Four young men met in and around Leeds University in the late 1970s. They liked Wilko Johnson out of Dr. Feelgood and Jimi Hendrix and James Brown. They had thoughts about alienation and consumerism, and a working knowledge of the Situationists. It seems like the time to form a band, but what kind of band? Should a singer talk about feelings or theories? What are electric instruments for? Why is music amplified? Why do songs have so many notes? Why would four people go into a room and play together? Entertainment! answers those questions by turning a rock band into a collective of four with equal roles and no stars: voice, guitar, bass, and drums. Somehow the band that lived to demystify created a machine that erases time and defies analysis. These songs posit that living and thinking and wanting and dancing are all the same thing.

Gang of Four’s first full-length album proved to be its masterpiece, in the original sense — a high point that the band would not attain again. This isn’t to say that Solid Gold wasn’t a very fine release, only that Entertainment! achieved a density of impact with an economy of sound that no later release could match. The band’s visceral-but-intellectual funk-punk hybrid was perfectly encapsulated in tracks like “At Home (He’s a Tourist)” and “Guns Before Butter,” and its pervasive concern with sexual politics was well summed up in “Love Like Anthrax.” Taken alongside the brilliant four-track Yellow EP, this album is pretty much the essence of this hugely influential band.