Hard Solid Gold by Gang of Four

Hard Solid Gold

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Hard Solid Gold

Reader Reviews
I find the reviews here to be somewhat revisionist in their take on this double lp CD. Hard WAS commercially viable, scoring a fairly big pop hit with "Is it Love". It is really a fun album with lots or classic ironic GO4 lyrics and a fair sprinkling of the now fully developed lacerating guitar sound (Gill took his guitar sound to the logical extreme on Songs of the Free). Nearly every british post-punk band went in this basic direction, Captain Sensible scored big pop hits with his funk-rap and pure pop, 999 was a seminal punk band that went farther into disco with "13th Floor madness", Japan began their career with the most unstoppable mix of disco and snarl perhaps ever in the late 70's. The list goes on and not all went to funk/soul, some just went pop. Take American bands like Bad Religion (Into the Unknown is folk pop) and TSOL (not sure what Beneath the Shadows is but I think they may have been trying to copy the Damned's Strawberries). By 1983 there was no where to go with post-punk in England and not much of an audience. With the rise of Hardcore and bands like Discharge and GBH, you would have to get harder to try to fit in and the kids would have laughed at it, seeing GO4 as posuer old men, like they did the Stranglers. Let's remember that Solid Gold was probably the reason they turned more pop for Songs of the Free. It was not very successful and I did not know many folks that liked it back then. I find the Yellow EP to be the best of their early "darker" sound. Solid Gold almost has none of the melody and hooks that all 3 of their other lps have, including Entertainment. It was a tough listen in the early 80's with all that was coming out at the same time. Sure, now that the Ramone are considered heroes instead of the zeroes they were seen as at the time by the masses, Solid Gold deserves a listen. But when people say GO4 was a huge influence etc, they are usually talking about Entertainment and Songs of the Free, even though they may not admit it now. Why do you think it took so long to put it on CD in the US? It didn't sell! It was the truly failed experiment, sadly. All in all, this is a great CD from start to end and worth having. Songs of the Free is an absolute must as well as the US pressing of Entertainment (if only for the 4 song Yellow EP included which has different recordings of the 2 songs that made it onto Solid Gold).

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