Negativland

Negativland is an experimental music and sound collage band which originated in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1970s. They "lifted their name" from a Neu! song. [1]

Overview

The core of the band are Mark Hosler, Richard Lyons, Don Joyce and David Wills. Chris Grigg is a former member.

Negativland has released a number of albums ranging from pure collage to more musical affairs, these have mostly been released on their own label, Seeland Records. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, they produced several recordings for SST Records, most notably Escape From Noise, Helter Stupid, and U2.

Negativland's main claim to fame is the U2 lawsuit which nearly destroyed them as a band.

History

Early history

Negativland started in Concord, California in 1979 around the core founding members of Lyons and Hosler (who was in high school at the time) and released an eponymous debut in 1980.

A number of releases followed in the early 1980s, but it wasn't until after the release of their breakthrough sample and cut-up sonic barrage Escape From Noise in 1987 that Negativland gained wider attention.

Following the somewhat unexpected success of this album, Negativland faced the prospect of going on a money-losing tour. To prevent this, they put together a phony press release claiming that their song "Christianity is Stupid" (featuring the sampled voice of a televangelist repeating "Christianity is stupid! Communism is good!") was an inspiration for a real mass-murder that had occurred in Rochester, Minnesota, committed by David Brom.

The resulting fallout and media frenzy, based on the humorously fabricated claims by Negativland, had the effect of pointing out the venality of the mass media. Though the story was completely unsubstantiated by any facts, the lurid combination of murder, religion, and "rock" music proved too tempting for the media to ignore. The story ran on TV news shows, newspapers, and magazines, with little to no fact-checking. Soon the world was informed of the "Killer Song" that supposedly led some kid to murder his parents with an ax.

The scandal became the foundation for their next release Helter Stupid, featuring a cover photo of a TV news "journalist" intoning the fake ax murder story, with the news station's caption "Killer Song" above his head, and a photo of the ax-murderer.

The U2 record incident

Negativland's next project was the infamous U2 record with samples from "America's Top 40" host Casey Kasem. In 1991, Negativland released a single with the title "U2" displayed in very large type on the front of the packaging, and "Negativland" in a smaller typeface. An image of the Lockheed U-2 spy plane was also on the single cover.

The songs within were parodies of the group U2's well-known song, "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For", including kazoos and extensive sampling of the original song. The song "The Letter U and the Numeral 2" features a musical backing to an extended profane rant from well-known disc jockey Casey Kasem, lapsing out of his more polished and professional tone during a frustrating rehearsal, commenting, for instance: "These guys are from England and who gives a shit?" (U2's members are in fact from Ireland.)

U2's label Island Records sued Negativland claiming that the "U2" violated trademark protection, and the song itself violated copyright protection. Island Records also contended that the single was an attempt to deliberately confuse U2 fans, then awaiting Achtung Baby.

Funds exhausted, Negativland settled out of court. Most copies of the single were recalled and destroyed. By the mid-1990s, rap had made authorized sampling more common in mainstream music, but the single "U2", for which Negativland did not obtain clearance to use U2 samples, is still illegal to sell in the United States, but is available for free download from Negativland's official web site.

In June, 1992, R.U. Sirius, publisher of the magazine Mondo 2000 came up with an interesting idea. Publicists from U2 had contacted him regarding the possibility of interviewing Dave Evans (aka "The Edge") hoping to promote U2's impending multi-million dollar "Zoo TV" tour, which featured found sounds and live sampling from mass media outlets (things which Negativland had been known for for some time). Sirius, unbeknownst to the Edge, decided to have his friends Joyce and Hosler of Negativland conduct the interview. Joyce and Hosler, fresh from Island's lawsuit, peppered the Edge with questions regarding his ideas about the use of sampling in their new tour, and the legality of using copyrighted material without permission. Midway through the interview, Joyce and Hosler revealed their identities as members of Negativland. An embarrassed the Edge reported that U2 were bothered by the sledgehammer legal approach Island Records took in their lawsuit, and furthermore that much of the legal wrangling took place without U2's knowledge: "by the time we (U2) realized what was going on it was kinda too late, and we actually did approach the record company on your (Negativland's) behalf and said, 'Look, c'mon, this is just, this is very heavy...'" Island Records reported to Negativland that U2 never authorised samples of their material; Evans response was, "that's complete bollocks, there's like, there's at least six records out there that are direct samples from our stuff."[2]

The "U2" single (along with other related material) was re-released in 2001 on a "bootleg" album entitled These Guys Are From England And Who Gives A Shit, released on "Seelard Records" (a parody of Negativland's record label "Seeland Records"). It is thought likely that Negativland themselves were responsible for the re-release, and that U2 gave their blessing; although the Negativland website refers to this release as a bootleg, it is available from major retailers like Best Buy, Amazon, and Tower Records, as well as Negativland's own mail-order business.

Negativland are interested in intellectual property rights, and argue that their use of U2's and others' material falls under fair use. In 1995, they released a book with accompanying CD called Fair Use about copyright law in general, and the U2 incident in particular, and were the main subjects of Craig Baldwin's documentary "Sonic Outlaws", detailing the use of "culture jamming" to escape and dilute the twisted machinations of corporate media/propaganda outlets. There are many other artists who push the boundaries of copyright law in a similar way to Negativland, including John Oswald, the Evolution Control Committee, The Bran Flakes, Sir Mildred Pierce, and People Like Us.

Negativland's Mark Hosler pointed at the irony of U2 infringing copyrights on a massive scale during their Zoo TV tour by broadcasting live satellite images on stage, and getting away with it, while almost simultaneously suing Negativland, who had been doing it for a long time before it ever dawned on U2.

Chumbawamba

In 1999 Negativland collaborated with UK anarchist band Chumbawamba to produce the album the ABCs of Anarchism, which is largely based around the writings of Alexander Berkman and cut-up versions of Chumbawamba's hit song "Tubthumping", the theme tune to the children's program Teletubbies and the Sex Pistols' "Anarchy in the UK".

Recent developments

In 2003, members of Negativland contributed their efforts to Creative Commons, an organization devoted to providing artists with a broader range of copyright options.

As of 2004, Negativland exists and has released several albums including Points, Dispepsi, Free, Escape From Noise, Helter Stupid, and A Big 10-8 Place. Their records are released on the band's own Seeland label. Member Don Joyce hosts a weekly radio show called Over The Edge most Thursdays at midnight on KPFA.

In September 2005, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the band, Negativland curated an art exhibit in Manhattan's Gigantic Artspace gallery. Titled "Negativlandland", the exhibit included a number of pieces of artwork from and inspired by Negativland recordings, video projection of music videos created by the band and others, and some artwork created specifically for the show, such as an animatronic Abraham Lincoln figure (inspired by the band's Lincoln cut-up piece "God Bull") and a hands-on exhibit featuring the "Booper", the audio-processing unit that band member David Wills (aka "The Weatherman") assembled out of old radio parts. The band is hoping to eventually take Negativlandland to other cities.

Discography

Albums

• Negativland (1980)
• Points (1981)
• A Big 10-8 Place (1983)
• Over the Edge Vol. 1: JAMCON'84 (1985)
• Escape From Noise (1987)
• Helter Stupid (1989)
• Over the Edge Vol. 2: Pastor Dick: Muriel's Purse Fund (1990)
• Over the Edge Vol. 3: The Weatherman's Dumb Stupid Come-Out Line (1990)
• Over the Edge Vol. 4: Dick Vaughn (1990)
• Free (1993)
• Over the Edge Vol. 5: Crosley Bendix: The Radio Reviews (1993)
• Over the Edge Vol. 6: The Willsaphone Stupid Show (1994)
• Over the Edge Vol. 7: Time Zones Exchange Project (1994)
• Fair Use: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2 (1995)
• Over the Edge Vol. 1½: The Starting Line with Dick Goodbody (1995, partial reissue)
• Over the Edge Vol. 8: Sex Dirt (1995)
• Dispepsi (1997)
• Negativ(e)land: Live On Tour (1997)
• Over the Edge Vol. 4: Dick Vaughn's Moribund Music of the '70s (2001, expanded reissue)
• Deathsentences of the Polished and Structurally Weak (2002)
• No Business (2005)

Singles/EPs

• U2 (1991)
• Guns (1992)
• The Letter U and the Numeral 2 (1992)
• Truth In Advertising (1997)
• Happy Heroes (1998)
• The ABCs of Anarchism (1999)
• These Guys Are From England and Who Gives a Shit (2001)

Bootlegs

• Negativconcertland (1993)

External links and references

• NegativWorldWideWebland (Official web page)
• Negativland Discography (22 October 2001). (Accessed 3 March 2004).
• Negativland Lyrics Transcriptions of most studio works.
• Negativland - Past, Present, Future mp3 of Mark Hosler's talk at H2K2 in 2002