A year later, while driving across the country from NYC to LA, I happened to have the extremely rare opportunity to stop at both branches of one of the best record stores in the country – Wax Trax!, which has locations in Chicago and Denver. While perusing the racks in Denver, I came across the latest Negativland single, and snapped it up, even though I wouldn’t be able to listen to it until a couple of months later when I was finally settled enough to have the rest of my belongings shipped out and I got and unpacked my turntable. The 12” single featured a picture of an airplane on the cover in front of giant letters spelling U2, with Negativland written in smaller letters across the bottom. The single featured a poor rendition of U2’s Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For sung badly over random radio noises and some hilarious outtakes of American Top 40 DJ Casey Kasem swearing and blowing a gasket. Little did I know that that single would spark a firestorm of controversy and litigation that nearly killed Negativland.
At the time that U2 the single, was released, U2 the band, was one of the biggest groups in the world, and a fans everywhere were breathlessly awaiting their upcoming album. When Negativland released a single with U2 writ large upon it, U2’s label’s lawyers immediately leapt into action, accusing Negativland of intentionally trying to trick consumers into buying their single as the new U2 single. Eventually, the legal snowball grew to include Island Records – U2’s label – SST records, and Casey Kasem. The single disappeared almost immediately and all available copies were destroyed (except, of course, for mine). The irony of Negativland, a marginal group whose members all have day jobs and whose fan base is smaller than most rural villages in Nebraska, being taken on by one of the biggest, richest dogs in the neighborhood was not lost on the members of Negativland, and they chronicled the whole sordid tale in a book and CD called The Letter U and the Numeral 2 – which is a phrase that Casey Kasem had used when originally introducing the band to American listeners (or, at least, to American mall listeners who hadn’t registered that U2 was a group, even though they had been putting out well-received albums for years before they finally broke on these shores). Probably the supreme moment of righteous irony occurred during an interview with The Edge, guitarist for U2. At that time, U2 had embarked on a giant world tour (Zooropa) and one of the features of their show was a giant TV screen that flashed live images stolen from the airwaves during the show. In the interview, which was clandestinely being held by one of the members of Negativland, The Edge defends this practice by saying that, even though it’s technically illegal, they felt justified in doing it because of the media saturated society in which we all live. Which is, of course, precisely what U2’s lawyers were crushing the life out of Negativland for doing. They fessed up to the Edge about who they were, and he was very gracious, saying that their lawyers had presented the action to the band as a fait accompli and being so nice as to even call them back when they lost their phone connection.
The other irony of this whole saga is one that the powers that be never seem to learn. And that is that Negativland got so much more free publicity by being sued by Island Records than they ever would’ve gotten if they were just ignored. The issue, as far as I know, has never been satisfactorily resolved, but the U2 single remains unavailable and has become an extremely valuable rarity – something else that never would’ve happened if Island’s lawyers had just let the record sink into obscurity, as it was well on the way to doing. Because the truth of the matter is, it’s not that good. And nobody is ever going to confuse Negativland for U2 no matter what they put on the cover.
A few years later, Negativland tried to provoke another corporate giant into suing them out of obscurity by releasing an album based on the cola wars and titled Dispepsi, although they were forbidden from actually printing the name of the CD anywhere on it (it shows up as an easily decoded anagram a couple of times). But Pepsi didn’t bite and the album is still available today.
This track comes from an album released after U2 but before Dispesi, called Free. Most of their albums revolve around some theme, and Free’s loose thesis is about drinking and driving. We Are Driven is perhaps the most chilling track on the disc, and showcases their densely layered production techniques. Using bits of commercials for both alcohol and cars, sound bites from film and television shows, and a harrowing confession from a chronic drunk driver mixed together with their own peculiar lyrics and sounds creates a heady mix that is not easily forgotten. Their sound is rich and provocative and more polished and refined than most other artists working the media manipulation and sonic terrorism angle (such as EBN or John Oswald). And although I rarely listen to them, I find myself buying all of their releases, just because I so deeply respect what they are doing. U2 doesn’t need my money, so I’m happy to pull their tracks off the internet, but the members of Negativland are true pioneers, audio hackers in a commercial world, and they need all the support they can get.
