'' is the
1979 debut album by
English Post-punk band
Gang Of Four . This album was released on EMI in the
U.K. and on
Warner Bros. in the
USA .
The music on the first album shows clearly the influence of
Punk , yet also incorporates
Funk and less-obvious influences of
Reggae and
Dub , similar to other bands at the time such as
Public Image Ltd. ,
Pere Ubu , and
Au Pairs . As with these other influential post-punk bands, the
Bass is mixed much more prominently than it typically is in
Rock or punk.
The album has attracted praise from rock musicians. "''Entertainment!'' shredded everything that came before it,"
R.E.M. 's
Michael Stipe has said.
Flea of the
Red Hot Chili Peppers stated that the first time he heard the record, "It completely changed the way I looked at rock music and sent me on my trip as a bass player."
The album's artwork was designed by band members Jon King and Andy Gill, typical of their
DIY approach. The cover depicts an "
Indian " shaking hands with a "
Cowboy " in three heavily processed versions of the same image, the faces reduced to blobs of red and white--that is, to the
Stereotypical racial colors. A text that winds around the images reads, "The Indian smiles, he thinks that the cowboy is his friend. The cowboy smiles, he is glad the Indian is fooled. Now he can exploit him."
In the context of the album, this is less a protest of inter-ethnic conflict in the
Old West than it is a commentary on the way that media images like "cowboys and Indians" (which is to say, ''Entertainment!'') can convince people to act against their interests--as in the artwork on the album's back cover, depicting a family whose father says, "I spend most of our money on myself so that I can stay fat," while the mother and children declare, "We're grateful for his leftovers."
On the album's inner sleeve, small photographs depicting scenes shown on television are interlaced with text illustrating what the band suggests are the misleading subtexts of media presentations: "The facts are presented neutrally so that the public can make up its own mind"; "Men act heroically to defend their country"; "People are given what they want." These are the sort of
Memes that Gang of Four attempted to challenge with their own version of ''Entertainment!''.
The album's central theme is set forth at the beginning of its second track, "Natural's Not in It": "The problem of leisure/
What to do for pleasure". Extending the workplace, the realms of home, play and especially love actually replicate the same self-destroying forces. As the song goes on to say:
:Fornication makes you happy
:No escape from society
:Natural is not in it
:Your relations are of power
:We all have good intentions
:But all with strings attached
{Link without Title}
As Gang of Four see it, once leisure becomes a commodity like any other, one's leisure time and one's own self participating in leisure become commodities as well, with no more intrinsic meaning than the profit to be made from them. As the song "Return the Gift" puts it:
:It's on the market
:You're on the price list...
:Please send me evenings and weekends
{Link without Title}
Being thus reduced to economic tokens, people at leisure feel alienated by the very activities they are supposed to be enjoying. To the complaint "I'm so restless (I'm bored as a cat)", the song "Glass" responds: "If you're feeling all in take some aspirin/Or some
Paracetamol ."
"At Home He's a Tourist" describes the condition of everyman: "He fills his head with culture/He gives himself an ulcer." [http://www.notgreatmen.com/gof_l1.html#10
One of ''Entertainment!'''s best-known songs is "Anthrax", which might be considered an anti-love song ("Love will get you like a case of anthrax/And that's something I don't want to catch"). As Jon King sings, Andy Gill issues what might be considered a spoken-word manifesto of the group's take on romance, which concludes: "I don't think we're saying there's anything wrong with love, just don't think that what goes on between two people should be shrouded in mystery."
{Link without Title}
Stripping away that "mystery," in the song "Contract," Gang of Four suggest that love is nothing more than "a contract in our mutual interest". Shaped both by economic inequality and media messages ("You dreamed of scenes/Like you read of in magazines"), modern relationships are doomed to re-enact the exploitation of capitalism:
:These social dreams
:Put in practice in the bedroom
:Is this so private
:Our struggle in the bedroom
{Link without Title}
As "Natural's Not in It" notes, "The body's good business."
{Link without Title} Or as "At Home He's a Tourist" puts it:
:Down on the disco floor
:They make their profit
:From the things they sell
:To help you cob off
:And the rubbers you hide
:In your top left pocket
{Link without Title}
As those lyrics suggest, ''Entertainment!'' often presents
Sexuality in a grim light--sometimes using religious terminology (like "
Fornication ") to express disgust. The song "Damaged Goods" declares:
:The sins of the flesh
:Are simply sins of lust
:Sometimes I'm thinking that I love you
:But I know it's only lust
{Link without Title}
At times, this anger at a socially mediated sexuality turns into a rather cruel attitude towards lovers in general and female partners in particular. In "I Found That Essence Rare," the band sings: "See the happy pair smiling close like they're monkeys/They wouldn't think so but they're holding themselves down."
And in "Damaged Goods" (the title itself a pejorative expression for a sexually active woman), the singer declares, "You said you're cheap but you're too much." [http://www.notgreatmen.com/gof_l1.html#4 ''The New Trouser Press Record Guide'' (1989) credits the album with "the self-righteous air of someone who couldn't get to first base with his girlfriend the previous evening."
Aside from its critique of leisure and romance, the album does tackle some more conventional political subjects--though with Gang of Four's unique take. "Ether", the album's lead track, is a protest against the British occupation of
Northern Ireland ("Fly the flag on foreign soil"), making reference to the
Maze prison outside Belfast in lyrics like "locked in Long Kesh" and "H-Block torture", and suggesting that Britain is motivated by economic factors in the lines "There may be oil/Under
Rockall " (a barren islet that was the focus of an Anglo-Irish dispute). But, typically, what are seen as the outrages of British rule are presented as a problem for those "trapped in heaven lifestyle", the "dirt behind the daydream" that "breaks your new dreams daily".
{Link without Title}
The song "5.45" deals with
Guerrilla Warfare , presumably a reference to the bloody conflicts then going on in
Central America . But the song, like the album as a whole, approaches the subject from the point of view of the alienated bourgeois spectator: "How can I sit and eat my tea with all that blood flowing from the television." In the end, Gang of Four concludes, "Guerrilla war struggle is the new entertainment."
{Link without Title}
All songs written by Gang of Four.
#"Ether" - 3:52
#"Natural's Not in It" - 3:09
#"Not Great Men" - 3:08
#"Damaged Goods" - 3:29
#"Return the Gift" - 3:08
#"Guns Before Butter" - 3:49
#"I Found That Essence Rare" - 3:09
#"Glass" - 2:32
#"Contract" - 2:42
#"At Home He's a Tourist" - 3:33
#"5.45" - 3:48
#"Anthrax" - 4:23
The
CD reissue includes songs from the ''
Yellow EP '':
- "Outside the Trains Don't Run on Time" - 3:27
- "He'd Send in the Army" - 3:40
- "It's Her Factory" - 3:08
- "Armalite Rifle" - 2:48
And four previously unissued tracks:
- "Guns Before Butter (Alternate Version)" - 4:25
- "Contract (Alternate Version)" - 2:48
- "Blood Free (Live)" - 3:17
- "Sweet Jane (Live)" - 3:20
