Negativland, Part Two

As if the storm of controversy over Christianity Is Stupid wasn’t hectic enough, what Negativland did next was nearly enough to do itself in permanently. In 1991, while the world was anxiously awaiting the next U2 album, the song I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For had been in the Top Forty for quite some time, and Casey Kasem had introduced it so many times he was sick and tired of it, Negativland did something truly original.

With barely any advance publicity — but all too suspiciously timed to appear just before U2's Achtung Baby album was to be released — Negativland let out a two-song single called U2. The record’s contents were two radically different versions of I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, incorporating the song lyrics with a bizarre background of Casey Kasem outtakes in which Kasem swore and repeatedly bashed the song (i.e. “It’s dumb and I have to read this shit about some fucking dog that died? These guys are from England and who gives a shit?”).

Barely a week had passed before Negativland was hit with a 117-page lawsuit, taking the band for all that it was worth. First U2’s label forced the release to be withdrawn after only a few days of being in the stores (supposedly without the knowledge of U2's members themselves). Mr. Kasem found out what happened as well and launched his own lawyers onto the case. Things then got even worse for the band when SST Records suddenly turned on the group, with Mr. Ginn seeking to recoup his financial losses via the bandmembers. The ensuing barrage of claims and counterclaims found Negativland beset by legal and monetary woes that almost sank it.

At the same time, what had been a joke and a dare soon became a new focus for the bandmembers, who inadvertently made a name for themselves as crusaders for both artistic integrity and a freer interpretation of copyright law in opposition to corporate control. According to a 1998 statement released by the band:

"Negativland is an experimental-music and art collective that has been recording and self-releasing music/audio/collage works since 1979. Negativland has become, by necessity, interested in copyright law and the ‘fair use’ statute within it. What began as a natural attraction to found sound in a society overflowing with disposable media has now become a conscious desire to show by example the crucial difference between pirating or counterfeiting another’s work straight across in order to profit from the saleability of that single source, and the creative transformation of material from multiple sources into new, ‘original’ works. This is known in the art world as COLLAGE and it has had an undisputed legitimacy in virtually all art forms since the turn of this century. However, the owners and operators of mass marketed music, being the latest medium in which collage is being practiced, continue to naively attempt to criminalize the technique of audio collage as if it was an illegitimate intruder on originality and nothing more than a form of theft."

This fresh direction, though one which grew naturally out of Negativland’s previous work, helped reinvigorate the group. After extricating itself as much as it could from the legal matters, as well as completely severing all links with Mr. Ginn and SST Records, Negativland kept on. The Over the Edge radio show continued as always, with an increasing number of old and new shows edited for presentation as formal releases.

Negativland's 1997 release, Dispepsi, looked to be another red flag, though whether out of foolhardiness or calculation is up to the individual to decide. Negativland wasn’t trying to pretend otherwise with Dispepsi — Pepsi, along with Coca-Cola and the whole conceit of advertising, were under the gun. The open courting of controversy didn’t pan out into as much attention as U2 (inadvertently?) gained, but the band had enough samples from commercials, speeches, and more to work with, and did. Nearly every song had to do with some sort of corporate branding, whether it’s the deadpan lyrics about things like Hi-C and Hawaiian Punch on the semi-folk singalong Drink It Up or the nature of the Coke-Pepsi “wars” on songs like I Believe It's L. Dispepsi alternates between semi-straightforward songs and elaborate sample/tape-loop constructions. Perhaps most unsettling in context are the continuous snippets from various interviews and speeches from industry insiders and observers about the psychology of marketing. Though the band’s general fears and contempt for advertising and branding are clear enough here to make Naomi Klein happy, the wistfully off-kilter humor of the whole presentation sugared this particular pill. Regardless, Dispepsi didn’t bring down the wrath of Pepsi-Cola on the band’s head even though the cover art was clearly a riff on the brand’s distinctive logo.

FCC and copyright laws have yet to figure out what to do with the increased use of sampling in postmodernist music. As Mr. Hosler stated:

"Almost everything we do is illegal. Usually I do it first and find out later . . . of course I steal a lot of stuff. I just play all kinds of things like on TV and radio and records . . . People just, you know, basically want to be entertained. They don't care whether what you're doing is actually legal or not."

However elaborate Negativland's albums are, they are more successful with the live multimedia performance with videos, film, ad-lib sampling, etc. Instead of using album material at their shows, Negativland produced completely new, conceptual spectacles, such as the “Mercury Monarch” show in which they gave away a group member’s car in a game-show format, and “The Last Supper” based around food and religion, complete with kids dressed as singing/dancing toast.

“A live show has to be more than listening to a record. It has to be very tactile and visual. We try to think about that -- all of the different aspects of what ‘being present’ means, which is sound, sight, smell and everything.”