Artist: Negativland
Genre(s):
Rock
Alternative
Discography:
Deathsentences of the Polished and Structurally Weak
Year: 2002
Tracks: 12
These Guys Are from England and Who Gives a Shit
Year: 2001
Tracks: 11
Over The Edge Vol. 3 - The Weatherman's Dumb Stupid Come-Out Line
Year: 1998
Tracks: 2
DisPepsi
Year: 1997
Tracks: 13
The Willsaphone Stupid Show
Year: 1994
Tracks: 20
Free
Year: 1993
Tracks: 12
U2
Year: 1991
Tracks: 2
Fair use
Year:
Tracks: 10
Some will always enunciate that practical jokers should expect to get attacked back themselves at some tip. Others may line that inside any jokes in that location ar some human truths. Still others will scarce need to enjoy the jokes for themselves as jokes and nada more than. Three differing statements, all valid truths when applied to matchless of America's most curious, cunning, and imaginative bands in the last 20 years of the twentieth 100 and beyond, Negativland. Though named subsequently a rails by cult Krautrock band Neu!, world Health Organization as well inadvertently provided the nickname of the band's label, Seeland, Negativland's origins toilet be seen more in the cut-ups of former Faust, the radio receiver play on acid approach path of the fiendishly funny Firesign Theatre and any number of sonic experimentalists and musique concrete composers. Sometimes appearance only to please themselves, other times peradventure willfully courting adverse attention without expecting the possible results, Negativland's rescue grace has invariably been the absolute mirth of its work. Without being a comedy band per se, and at many points making rather serious observations on the world about it, Negativland's idiotic, satirical sight of a barely sane major planet often results in the best kind of humour -- the tolerant that can be enjoyed once more and over again, specially because of the textured, complex profound of their many amazing releases.
Formed in the San Francisco area, Negativland primitively rotated around the talents of Mark Hosler and Richard Lyons, multi-instrumentalists with an ear for tape manipulation of all sorts. Their divine stroke of brilliance was to enroll David Wills, more famously known as the Weatherman in by and by long time, to make up the original trinity. Wills, a cable television TV repairman by trade, was just as haunted with plate recording and experiment as the other deuce, and his wry, drawling vocals became the core trademark for many of Negativland's most ill-famed releases. Working with a few guests such as Peter Dayton on guitar, the triplet released its debut self-titled release in 1980, renowned as much for its packaging (each album featured on an individual basis wallpapered covers) as for its disconnected songs and textures. Apparently the still-teenage Hosler wanted it completed in section so he could feel he had complete something by the clip he gradational from senior high school, a sensible sufficiency goal. 1981's Points featured the same general batting order, with a new notable node performer organism Ian Allen, credited with tape processing on matchless track. However, an even more significant bond was made that year -- the recruitment of Don Joyce. Joyce had started a free form radio indicate, Over the Edge, on the Bay Area's KPFA station that also explored fried humor and social commentary much like Negativland itself. As a result, Hosler and company appeared one day on the demo shortly afterward it began, and since then Joyce has non only been the only unvarying member of Negativland by from Hosler, just Over the Edge has suit the regular sonic testing ground for to the highest degree of the band's releases, still running strong after 20 long time.
The adjacent official Negativland album was the group's unquestionable discovery, 1983's A Big 10-8 Place, created by the magnetic core of Hosler, Allen, and Wills, with Lyons and Joyce as guests, along with a new face, Chris Grigg. Synthesizing the band's making love of aural theater and subversion of expected pop and rock approaches, it was at an in one case uproarious and quietly excruciating vivisection of suburbia, taking them new fans and a growing reputation. Allen at one time departed subsequently that percentage point, piece Joyce and Grigg became fully fledged members. The ensuing five-piece lineup -- Grigg, Hosler, Joyce, Lyons, and Wills -- kept up their diverse explorations on the breeze and in the studio, non to reference irregular just creative and well-received live performances and occasional dabbling in tV ferment. Their report grew to the point where they were formally signed to Greg Ginn's legendary punk rock tag SST, a decision that would make unexpected consequences some time afterward.
The band saw out the '80s with two major releases on SST, non numeration a potpourri of tape-only efforts showcasing some of the charles Herbert Best Over the Edge roger Sessions. 1987's Escape From Noise took the scope of A Big 10-8 Place to even wider levels, touch on everything from how many clip zones Russia covers to a rendering of "All over the Rainbow" sung dynasty by a little female child plagued with hiccups. Maintaining Negativland's blending of card and darker themes, it might have only remained a cult classical were it not for the appearance of the throbbing, creepy "Christendom Is Stupid" and, a few months afterwards the album's acquittance, a mass off in Minnesota committed by a adolescent against his class. Having seen hitch plans accrue through at around the same clip, Negativland decided to circulate a fake fight vent hinting that the killer had in fact been contestation with his parents o'er "Christianity Is Stupid," which resulted in a slue of promotion and muddiness over what the true statement of the state of affairs was. Some condemned the group's actions as tasteless exploitation, only Negativland preferent to call up of it as an examination of media assumptions, and the whole function became the backbone of 1989's Helter Stupid.
As if the storm of controversy over "Christian religion Is Stupid" wasn't hectic enough, what the band did next was nigh sufficiency to do itself in permanently. With barely whatsoever get on packaging -- only all to a fault suspiciously timed to seem barely ahead U2's long-awaited 1991 album Achtung Baby -- Negativland (with Lyons taking a impermanent break) allow a two-song single gaucherie out in the summer of that year called U2. The table of contents turned out to be deuce radically different versions of the Irish band's anthem "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," victimization and chopping up the original beyond recognition, as well as splicing in bits from a notorious underground tape featuring legendary -- or at least long-lasting -- American DJ Casey Kasem obscenely rant about closely everything.
What happened over the succeeding few months is still the field of legal threats on all sides, merely first U2's label crashed down hard on the release, forcing it to be withdrawn after only a few days of existence in the stores (all of which occurred without the knowledge of U2's members themselves, by all accounts). Kasem found out what happened as well and launched his own lawyers onto the case. Things and so got even more hairy for the band when SST of a sudden sour on the group, with Ginn quest to recoup his fiscal losses via the bandmembers (even as a reexamination EP, Guns, slipped verboten). The ensuing barrage of claims and counterclaims, documented first in the band's 1992 CD/book The Letter U and the Numeral 2 and and so in even more detail tierce days after in an expanded release called Fair Use, found Negativland harass by sound and monetary woes that nigh sank it. At the like fourth dimension, what had been a jocularity and a dare before long became a new focus for the bandmembers, wHO unwittingly made a list for themselves as crusaders for both artistic integrity and a freer interpretation of right of first publication law in opposition to corporate control.
This new focusing, though one which grew naturally out of Negativland's previous work, helped invigorate the mathematical group, which re-activated the Seeland label with the release of Free in 1993. Accompanying tours establish the band delivering both senior hits (if you will) and protracted meditations on the whole U2 saga (a far-famed though unofficial release, Negativconcertland, presented a typical show all over its two discs). Perhaps most far-famed of all was Wills' live work -- for whatsoever bit of rumored personal reasons, he refused to term of enlistment, so the band did the next best thing and plainly videotaped his parts for playback.
After farther extricating itself as often as it could from the matter, as well as entirely severance all golf links with Ginn and SST, Negativland unbroken on keeping on. Joyce's Over the Edge designate continued as always, with an increasing number of previous and new shows edited for presentation as formal releases, though 1996 brought the deviation of Grigg from the band. Negativland's following formal release in 1997 looked to be some other red-flag-to-the-bull attempt, though whether out of foolhardiness or calculation is up to the single to decide. Regardless, Dispepsi, featuring the guest contributions of newest appendage Peter Conheim, didn't convey down the wrath of Pepsi-Cola on the band's top dog even though the cover fine art was clearly a riff on the distinctive brand's logo patch the content explored the very conception of publicizing and its potentially destructive nature. 1998 featured a follow-up EP, Happy Heroes, spell the following year power saw the visual aspect of a full collaborationism single with British chemical group stalwarts (and longtime Negativland fans) Chumbawamba, The ABCs of Anarchism.
2000 and beyond has brought a new, if by and large lower-key, eRA to Negativland, with the group's most far-famed afterwards influence existence a well-received term of enlistment, True/False 2000, featuring often newer material as well as an honest-to-goodness standby or deuce, not to reference some astonishingly kooky between-set skits and films (and, as invariably, Wills only turning up on video recording). As of 2001, a live text file of that tour is still in the offing, spell the most recent release is variety of a bootleg, These Guys Are From England and Who Gives a Shit, revisiting the whole U2 amplify with legion take turns versions (and the originals) of Negativland's most (in)notable drive.
