when Gang of fouris doing ambient thing almost.
Um, because in that song, right, theyhave like a, there's like a car horn
type deal that's happening in it.
There's like a weird clapping interlude,which I, I, I guess, precedes all the

(01:19:25):
stomp clap era, uh, in terrifying manner.
But nevertheless, like not greatmen is again, a good example of just
what we are talking about with theguitar technique and how it works.
on the other hand, I would say glass,the chords that are supporting the
vocals are doing so rhythmicallybut not melodically in one verse.

(01:19:47):
Then starts to invert and shiftaround like we've talked about a lot.
but then like in the chorus, it has thesame rhythmic alignment, but sort of
creates like a harsher sound around it.
Like you can really draw out the differentways that Andy Gill is sort of pushing
forward or pulling back, which is.
A weird way to sort of describe it.

(01:20:08):
'cause almost volume wise, it doesn'thappen that way so much on this record.
There's not enough there, there forany one member to like totally pull
back a ton unless it's intentional.
So there's always sort oflike a constant level of it.
but again, glass gives you a way to,I think, see the different facets of

(01:20:29):
how he tries to approach supportingthe song with the guitar specifically.
And then again, 5 45, whichwe were talking about earlier.
There again, thinking about alignment,like kind of sequencing of how guitar
works and how that technique supports it.
The guitar and the vocals aredoing this one-to-one melody line

(01:20:49):
in the verse, but only sometimes.
And like they like to do that move too.
Like it's it sort of fades away and, andgoes back to what we were talking about
earlier where it it creates this sensationof there being so much music there
because in a sense they're never reallyrepeating the same thing, even inside
of a three minute straightforward song.

(01:21:11):
and that then I felt creates thissort of like implicit harmony.
So like once, once you've heard thatthe vocals and guitars are gonna go
with each other and then they stop,you still hear the first one though.
And it creates this, like, thisliteral harmony between what you're

(01:21:32):
hearing in your brain and then what'shappening on the actual recording.
And like, it's no different from.
A common pop hook trick in the senseof like getting you to think of a
thing and then taking it in a slightlydifferent direction, but like it's
done to such great effect here insuch like microscopic ways, that

(01:21:53):
you really sort of get the chance tolike really pull that back out of the
production and see what they're doing.
Uh, and to me that happens so manytimes here, like, I don't even think
I'm done discovering all the placesthat the guitar implies a thing that
you should be hearing while it playssomething different the next time.

Kyle (01:22:09):
Yeah, I love all those examples.
I. Had a handful that are like,maybe kind of the inverse.
I like the moments where it feelslike he's doing something close
to straightforward as almost agrounding effect for the weirder shit.

(01:22:31):
So like, I love not great men,he turns around the riff at the
end with sort of like a bluesyafter a play in the Angular thing.
And that's weirdly the part ofthat that gets stuck in my head.
I think my favorite of theguitar stuff in a lot of ways

(01:22:52):
is I found that essence rare.
'cause it's almost Ramon,it's just like straight down.
Like it's the most angular ina way because the tone with
that sort of straight ahead.
Power cord riffing.
It's the most cutting, it's the, it'sthe most abrasive, the guitar feels,
but he is kind of doing the straightestahead thing on the whole record.

(01:23:14):
but then on return, the gift,the guitar and bass lock in
on an ascending chord thing.
And that's where I'm like feelingthe dr feel good pub rock influence.
And it's interesting that there aremoments for like, just a flash, like
at the illusion of like Bachman Turneroverdrive or, you know, jock rock type

(01:23:40):
shit, but they never lean into it.
but you, you get a glimpse intoa parallel timeline where it
could, they could be that band.
They could just be likesome English bullshit rock.
hold up your, your pint ofpiss water for this one.
But then also return the gift is a, isa great example of both sides of the

(01:24:02):
coin because there's a solo questionmark on return the gift around 1 45,
where it's totally a tonal and thenit like switches into clean chords.
And then you keep hearing strange notesfrom that sort of echo deep in the mix
after that, as the song just sort of moveson from like, well that was fucking weird.

(01:24:26):
and the rhythm section has to likefind the funk around the party
crasher of Andy Gill on that song.
So it's great.
It's rowdy in an almost metaphysical way.
And then on tourist onat home, he's a tourist.
he's absolutely just fucking around.
Like it made me laugh out loudthe first couple of times I.

(01:24:48):
Really listen to it intently.
because another band that youinvoke a lot on this podcast
that we both love the Mars Volta.
It's very Omar.
It's just like, come on man.
Come on.
Be, be for real.
but it works.
and they're, one of the ways that they'relocked in is the rest of the band is

(01:25:09):
tight when somebody decides to be crazy.
And it's usually Andy that'sdeciding to be crazy on this thing.

Cliff (01:25:16):
The ending of that song is incredible.

Kyle (01:25:18):
of tourist.

Cliff (01:25:19):
Yeah.
All the build with the Toms.

Kyle (01:25:22):
Yeah.
I mean, the tremendous rhythmsection record like Andy Gale would
not work nearly as well as he doesoutside of the context of a highly
disciplined, really, really tight.
Rhythm section, it would, it wouldbe to Mars Volta on a bad acid night
without somebody really holding ittogether and making it pop and palatable.

Cliff (01:25:46):
If you'd like to do the extra credit tune, dig version for this one
and step inside the hellscape of mybrain, you can, think about to, to suss
out what you just said, Kyle, simplylistening to the rhythmic overlay between
the snare and the guitar on almost everysong will fascinate you they, he aligns.

(01:26:10):
attributing it to Andy Gill, but Ishould attribute it to all of them.
The way that they talk about it,just their alignment rhythmically
with each other is surprising.
I, I don't know how else to describe that.
Like that's part of what helps createthis sound is moving rhythmically
different parts of what you'replaying to correspond different parts,

(01:26:34):
specifically with what the drum isplaying or what the drums is, is doing.
And that gives you that sensation ofspace that they have here where it's
like sometimes it feels really full.
Wait, is it empty?
No, it came back.
Now it's fast and it's like somehow, italways feels in balance despite being.

(01:26:54):
Almost objectively prettydynamic from time to time.
and I think that that's, again, onelike super specific way that you
could start drawing some of this out.
It doesn't mean that they all satdown with a fucking TI 83 calculator
and said like, this is how the snarelines up with, like the, exactly what
I'm playing on this given string.

(01:27:15):
But it's just like theintuition that comes from this,
it's almost an anti R thing.
Like they, resist the idea oflike falling into a halftime
riff or something like that.
And they almost go in the oppositedirection a lot of the time.
And like that is, it's a small tweakthat makes a really fascinating
approach and I think contributes inan outsized way to like, what became

(01:27:39):
of this sound and some of the thingsthat got inspired by them specifically.

Kyle (01:27:43):
I was envisioning, you know, the Shuga famous riff farming exercise where
they charted out and you can sort of seethe, the patterns or whatever visually,
but they were doing that with commentary.
You know, the calling out the changeslike a classic band, but it was
like, no, remove the drum fill hereand put this noise here instead.

(01:28:05):
And just remembering it and then rippingit all in one long take a bit like.
Sleeps dope smoker in a way where it waslike, no, then do this for 17 minutes
and then go into the other thing.

Cliff (01:28:18):
But in, I promise this will be my last temptation to the listener
to become a huge fucking nerd.
But, corresponding to.
Yes, but corresponding to our lastepisode and the Cliff's educational corner
that you made me do about Telecastersversus Strats, here's a great one.
Andy Gill's, a Strat player.

(01:28:39):
So we talked last time about thedifferences specifically between
Strats and Tellies because they'remade by the same company and it
gives you a really good, easy way tolike draw the contrast between them.
Here is, and we didn't plan it thisway, but like, here's, in contrast
to that, a perfect example of howthe Strat works as a guitar, how that
supports the technique of Andy Gill.

(01:29:01):
How that supports the tone and theshape of what's being done here.
and you know, if you want to go backand listen to the explanation of why
it worked well for Honky Tonk andBrooks and Dunn, you'll probably have
enough information to understand, okay,I kind of get why then this guitar
would work well for exactly this.
Which is in a sense, a kind ofsonic inverse from what they

(01:29:21):
were doing a lot on that record.

Kyle (01:29:23):
So the record rips, Once you pop the fun.
Don't stop.
you will listen to it a bunch.
We bet if you like it once.

Cliff (01:29:31):
Listen to it on evenings and weekends.

Kyle (01:29:35):
Please send me evenings and weekends.
where do you go from here?

Cliff (01:29:39):
Deceptively hard question.
I wonder if you feel thesame way about this one.
Usually we have like the, I have amillion things to tell you thing,
and here it's like, hmm, I don'tknow which ones I want to tell.

Kyle (01:29:52):
I do have a million.
cause that's the poison in mybrain so there's, you know, one
or maybe multiple elements thatyou're gonna love from gang of four.
sonically, like we talked about,there's a bunch of post-punk bands,
post-punk ish bands out there right now.
Even if it's not a direct line,I think all the coolest bands

(01:30:15):
in the world at this moment havesome debt owed to Gang of Four.
So if you're thinking aboutthe arty side of post-punk,
there's water from your eyes.
There's lifeguard, dry cleaning,wet leg preoccupations, or women,

(01:30:38):
RIP before them black Midi we dunkedon Fran Ferdinand and The Killers.
But I do think Block Party were one of thefew of the aughts that were like worth it.
one Atlanta band that was like oneof my favorite bands ever to do this.
They, their debut recordwas a perfect record.

(01:31:02):
Respectfully not on the level ofentertainment, but it was great.
It was Balkans.
they're still eating off that one record.
They all live in New York now, butthey're still playing shows periodically
'cause people love those songs so much.
you know, we didn't really acknowledgeat any point how Talking Heads was
a couple of clicks over from this,but it is apparent that there's

(01:31:24):
a spiritual third cousin elementwith what they were doing with, you
know, society of the Spectacle Rock.
And in some ways, like at the time ofthis recording, Haley Williams has just
really 17 weird new art rock singlesthat are not an album to be clear.
But we talked about the latestParamore record that So Talking

(01:31:46):
Heads influenced, I mean, but.
There's very easily a world in whichnot great men is a sneering fierce
Haley Williams performance, you know,and their small p politics are very
similar to her small P politics.
So I can see Zach Taylor and Haleycovering one of these songs and

(01:32:11):
really fucking pulling it off.
more on the politicalperformer side of things.
It's a little more punky, it's alittle more stooges than gang of four.
But Amal in the sniffers or in theballpark, I think Fontaine, who
I previously mentioned are, youknow, a little more romantic, but.
Somewhere in the ballpark.

(01:32:32):
I think the Viagra boys, while not thesame thing, are capturing attention
for a lot of the same reasons.
Tight interplay of instrumentswith a, what the hell is happening,
vocal character performance.
I think you'd be hard pressedeven though they're more overt
with their political stuff.

(01:32:53):
Another English political postpunk band, idols, definitely
a successor of Gang of four.
Then there's Yard Act, reallymore the first Yard Act record.
again, yard Act also from leadsalso like Gang of Four in that their
second record is very different thantheir first, leads is kind of an
interesting breeding ground and I waslike, are there other leads bands?

(01:33:14):
Is there a thing there?
You know, is there aBristol sound for leads?
The list is interesting.
Chumba Womba who not fornothing, has kind of gone for it
politically, like gang of force.
So respect pulled apartby horses is from leads.
Sisters of Mercy are from leadssoft sell, incredible from leads,

(01:33:35):
Kaiser chiefs, whatever, alt Jwhatever, Corrine, Bailey, Ray.
So leads has been aninteresting, interesting ground.
But that right there, just sonically,you know, I, I also feel like in the
lineage of Devo, the ocs are like a lot,a lot of the more I listened to Gang

(01:34:01):
of Four was like if you dunked gang offour in slime and let them turn into a
mutant, they would come out as the ocs.
I feel like.

Cliff (01:34:10):
I knew you were gonna land there,

Kyle (01:34:12):
they're the Tim and Eric version of Gang of Four.
but that, that's a lot ofdifferent bands with a lot of
different vibes and Headspace,but they all lock into a groove.
and they all like have somethingto say in their weird way.
And so that big tent in a lot of ways,I think was pitched by a gang of four,
and again, mostly by this single record.

(01:34:34):
So having said all that, are thereothers now that come to mind for you?

Cliff (01:34:40):
so you've done an awesome job and I would say laying out, starting
point directions like we try todo, uh, I totally failed at that
particular exercise, so bless you.
I would then supplement

Kyle (01:34:54):
Apes Together, strong Baby.

Cliff (01:34:56):
I would supplement it then with a less diverse range,
but another interesting wayto, I think, go deeper on it.
so that would be closer contemporariesof theirs and then also bands
who Andy Gill ended up producing.
So

Kyle (01:35:16):
Oh,

Cliff (01:35:16):
quick example.
First of all, uh, ona closer contemporary,

Kyle (01:35:20):
wavelength.

Cliff (01:35:21):
there we go.
Thank you.
Wavelength.
Well done.
we mentioned Melvin's earlier, butMelvin's like, so Buzz specifically from
Melvin said quote, like entertainmentwas a, a massive influence on our
band, much more so than people think.
Actually, certainly on our secondrecord, OSMA, that was one of the main
records we were listening to and one thatprobably influenced it more than most.

(01:35:43):
I've never not listened to that record.

Kyle (01:35:46):
Man,

Cliff (01:35:47):
So, you know, we've covered Melvin Tier and talked
about them from time to time.
Melvin's is a thing you're either gonnabe into or probably hate quickly but is

Kyle (01:35:58):
long as you have strong feelings, buzz is happy.

Cliff (01:36:01):
exactly, yes.
And they're a cool manifestation oflike, dragging out some of the ideas
that are happening here and giving.
1% of the shit that wasoriginally given with the idea.
And that's sort of what it feels likemoving in a bit more in that direction.

(01:36:21):
And, you know, you mentioned Kurt Cobainearlier, like had this as, you know,
one of his most important records.
So, you know, we connected the Melvinsand Nirvana dot for folks along
with a lot of other Seattle esqueaffiliated folks in other episodes.
So, it's always an interesting place togo back to there and sort of rediscover
and sort of try to think about,okay, how did Ggo four get in here?

(01:36:44):
'cause I can track a few other bands,but like, how did they get in here
and what am I hearing and how canI listen to a Nirvana record and
try to find the gang of four in it?
Right?
So I love that exercise in general.
Also then, bands that are probablyobvious to mention, uh, stylistically,
but are in a similar, I don't evenwanna say a similar vein or a similar

(01:37:05):
style, but have a. A vibe that Ifeel maps or align fairly closely.

Kyle (01:37:12):
to Gene Se Quo?

Cliff (01:37:13):
Yeah.
So don't hate me too hard inadvance, but, you know, Husker do
is a pretty good example of a bandthat was around a similar time,
that loves to weirdly produce theirsnare tone, um, and all that stuff.
And like there is alot of crossover there.
And then just, your usual likeFugazi television and I think you,
you did already mention The Stooges.

(01:37:35):
that was close enough to me whereit's like, nah, if you haven't
listened to the Stooges in a while,this is a good reason to do it.

Kyle (01:37:41):
Yeah.
Or wire or the minuteman

Cliff (01:37:43):
yeah, yeah.
The Minutemen are a good example too.
And then, so Andy Gill did some productionfor other bands before he would eventually
produce some of the Gang of Four records.
and two of the bands that he producedwere the Jesus Lizard and the debut
record from Red Hot Chili Pepperswas an Andy Gill produced record.

(01:38:05):
And

Kyle (01:38:06):
I was extraneously trying to avoid talking about how much
Flea said Gang of four was aninfluence on the chili peppers.
Sort of like.

Cliff (01:38:14):
we don't even have to pick that up, honestly.
Like even the vignette fromwhen they work together is good.
Let me give you an example, Kyle.
This will warm your heart.
Okay.
In the Terrifying autobiography scartissue, Anthony Keis, uh, on top of
admitting many crimes, as far as Iknow, um, he said, quote, one day I
got a glimpse of Andy Gill's notebook.

(01:38:36):
While they were, you know, while hewas producing this record for them
he got a glimpse of Andy Gill'snotebook and next to the song police
helicopter, he had written shit.
I was demolished that hehad dismissed that as shit.
Police helicopter wasa jewel in our crown.
It embodied the spirit of whowe were, which was this kinetic,
stabbing, angular, shockingassault, force of sound and energy.

(01:38:59):
Reading his notes probably sealedthe deal in our minds that, okay,
now we're working with the enemy.
And it became very much himagainst us, especially fleeing me.
It became a real battleto make the record.

Kyle (01:39:13):
Okay.
I take back what I said, worth it.
That was a delight.
I will carry that inmy heart on hard days.

Cliff (01:39:20):
Yeah, so you know, Steve Albany's ghost lives forward and backwards in time,
and is always doing things like this.
So, uh, it's nice to know that that energycontinues, but with that context in mind.
The debut record from the Red Hot ChiliPeppers in 1984 is an interesting listen
now, on top of it is one of the onlytime, or it was the only record they

(01:39:42):
had with a particular guitarist, andthat certainly changes their tone a lot.
But anyway, so less, less like,oh, you should become a giant Red
Hot Chili Peppers fan, and more,

Kyle (01:39:54):
California.

Cliff (01:39:56):
which, this is a good moment as any to make this point.
Once again, you know, we mentionedearlier that we made some fun of Franz
Ferdinand and a number of other dandertype bands here, dude, if you like
those songs, that's fine, dude, I likeVanessa Carlton's a thousand Miles.

Kyle (01:40:12):
Don't you drag her down

Cliff (01:40:14):
You

Kyle (01:40:14):
this?
Yeah.
There

Cliff (01:40:17):
enough, fair enough.
I could actually defendthat as a thesis, but yes.
point made.

Kyle (01:40:21):
I can't remember if I've told this story on the podcast or not, but we went
and saw a band we love many summers agowhen we were young, and I hated one of the
openers, who I've come around to respect.
but I like really hated the performancethat day and was just kind of more
of a hater in general in those times.

(01:40:44):
And when the headliners who, again,we love, like one of the bands I've
seen the most in the world said,you know, give it up for this band.
And then, then they said thename of that band and I went,
they suck and dead silent.
And instead of rising toactively chastises me, he
just went, it's all music man.

(01:41:06):
For some reason that felt, it'slike apparent being like, I'm
not mad, I'm just disappointed.
And that single comment from adrunk, asshole lead singer, singer
who didn't want to put effort into aheckler changed the course of my life.
And I would never talking tohim, I would never tell him this
story and give him credit for anunintentional phone head moment.

(01:41:29):
But like this podcast, I wouldn'tbe on the journey of this podcast
without that moment in my life.
It's all music, man.
Even if it's Franz Ferdinand, evenif it's, you know, dah, dah, dah
parentheses, Taylor's version,

Cliff (01:41:43):
Yep.

Kyle (01:41:44):
it all has a right to exist.
Almost all of it ain't hurting nobody.
And sometimes when it's hurting somebodylike r Kelly, but it's still great
music, eventually the arc of justicewill bend back toward your streams
going to restitution for victims.
So, let a thousand flowersbloom, so to speak.

Cliff (01:42:04):
So once again we faced with the concept that we hit right back at the
beginning of this is serious and notserious simultaneously as evidenced by
our discussion of a Red Hot Chili Peppersalbum as a way to seriously take on
the musical learnings of gang of four.
But that's just one example.
You can't take anything too seriously,but you can't underappreciate it either.

(01:42:27):
Things do mean things, and I thinkthis record is such a good example of
that tone that you can strike againwhen you have intentionality, vision
and care about getting something done.
But the punk ethos just helpsyou to move the fuck forward.
The song sounds like this.
That's good to go.
Let's do it.
Yes, that rips I will perform that50 years again in the future and

(01:42:50):
it will still be good then too.
Actually, you know, now that I thinkabout it, it must be pretty good to
be whatever age they're at playingthose songs and thinking to themselves.
If this is still way better thaneverything else that I hear right now.

Kyle (01:43:03):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I would be remiss if I didn't sharethe lesson from not great men,
which is, refuting the Great Men.
Theory of history, anotherWikipedia rabbit hole.
it's the Marxist ideaof history from below.
it's really like critique from below.

(01:43:25):
So for all the like armchair Twitterleftists people, the analysis of small
p politics that they do recognizes thatthere's no place of ideological purity.
if you're operating, if you're likeadvancing any kind of expression in
the world, none of you are free fromideology in the critical theory sense.

(01:43:46):
like you exist in yourown loop of it, I guess.
so the Marxist in me wants to say, getin the pit and try to love someone.
And there is an equivalent of that.
There's.
There is canonically.
Uh, one of the most famous band quotescomes from Dave Allen, the bassist,
who said, you know, gang of four we'reabout politics with a small p, the stuff

(01:44:08):
that affects your daily life, not partypolitics, although I do like to party.

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