Gang of Four changed the way punk sounded and what it could say. A new box set reveals the peak of their power.

~ Michael Stevenson

“We didn’t sound like anybody else,” says singer Jon King. A new box set finds the band’s earliest albums have kept their original thrills.

Millions out of work and businesses shuttered. A crushing sense of poverty and alienation in the populace, leading to openly fascist groups marching in the streets and Marxist radicalization fomenting in the universities. The government teetering on the verge of a national emergency, with more details of the ultraright plotting a coup d’etat emerging every day. Yes, 1970s Leeds felt as if it were on the brink of social collapse.

“We were on the verge of civil war,” Jon King remembers of the era from his home in Camden Town. “You had this great split between progressive forces trying to accommodate different people in a way that respected each other. But by doing that, privileged people were going to lose something or other, whether material or psychological.” [ . . . ]

Continue at WASHINGTON POST: Gang of Four changed the way punk sounded and what it could say. A new box set reveals the peak of their power.

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