Gang
Tribes' Union

Necessary preface: this review is absolutely biased.

You know how it happens when you buy a record and get so attached to it that even if it were objectively a glaring mess, well… for you it remains a piece of vinyl that has improved your life?

That's what happened to me with «Tribes' Union» by the Gang, one of those records that maybe I listen to once a year today, yet every time it gives me the same emotions as when I heard it for the first time 25 years ago or so.

The fact is, I judge a great record like this: if after 4 or 5 years, it still fascinates me, then yes, it really is a great record.

And for me, «Tribes' Union» fully belongs to this category. As stated, this is an absolutely biased review.

To get to the point, the Gang is a band from Marche still active thanks to the commitment of the Severini brothers, Marino and Sandro, and the numerous companions who've joined them over the years.

«Tribes' Union» is their debut album, published way back in 1984, when they went by the names of Red and Johnny Guitar and were accompanied by the rhythm section of Buster and Bum Bum. They sang in English and were driven by the third-worldism passion of the Clash and Billy Bragg's socialist fervor.

The greatest merit of the Gang is that they wrote, in this album and the subsequent ones, internationally-steeped songs that can hardly be defined as “Italian,” as the term is sometimes limiting.

There are only eight songs on «Tribes' Union», but each in its own way is destined to become a small classic of the then-nascent Italian alternative rock and deserves mention: «The Challenge» and «The Last Border» characterized by almost-western atmospheres, the fast ska rhythm of «War In The City», the epic and martial cadence of «Killed In Action» and «Badland», and the Clash echoes in the dub of the closing «Action In Play». And then, almost closing side 1, there's «Libre El Salvador», which I won't discuss because I love it too much, and honestly, I can't find the right words to describe it, or maybe I can: simply an anthem.

The greatness of the group, which emerges perhaps in an unripe way from «Tribes' Union», is confirmed immediately afterward when they raise the bar and propose as side 2 of a single their cover of the Billy Bragg classic «It Says Here», so well-rendered that it convinced the English minstrel to create with the Gang the album following «Tribes' Union», the equally valid and more mature «Barricada Rumble Beat», and to accompany them on a series of concerts around Italy. In short, the pupils have reached and met the master.

Long live the Gang!