Gang of Four, Hollerado @ Music Box 2/21/11

Photo by xrayspx via flickr.

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Photo by xrayspx via flickr.
I’m not sure if anyone but me had images of the workers in Wisconsin in their heads while Gang Of Four was in the middle of a steaming version of “To Hell With Poverty” at the Music Box, but there sure were a lot of fists in the air for the lyric “In this land/ right now/ some are insane/ and they’re in charge.” Sometimes, a coincidence of timing can make a performance of a thirty year old track positively zeitgeist-capturing.During their run from the late 1970s through the early nineties, Gang of Four really had two separate careers, each with a different audience. Their first incarnation was a four-piece band of searing intensity that offered a deconstruction of funk from a dole-age British perspective. Choppy, angular and prone to lyrics that sounded like advertising slogans, their early releases sound like a UK parallel to the Minutemen. After their second album, the rhythm section abandoned ship while guitarist Andy Gill and singer Jon King soldiered forth with a drum machine and a rotation of bass players, crafting smooth, KROQ-friendly eighties pop. Their history is now repeating itself in chronological order, as the ecstatically received 2005 reunion of the original four-piece band has been followed by another lineup of King, Gill, “and the rest.”

But this new lineup has proven capable of making new music. The recently-released Content presents a worthy addition to the band’s catalog, and a splitting of the difference between their two approaches. While the sonic edges have been rounded off, many of the album’s pleasures come from the propulsive back-and-forth interplay between bass, guitar and drums - thankfully drummer Mark Heaney has been retained in place of that confounded machine. The new songs performed at the Music Box fit right in, and it was on these that the band seemed most clearly locked in with each other.

Other than those new songs, the set was virtually the same as the one performed during the 2005 reunion. It has to be admitted that Dave Allen and Hugo Burnham were important contibutors to the way that early band sounded, and their young replacements couldn’t exactly replicate what those guys brought to the table. But when King and Gill hit their stride, as they did early in the night, any minor hesitation from the bottom end was easy to forgive. Both signature sounds have dated reasonably well, particularly as they toughen up some of their later eighties hits for the four-piece lineup.

And the two remain captivating performers. “They look pissed,” a friend said in my ear as they took the stage, and he didn’t mean drunk. Gill glares down the audience and wields his guitar like a weapon, menacing and stern, while King waves his arms with the conviction of a street preacher as he calls out all the reasons we might be feeling guilty that day.

A frenzied “Anthrax” saw King and Gill tag-team against an innocent Stratocaster, which they nearly smashed to pieces during the song, finishing the job only after the song was done, the amp had been turned off, and the moment would seem to have passed. “Somebody needs an anger-management course,” marvelled Gill as King finally seperated the neck from the body. But it seems absolutely in character for this band to leave nothing half-finished.

We missed most of the opening set from Hollerado, but the band’s final ten minutes were impressive indeed, a high energy twin-guitar attack that shot back and forth from boogie jams to hypnotic space beats, suggesting a wide-open approach that rock and roll could use more of these days.