"Is it just me, or is this a technical shambles", mutters my attendant associate for the evening. He's certainly got a point. To begin with, the sound is murky: those scything guitar chords and throbbing bass pulses seem to congeal into a treacly mess. Declamatory vocals are almost indecipherable. If this were just some ageing bunch of pub punks playing for their beer money it could be forgiven. But this is Gang of Four; one of the most influential British bands of the late seventies/early eighties. You could open any page in NME right now and randomly find some young upstarts of 2009 who wouldn't exist without Gang of Four. So this should be a darn sight better.
The fact that this short Gang of Four tour is in honour of the thirtieth anniversary of their debut album, Entertainment, also feels somewhat incongruous from a group which really shouldn't need to indulge in nostalgic backslapping. It's only compounded by the discovery that this is actually the Gang of Two, the core unit of vocalist Jon King and guitarist Andy Gill now supplemented by a new rhythm section who look so fresh-faced one doubts whether they were actually alive when Entertainment was first issued.
Much of Entertainment itself is dispatched fairly early on. King hurls himself between multiple microphones like an epileptic Mark E Smith while Gill remains a coolly inscrutable presence, ripping out angular riffs while dispassionately eyeballing the audience. New bass player Thomas McNeice ricochets between them with riotous abandon and it's hard to deny they're certainly giving it their all. But somehow it never quite seems to gel. At time it almost feels like we're watching an excellent tribute to a once groundbreaking band.
Finally, however, it all comes good with a truly merciless version of "To Hell With Poverty". A previously restrained crowd lose their cool and let rip, shrieking King's words back at him, "To Hell with poverty, we'll get drunk on cheap wine!" While the temperature has slowly risen throughout the evening, this is the moment of immersive explosion, of being inside the bubble when two elements collide. It's as if Gill and King had planned this all along. A slightly lumpen performance battling with technical issues and an aloof audience released into a five-minute punk-funk Big Bang. Finally, Gang of Four appear.