Gang of Four guitarist Andy Gill has criticised an Ohio gig promoter’s decision to cancel Viet Cong’s gig for having a name that “deeply offends and hurts Vietnamese and Vietnamese-American communities” and to apologise to “anyone hurt or made uncomfortable by the name and its connotations.”
In response, Andy Gill argued: “as soon as you get into being the guardian of public morality, taking it upon yourself to decide whats ok and what is not, you are acting in an illiberal, undemocratic and anti-progressive way.” Gang of Four are named in reference to a faction of the Communist Party that came to prominence during China’s Cultural Revolution and were later trialled for crimes of treason after the death of Chairman Mao. Read Gill’s full statement via Brooklyn Vegan below.
In a recent interview with The Guardian, Viet Cong discussed the controversy surrounding their name, with drummer Mike Wallace explaining the name originates from his description of frontman Matt Flegel jumping around and “kind of shooting his bass like a gun. I said: ‘All you need is a rice paddy hat and it would be so Viet Cong.’ We stopped on that sentence and thought it was a good idea…” Elsewhere in the interview, the band claimed they “get hate mail at every single fucking show” and insisted the name has “zero political connotations”.
Andy Gill:
“It’s a little ridiculous to ban bands for their name. We can all think of dozens of bands with really quite offensive names and as soon as you get into being the guardian of public morality, taking it upon yourself to decide whats ok and what is not, you are acting in an illiberal, undemocratic and anti-progressive way. People should be treated as grown ups, capable of making their own decisions . We should not be deciding for people what we think they are capable of understanding or not. Artists; film-makers, writers, musicians need to be un-censored so they can make their point, political or otherwise.”
