To call someone a “Marxist pop star” is to describe an impossibility. A pop star is a myth made real, a mutant collision of art and commerce. Talent, personal charisma, and material success become one and the same — the purview of those who have over those who don’t. Marxism, conversely, seeks to destroy the notions of earned privilege. History, society, and culture are built by a vast majority whose individual talents are coerced and repressed. In the words of Andy Gill and Gang of Four, “it’s not made by great men.”

Gill, who passed away on February 1, personified this contradiction. Gang of Four reveled in the sheer fun and cheeky sneer of rock and roll, even while acknowledging that its trappings had become yet another pose to be consumed and metabolized.

As British punk appended a “post” in front of it and its visceral howl morphed into a serrated sonic blade, the groups that carried it forward in the late 1970s sought to refine its conceptual rebuke of postwar capitalism. The Slits, the Fall, the Pop Group, Mekons, Delta 5 — all were stunning in the ways they put their own unique spins on this project. But none more so that Gang of Four.