Gang Of Four
I Heart Hiroshima
Rebuilding The Rights Of Statues
The Corner Hotel, Melbourne
Wednesday 2nd March 2011
by René Schaefer
Gang Of Four pretty much defined the post-punk genre with their 1980 debut album Entertainment!. While other British bands like Wire, PiL, The Au Pairs, Fire Engines, Joy Division and The Raincoats all released equally ground-breaking albums around this time, Gang Of Four are most closely identified with the sound that influenced the hordes of neo-post-punk-disco-wavers that had a stranglehold on indie dance floors five years ago. Jagged, yet danceable rhythms; trebly cheese grater guitar riffs; semi-spoken or shouted vocals, stripped of all but the vaguest notion of melody – these are the clichés that were easy to emulate. But Gang Of Four’s ace in the hole has always been their fierce intellect and left-wing radicalism. This, paired with a keen sense of irony, informed everything from their name, to their lyrics and album designs. They were poster boys for a self-critical form of politics, informed as much by Marxism as by Situationism’s exhortations to question everything and demand the impossible.
Singer Jon King and guitarist Andy Gill, the core remainder of the original group, are still concerned with making their audience think. It is right there in the way they approach the fraught spectacle of the rock show, but it is also inherent in gestures such as inviting young Beijing trio Rebuilding The Rights Of Statues (aka Re-TROS) to be their Australian tour support. It was a subtle reminder that Australian music fans are still largely ignorant of the wealth of creativity being generated in Asia, beyond the occasional visiting Japanese garage rock band. Even though people were slow to filter into the Corner band room during Re-TROS’ set, those who made the effort to arrive early were rewarded with a highly energetic set of (you guessed it) post-punk influenced dance rock, infused with a certain urgency that many local proponents of the form sadly lack. Lead singer and guitarist Hua Dong poured his heart and soul into his performance that recalled the bounciness of The B52s as much as the lean, propulsive attack of Wire.
Brisbane band I Heart Hiroshima faced the challenge of following this burst of energy with their spindly, stripped-bare approach to songwriting. The fact that they managed to pull it off with great aplomb highlights the real strengths of this three-piece. With two guitars, drums, and a mixture of male and female voices in just about every song, IHH exhibited a decidedly skewed approach to constructing songs. Drummer Susie Patten was the focal point of the group, both visually and in her idiosyncratic playing style, which occasionally conjured memories of a young Rob Hirst. Meanwhile, the absence of bass actually helped to foreground the intricacies of the interweaving guitar lines. The lesson these guys have taken away from post-punk is a refusal to rock in the conventional sense, instead constructing dynamics beyond the strict four-four tempo and reliance on hooks of most pop music. A muscular interpretation of The Chills’ kiwi cult classic ‘Pink Frost’ almost bettered the original. In the hands of IHH, the mopey, fungal amorphousness of the original suddenly grew feral and snarling, without losing any of its spine-tingling spookiness.
As the stage was readied for Gang Of Four behind a heavy red curtain, people jostled for a good viewing position down the front. A fair smattering of graying and receding hair rammed home the point that this was indeed a band whose creative heyday was 30 years ago. Still, they hit the stage running, Jon King gesticulating and goading the crowd, while Andy Gill paced back and forth while conjuring shards of razor-edged noise from his guitar. One of the benefits of having played most of this material for such a long time was in being able to tighten or slacken the pace at will. For every volley of classics from Entertainment! or Solid Gold, there was a tune from the new and still unfamiliar album Content, which blended in seamlessly. In fact, it was at times like these that the mood of the crowd swung from nostalgia to focused attention, as people forgot to dance and started straining to catch King and Gill’s words, the same way they might have tried to decode every phrase when they first heard template tracks ‘At Home He’s A Tourist’ or ‘Anthrax’.
It was during the latter song that audience participation was stepped up a level. Having already destroyed a sacrificial pawn shop guitar during the feedback intro that kickstarts the song, Gill passed a second instrument into the crowd to generate some wild, abstract noises. As the song finished, a roadie tried to retrieve the guitar to shouts of “return the gift”, only to be told by Gill to let the punter who laid claim to the prize keep it. It was the antithesis of rock’n’roll preciousness – a democratising gesture that seemed to inspire the crowd to ever greater adulation and in return energised the band.
‘Return The Gift’, ‘What We All Want’ and ‘To Hell With Poverty’ – each new number met with a more raucous response. Even the divise commercial hit ‘I Love A Man In Uniform’, off their third album Songs Of The Free, was transformed into a ramshackle stomper and singalong. The irony of a crowd demanding of the performers “I need an order, I need an order!” was not lost. If the rock concert is indeed a ritual, Gang Of Four invested tonight's ritual with a political significance - there for the taking by those who wanted to perceive it. Which is exactly how the band would like it, I’m sure.
The gesture of beating a microwave oven with a baseball bat for extra percussive effects may have seemed ham-fisted in comparison, but there was a strange satisfaction in seeing this consumer commodity reduced to a hunk of twisted metal and plastic. The fact that it actually sounded pretty good, raised it above the level of the kind of gratuitous destruction Wendy O’Williams of The Plasmatics used to indulge in. More likely it was intended in the spirit of Georges Bataille’s notion of non-productive expenditure and sacrifice. Perhaps.
More importantly, Gang Of Four kicked arse. The new-ish rhythm section was tight and rambunctious, with Thomas McNeice on bass clearly enjoying being included in the good-natured pushing and shoving that occasionally ensued on stage. The lighting design, with white spotlights illuminating the musicians from below, gave the show a visual starkness, accentuated every time that Gill leaned out over the crowd barrier and fixed individual audience members with piercing blue piggy eyes. With their rumpled suits and disheveled bleach blonde hair, Gill and King came across as West End gangsters rather than Marxist agitators, and once again it is conceivable that this was entirely intentional.
Two encores later, and finally they launched into the song that everybody wanted to hear. ‘Damaged Goods’ was a guaranteed dance floor filler at the height of the post-punk revival a few years ago. It was thoroughly over-exposed and has subsequently become a song DJs avoid like the plague, but in this setting, on this night, it was an anthem that united several generations who identify with its sentiment of ambivalence in love and lust. Re-TROS provided some spot-on vocal support in the choruses, and as the song moved into the outro “You know the change will do you good, I’m kissing you goodbye, goodbye, goodbye…” it was clear that this was indeed the end of the show. The musicians linked arms, Broadway style, and took a bow before departing the stage.
To quote from the sleeve of Entertainment!: “The people are given what they want.” The majority of people who attended this gig were there to see a band that has meant a lot to them at some point in their lives. Maybe it still does. Either way, there was nothing cynical or exploitative about Gang Of Four revisiting their past glories. The messages of their songs are still fresh, as was their performance. Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon once wrote that “people pay to see others believe in themselves”. On this occasion at least, that statement is an over-simplification of the relationship between audience and performer. Tonight was more than just entertainment.
René Schaefer
(Pics: Ben Butcher)