Red Set ― A History of Gang of Four

Based on detailed interviews with band members, Red Set considers the music, art and politics that shaped Gang of Four and how the band, in turn, left an indelible mark on popular music.

In the autumn of 1976, two young British Fine Arts students travelled to New York on a university grant, but instead of merely studying ended up staying with one of the city’s pioneering punk journalists, visiting the Museum of Modern Art by day and hanging out in punk epicentre CBGBs by night. It is from this trip that Gang of Four emerged. 

Blending revelations from interviews with the band conducted by the author with snippets from newspaper articles and record reviews, Jim Dooley tells the history of Gang of Four as they remember it. From their days at art school through countless tours, records and reunions, Red Set is the definitive history of one of Britain’s greatest and most influential bands.

Jim Dooley studied at the Institute of Political Economy at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, where he investigated the links between politics and popular culture and wrote an MA thesis on music piracy. Jim has conducted numerous interviews for reggae fanzines (some being compiled in More Axe 9: Interviews from the Culture Reggae Archive in 2013), written articles for the BEAT, and is the author of the Small Axe Guide to Dub (Muzik Tree, 2010).