In 1978, Gang of Four released their first 7" on Fast Product records. The single's second track, "Love Like Anthrax", will never be the group's most popular track (that honor, in the main, undoubtly goes to the lackluster track "I Love A Man In A Uniform", and among fans, to the excellent "Damaged Goods") but to my mind it is one of the crucial, inspired early statements of the post-punk movement.
We are introduced to the song (the opener on side b of this 45) with a quiet wail of feedback, followed by a louder, more insistent slashing of distorted guitar. This goes on for a few rhythymless bars until the drums and then bass make their quietly thundering entrace (this is the only way to describe it, I swear) and the guitar exits with as little fanfare as it entered with. The rhythym section here is smoothly hypnotic: rock steady 8th-note tones, with snare accents on the 5 and 8, holding your mind's eye unwavering, while the bass loops through a 4-bar rising and falling dance. This is the foundation of the track, and it is not hard to imaging a punk chanteuse like Debbie Harry singing a whisky lullabye over the top. No such comforts are to be found here, however.
"It's practically not even a song at all!" you can hear the pop critic mutter. No guitar, no hook, and when we are introduced to the narrators, they seem insistent on drowning each other out -- what melody is to be found in the lead vocals is half obscured by a dark, spoken vocal, which is holding a completely different conversation -- save the odd line on which our background poet chooses to chime in with a doubling of the singsong, snapping your attention momentarily from the song itself to the words, which pound almost as much as the toms.
This is a song against songs, a song against love. It's not punk, and that is a good thing, because the vapid nihilism of the punk philosophers of the day leaves as much to be desired as the culture against which these bitter souls rail. This is a criticism of media and pop portrayal of love.
Woke up this morning desperation a.m.
What I've been saying won't say them again
My head's not empty, it's full with my brain
The thoughts I'm thinking
Like piss down a drain
And I feel like a beetle on its back
And there's no way for me to get up
Love'll get you like a case of anthrax
And that's something I don't want to catch
Ought to control what I do to my mind
Nothing in there but sunshades for the blind
Only yesterday I said to myself
The things I'm doing are not good
For my health
The second vocal track has not been preserved in written form, so far as I know. It is easy to catch snippets about "reverb" and "tape echo", but a full transcription would be rather difficult. That just gives the song room to grow, as by the second recording of the song (with title shortened to the simple "Anthrax"), for the band's debut album, Entertainment, the second track had become a full scale indictment of the pop music industry, one which complements the approach of the rest of the track quite nicely:
Love crops up quite a lot as something to sing about,
most groups make most of their songs about falling in
love or how happy they are to be in love, you
occasionally wonder why these groups do sing about it all
the time - it's because these groups think there's something very
special about it either that or else it's because everybody
else sings about it and always has, you know to burst into
song you have to be inspired and nothing inspires quite like
love. These groups and singers think that they appeal to
everyone by singing about love because apparently
everyone has or can love or so they would have you
believe anyway but these groups seem to go along with the
belief that love is deep in everyones' personality and I
don't think we're saying there's anything wrong with love,
we just don't think that what goes on between two people
should be shrouded with mystery.
The statement made, we are brought back down to reality with a few more bursts of feedbacky guitar, and the song is done...
The post-punk movement is characterized by stripped-down, sparse arrangements and dour vocals. It reflects an era of increasing disenchantment with mainstream values, as the economies of both the United States and the United Kingdom went out to lunch and left a bitter trail of poverty and failed dreams in its wake. This song captures much of that attitude precisely, and came at a time when middle class folk were turning to gaudy clothing and shallow late-disco music in a vain attempt to block out the problems that faced them.
This track can be found in it's original form on the Fast Products Damaged Goods 7" and the third Fast Products compilation, Mutant Pop (which features the aforementioned 7" in its entirety). The second version can be found on the Entertainment LP, the Gang of Four compilation CDs A Brief History of the 20th Century and 100 Flowers Bloom and the Dogs in Space soundtrack. Both versions are highly recommended.