Negativland

The story is about Negativland, a collective of three or more friends who sometimes get together to make music. Well, maybe it's music: recorded audio material - television jingles, radio talk-show clips, conversations culled from radio waves, anything that features the sound of a human voice - is fodder for the collage that comprises a Negativland recording. Mediaddicts who see society suffering under a constant barrage of TV, canned imagery, advertising, and corporate culture, Negativland's members are, by self-definition, artists of appropriation. They create with mirrors.

Gathering the most memorable, most evocative, or most provocative chunks from the spew, they reassemble them into something new - occasionally political, frequently critical - and spin them back into the barrage. Combining, say, car-manufacturers' slogans, sound effects, and a PSA warning against drinking and driving in "We Are Driven" (from their 1993 release, Free), they create a danceable phantasmagoria that disses our culture's obsession with the automobile: simple enough, thought-provoking, and pretty funny. At their worst, the members of Negativland are repetitive and smarmy; at their best, they are razor-sharp, microscopically focused, and deadly accurate.

At a tiny North Oakland, California, studio, where he collaborates with Mark Hosler and Don Joyce (Negativland's brain trust), Chris Grigg explains the band's techniques. "By working with several levels at the same time, we encourage people to observe multiple meanings - even if they aren't intended - in everything around them," he says. Negativland invites us to inspect more closely the surrounding world and its media, a practice Grigg calls "instructive, terribly fun, and a bit psychotic."

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. Long-standing band member Don Joyce produces a weekly interactive radio programme, Over The Edge, on listener-supported KPFA in Berkeley, California. A significant number of Negativland's recent releases have been formed from material which was developed by the band live on the show. The core of the band is Mark Hosler, Richard Lyons, Don Joyce and David Wills (aka "The Weatherman"). Chris Grigg is a former member. Peter Conheim joined the band in 1997. 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 is well-known for the U2 lawsuit, which nearly destroyed them as a band.

Negativland started in Concord, California in 1979 around the core founding members of Lyons and Hosler (who were 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 and edited voice of an actor portraying a commissar repeating "Christianity is stupid! Communism is good!", taken from the propaganda movie If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?) was an inspiration for a real mass-murder committed by David Brom in Rochester, Minnesota. 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

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 well-known song, "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For", including kazoos and extensive sampling of the original song. The song I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For 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 law, and the song itself violated copyright law. 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 for which Negativland had been known 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." 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 subvert the messages of more traditional media 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.

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 the hit song Tubthumping, the theme tune to the children's program Teletubbies and Anarchy in the UK.

In 2003, members of Negativland contributed their efforts to Creative Commons, an organization devoted to providing artists with a broader range of copyright options. In September 2005, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the band, Negativland curated an art exhibit in Manhattan's Gigantic Artspace gallery. The exhibit, Negativlandland, 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 (a.k.a. The Weatherman) assembled out of old radio parts. The show will appear in Minneapolis on May 12, 2006, at Creative Electric Studios. The band is hoping to continue to bring Negativlandland to other cities.

• 1980 - Negativland - 320 Kbps
• 1981 - Points - 320 Kbps
• 1983 - A Big 10-8 Place - 320 Kbps
• 1987 - Escape From Noise - 320 Kbps
• 1989 - Helter Stupid - 320 Kbps
• 1991 - U2 - 320 Kbps
• 1992 - Guns - 320 Kbps
• 1993 - Negativconcertland - 320 Kbps
• 1993 - Free - 320 Kbps
• 1995 - Fair Use: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2 - 320 Kbps
• 1997 - Dispepsi - 320 Kbps
• 1997 - Live On Tour - 320 Kbps
• 1997 - Truth In Advertising - 320 Kbps
• 1998 - Happy Heroes - 320 Kbps
• 1999 - The ABCs of Anarchism [with Chumbawamba] - 320 Kbps
• 2001 - These Guys Are From England And Who Gives A Shit - 320 Kbps
• 2002 - Deathsentences Of The Polished And Structurally Weak - 320 Kbps
• 2005 - No Business - 320 Kbps
• 2006 - It's All In Your Head FM (v 1.0) - 320 Kbps
• 2008 - Thigmotactic - 320 Kbps
• 2011 - Mom and Dad [with NCN] - 320 Kbps
• 2011 - Bombscare [with NCN] - 320 Kbps
• 2011 - Christianity is Stupid [with NCN] - 320 Kbps
• 2012 - Probing Mars - 320 Kbps
• 2012 - To Be, Or What? [with NCN] - 320 Kbps
• 2012 - They Saved Zappa's Moustache [with NCN] - 320 Kbps
• 2014 - It's All In Your Head- 320 Kbps
• 2014 - The Experience Variations Remix Project [with NCN] - 320 Kbps
• 2015 - Live at the Oasis 1993 - 320 Kbps
• 2015 - The Art of Breathing [with NCN] - 320 Kbps

Over The Edge series:

• 1993 - Vol. 5 - Crosley Bendix - The Radio Reviews - 320 Kbps
• 1993 - Vol. 6 - The Willsaphone Stupid Show - 320 Kbps
• 1994 - Vol. 1 - Jamcon '84 - 320 Kbps
• 1994 - Vol. 7 - Time Zones Exchange Project - 320 Kbps
• 1995 - Vol. 8 - Sex Dirt - 320 Kbps
• 1995 - Vol. 1½ - The Starting Line with Dick Goodbody - 320 Kbps
• 1995 - Vol. 2 - Pastor Dick: Muriel's Church Fund - 320 Kbps
• 1998 - Vol. 3 - The Weatherman's Dumb Stupid Come-Out Line - 320 Kbps
• 2001 - Vol. 4 - Dick Vaughn's Moribund Music of The '70s - 320 Kbps
• 2011 - Over the Edge - Redball & Newport - 320 Kbps
• 2012 - Helter Stupid: The Over the Edge Mix - 320 Kbps

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