Last modified on Mon 15 Mar 2021 04.28 EDT
Damien Hirst is talking about the epiphany he had at the age of 14. It was 1979 and he’d been “a bit wayward” after his parents’ divorce two years earlier. “Then I got done for burglary,” he says. “I stole a record collection from someone’s house. Among the records was Entertainment! by Gang of Four. I loved it because it made me think. After that, I wrote ‘Gang Of Four’ on my school blazer and had their button badge. I used to copy their artwork on to my school books. I got into the art world because, through Gang of Four, I realised anything was possible. I thought, ‘I’m fucking doing what I want.’”
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The UK post-punk pioneersâ influence always outshone their popularity, but a new box set makes a convincing case that stardom actually was within their reach.
Why didnât Gang of Four become pop stars? Four and a half decades after the UK band began, the answer might seem obvious. From the start, their work was innovative and challenging, with politically aware lyrics that drew on academic theory and music that moved at razor-sharp angles. One reason why their early singles and first two albumsâcollected on this new
77-81 box set alongside a live 2xLP and a cassette of demosâstill sound so vital is that the band never pandered to the mainstream or dumbed its songs down.
Death By Rock And Roll. More recently, Morello and his Rage Against The Machine bandmates debuted a new documentary that was inspired by one of their most iconic songs.
Now, Tom Morello has another new project in the works. This week, it was announced that Morello is overseeing all of the music for the upcoming coming-of-age comedy Metal Lords.
The film follows two kids who aspire to start a heavy metal band while in high school. As it turns out, none of their classmates are as passionate about heavy metal as they are. In fact, they don’t really care about the genre at all.
Strokes producer Gordon Raphael on working with The Lounge Society nme.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from nme.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
A new box set anthologises that period in the immediate aftermath of punk when musicians began drawing influence from US funk.
Bands – most notably Gang Of Four and The Pop Group – began marrying often confrontational lyrics and exploratory, experimental sounds with the bass and drum rhythms of Funkadelic and the Fatback Band, and emboldened by New York’s no-wave movement brought post-punk to the dancefloor.
Compiled and with sleevenotes by noted DJ and writer Bill Brewster, the 3-disc
Shake The Foundations: Militant Funk & The Post-Punk Dancefloor 1978-1984 features a raft rarely heard floorfillers from familiar bands like THE HIGSONS (pictured), A CERTAIN RATIO, SIMPLE MINDS, 23 SKIDOO and JAH WOBBLE to the less familiar – QUANDO QUANGO, PLAYGROUP, THE CHICKEN GRANNY etc…