relentless tension. Andy Gill's guitar shards perpetually rousted the deep groove created by bassist Dave Allen and drummer Hugo Burnham, while the consumer culture critique of Jon King's lyrics often addressed its own chilly delivery. It was thinking-man's funk, and history has deemed it unusually eloquent; abrasive discs such as Entertainment! and Solid Gold somehow make the Leeds foursome seem heroic. Undervalued during their punk heyday, they've inspired a host of bands during the last few years. On the eve of their reunion tour, we look at five key members of their progeny.
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Back in the late '70s you wouldn't have recognized the naked youth who bum-rushed Gang of Four's L.A. show. But that bare-assed fan was none other than Flea. His passion for Entertainment! ("My young mind was just blown.") inspired the nascent Chilis, but hiring Andy Gill to produce their debut nearly undid the band. Twenty-one years later, they're one of the biggest groups in the world. Go figure.
The Rapture
The most recent update of the Gang of Four sound arrived with this New York band's "House of Jealous Lovers," the record of 2003. It's a virtual carbon copy of GOF's trenchant anthem "To Hell With Poverty!" right down to the yelped vocals and bursts of guitar noise that slice through the sinewy bass line. It was also a happy fluke - their Echoes album revealed them as bedsit romantics more interested in The Cure than Lenin.
Franz Ferdinand
This Scottish quartet became the band of 2004 by editing the GOF's ideas into concise pop. Sexiness is substituted for politics, instruments serve the song instead of turning it inside out, and Soviet Constructivist typefaces are now logos, not socialist art. In short, the defanged chart stars were the group the GOF were trying to become with '84's funked-up and synthed-out disc, Hard.
Radio 4
If The Rapture were turned into dance-floor monsters by their embrace of GOF's aesthetic, then Radio 4 - who share their DFA production team - are even more slavish devotees. As well as sharing their numerical nomenclature, their pointed album Gotham! (note the exclamation point) was a pre-9/11 timepiece that skillfully renegotiated each and every meaning of the word "party."
!!!
This amorphous New York/Sacramento collective (members are spread over other bands like Out Hud and LCD Soundsystem) let the bass-player to provide the blue-eyed funk; everything on top of that is allowed to explode in its own way. Their lyrical nonsense is riddled with political sloganeering that has a silly side. Check "Me and Giuliani Down By the Schoolyard" for proof.
