Friday night was last call, supposedly, for Milwaukee Gang Of Four fans. The seminal British post-punk act has gone through numerous breakups and reassemblies since its 1976 inception, but time catches up with us all, and the passing of founding guitarist Andy Gill in 2020 may have signaled the beginning of the end. While Gill had been keeping the Gang Of Four name alive with a new vocalist and a handful of backing musicians since 2012, his death brought about a reunion of sorts. Original lead singer Jon King and original drummer Hugo Burnham are helming the current “Long Goodbye” tour, which was originally scheduled to stop at Vivarium, but quickly got bumped up to Turner Hall, which was a pretty packed house on Friday night.
First on the menu: Entertainment! of course, the band’s debut masterpiece that’s currently celebrating its 45th anniversary. King was bursting with energy from the beginning, but the overall mood dampened slightly when Ted Leo’s guitar…did not clang out in distinctly Andy Gill-esque tones for the “Ether” opener. Oh dear, maybe Leo wasn’t the man for this job? Known more as a pop-punk/indie rock guy traditionally, this is his first tour as one of the Four and the shoes he’s filling are enormous. As it turned out, it just took a few songs for the sound mix to get dialed in. “Not Great Men” was a major improvement and it was pretty much smooth sailing from “Damaged Goods” onward.
Bassist Gail Greenwood (Belly, L7), who joined following Sara Lee’s 2023 retirement, struggled to be heard at first as well, but her kinetic presence onstage more than made up for the temporary sound issues. She whipped her hair and beamed joy into the crowd the entire show, matching King’s boundless enthusiasm. On record, Gang Of Four might come off as overly serious if not downright grim; they certainly didn’t shy away from politics Friday night, but the mood onstage was far more hopeful and buoyant than one might expect. The songs may yet be painfully relevant, but there was no trace of discouragement in King’s delivery.
“I was just looking at a photograph of this ballroom in 1926, of all the attended people,” said the frontman during one of several brief banter breaks. “Not one of them is smiling.” He then told us of his first visit to the U.S., winding up at the Chelsea Hotel in New York after being rejected at the Y.M.C.A. Next up was “Return The Gift,” with its anguished chorus of “Please send me evenings and weekends” resonating as deeply today as it ever could have.
There’s a timeless quality to Entertainment! that stems in part from its linking of history to the present—1979 and onward. “Authoritarianism, contempt for the rule of law, the rise of fascism—it’s hard to imagine, I know,” said King, introducing “Guns Before Butter,” a song about the dangers of nationalism going back to Otto von Bismarck. But King has always been equally adept at excavating interpersonal relationships, and songs like “Contract” and “At Home He’s A Tourist” still ring true in the modern age. Just replace lyrics about magazines and discos with smart phones and TikTok.
If Leo felt any lingering frustration from the sound issues early on, he got it out of his system as a lead-in to the iconic closing track of Entertainment!, “Anthrax,” physically abusing his guitar about as violently as possible without actually rendering it inoperable. At one point, King started smashing it with a tambourine. They’d played most of the material fairly close to recorded versions, so this fresh noise assault sent a jolt of energy through the crowd, and a glorious din it was.
After “Anthrax,” King announced a 10-minute break, and the band was back onstage in nine, opening the second set with “He’d Send In The Army,” featuring King bludgeoning a large microwave oven with a baseball bat as percussion. Having finished the “main event” of the full album, the group seemed more relaxed playing a random assortment of quasi-hits (although Gang Of Four’s actual biggest U.S. single “Is It Love?” didn’t make the cut). While songs like “Capital (It Fails Us Now)” and “Paralysed” and “I Love A Man In Uniform” may not be timeless bangers to the world at large, they certainly didn’t come off as relics. If anything, seeing Burnham play these songs live made it clear how influential his beats have been across the entire post/psych/alt/indie-rock continuum. Unlike a lot of legacy acts, the band wasn’t self-reverential at all. The Four simply wanted to put on a great rock show.
Following a rousing “To Hell With Poverty” the band again left the stage, but only for a minute. “I love this country,” said King after the break. “You’re going through dark times, but things will get better.” It was a pleasant reminder that no matter one’s political leanings, it’s not healthy to view any country as a monolithic culture, and although King’s been singing about the same societal ills for nearly half a century now with no relief in sight, there’s still inspiration to be found when people gather together.
The encore featured a song that predated Entertainment! and never made it onto a record: “Elevator,” which got a decent singalong despite almost nobody in the crowd having heard the tune before. And then, in true European fashion, the band played “Damaged Goods” again. Only this time, the sound was perfect, the guitar was roaring, and a little extra urgency was in the air: for most fans here, this was liable to be the last song they’d ever see Gang Of Four play. Farewell tours don’t always take, but having lost founding bassist Dave Allen just last month, this certainly felt like a last-chance show. Luckily, no one had to walk away feeling like they’d witnessed a pale imitation of their favorite band, whether it was the last time or not.
