I first became aware of Negativland sometime in 1987 when my friend Kerry, who was working in a record shop in Herne Bay, played a track from their album ‘Escape From Noise’. Knowing that I was a fan of The Residents, he suggested that I’d enjoy this record and, as was often the case, he was right. I bought the album that day and gradually tracked down their previous releases over the next couple of years. Their next album, ‘Helter Skelter’ was released in 1989, based around the incidents which ensued following a tongue-in-cheek press release the band had issued, claiming that they were being investigated by police who believed that the perpetrator in a recent murder case had been ‘inspired’ by the track ‘Christianity is Stupid’. Of course, this wasn’t true at all but the story was subsequently reported and publicised by the mass media. Negativland referred to this practice as ‘culture-jamming’, taking elements of existing media to create new statements, often as parodies or critique. However, the next Negativland project, the ‘U2’ EP, would become their most notorious release when the band were sued by U2’s management and, a little later, by their record label, SST. This resulted in the band returning to their own label, Seeland, where they have been releasing their own records ever since. In the mid Nineties, I bought a copy of the live album ‘Negativconcertland’. Up until that point, I wasn’t aware that the band actually performed live, but on hearing this album they quickly became one of the bands that I really wanted to see live. Unfortunately, I would have a long wait and the closest I got was when I saw a lecture / presentation by one of the founding members, Mark Hosler, at an event in East London. However, late in 2019 I spotted an advert announcing that Negativland would finally be performing in London, with two dates at Café Oto. Having waited this long and not knowing if I’d ever get the chance again, I sent a message to their website asking if there would be any chance of setting-up an interview while they were in London. Promptly, I received an email from Mark Hosler saying that he’d be happy to do this and we made arrangements to meet up. On the day of the second show, I met up with Mark early in the afternoon and, after obtaining some tea and coffee, we started our discussion.
Negativland have been producing music for over 40 years. Does it surprise you that the project has lasted so long ?
‘When I was younger and we’d been doing this for a while, I often thought about all of the groups and creative people that were around and wondered who of them would still be creating, making or supporting all of this weird shit when we reached our fifties and sixties… And it isn’t always the people that you think it’ll be! I was so happy when I was a teenager and our first record came out, that I probably would’ve been happy if that was all we ever did ! But you can never really tell how things are going to go. Sometimes people are into something for just a short time, like a phase they’re going through, while other people may want to keep doing their creative thing but end up spending all of their time doing other stuff just to survive. I’ve never had children, but I know enough people who are parents and I don’t know if I’d be able to continue making my contributions to Negativland if I was also looking after children full time. I’ve only ever really had the ability of making just-enough money to survive and I think that’s all I’ve ever been motivated to do… I’ve never been motivated to make lots of money and I’ve probably been more motivated towards keeping my free-time, so I can work on things… you know, walking around in the woods, or out in the desert, or making weird noises and working on projects with my friends…’
Funnily enough, one of the things that’s been happening a lot in recent years is that bands who split-up twenty or thirty years ago are now reforming, often because the people involved have gone through that period of raising their families or whatever and now find that they have the spare time to do their music again…
‘We always used to joke that if we’d only gone away and stopped doing Negativland for a long time, we probably would have had more success if we then came back with a Negativland Reunion! But we never did go
away and always remained more interested in what we would be doing next. There are a few things that we play in the current live show that reference our older work, but not much. Just playing older material doesn’t interest us unless we can figure out ways of using our older stuff in new ways. There’s a super messed-up version of ‘Christianity is Stupid’ that we’ve been doing, but the music is different and we’ve been inter-cutting it with recordings of Tim Cook from Apple talking about this new app that helps you meditate. It
works in a way that’s pretty funny. I think that if we weren’t doing our best to try and pay attention to what’s going on in the world, and doing new work that feels relevant, then we ought to hang it up, we should just quit. But our new record, ‘TrueFalse’, which is the first of two interconnected albums, is something I’m very excited about it. I hope listeners can tell that we’re still paying attention, still concerned and still care, and are trying to do something interesting in response to all the dark and crazy shit that’s going on around us these days.’
With so much insane stuff going on in the world at the moment, I’m surprised it’s not resulting in even more creative work being produced in response…
‘There’s a wonderful book I read some years back called ‘Dark Ages America – The Final Phase of Empire’ by Morris Berman. He looks at how, all throughout history, every civilization, no matter how powerful, ultimately fails. None of them last forever, they all eventually collapse, and usually the reason for that happening is that the very thing that gave them their strength, vitality and success, for good or for bad, will ultimately cross some tipping point and put everything off-balance and out of control. The very thing that initially propelled them to success will eventually destroy them and we can see that happening right now in America. During the course of the book, Berman goes through the history of various civilizations and shows what led to their collapse. There’s also another very good book called ‘A Short History of Progress’ by Ronald Wright, which also goes into that… Why do civilizations collapse? Of course, when the authors talk about America they come to the conclusion that we’re currently doing everything that civilizations do when they finally start to go down. If you agree with this thesis, the question is, what do we do now with the time we have left ? And instead of just our civilization collapsing, are we going to take down the entire planet with us?’
As you were saying, Negativland has always seemed to be a product of what’s going on around it. How did the project first come together ?
‘I grew up in a somewhat isolated suburb, east of San Francisco. It was a typical west coast suburb with shopping malls, mostly white people, four channels on the TV and pretty dull radio stations. It was very limited in what you could hear and see, but some time in the early Seventies, they opened up the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), a new train system which made it much easier to travel around the whole area. There was a stop that wasn’t too far away from where we lived, and from there I was able to travel over to Berkeley or to San Francisco and, fortunately, I was just old enough that my parents would let me do it by myself. So I started doing that and began to hear little bits of music here and there that seemed to have something going on that really excited me. Just certain tracks, really, like ‘Uncle Albert Admiral Halsey’ by Paul McCartney, which simulates a phone-call in the middle of the song. I thought that was just the coolest thing! And I remember hearing the radio-edit of ‘Tubular Bells’, which had this strange phase-shifted upright bowed bass sound which, to my ears, was incredible. I started enjoying film soundtracks and, in particular, a film called ‘Sorceror’ which was scored by Tangerine Dream. They were using something called ‘synthesizers’ - I didn’t even know what they were at the time. I also started getting into prog-rock, like early Genesis, Pink Floyd, Gentle Giant, King Crimson…the Firesign Theatre…I was interested in everything.
‘There’s a wonderful book I read some years back called ‘Dark Ages America – The Final Phase of Empire’ by Morris Berman. He looks at how, all throughout history, every civilization, no matter how powerful, ultimately fails. None of them last forever, they all eventually collapse, and usually the reason for that happening is that the very thing that gave them their strength, vitality and success, for good or for bad, will ultimately cross some tipping point and put everything off-balance and out of control. The very thing that initially propelled them to success will eventually destroy them and we can see that happening right now in America. During the course of the book, Berman goes through the history of various civilizations and shows what led to their collapse. There’s also another very good book called ‘A Short History of Progress’ by Ronald Wright, which also goes into that… Why do civilizations collapse? Of course, when the authors talk about America they come to the conclusion that we’re currently doing everything that civilizations do when they finally start to go down. If you agree with this thesis, the question is, what do we do now with the time we have left ? And instead of just our civilization collapsing, are we going to take down the entire planet with us?’
As you were saying, Negativland has always seemed to be a product of what’s going on around it. How did the project first come together ?
‘I grew up in a somewhat isolated suburb, east of San Francisco. It was a typical west coast suburb with shopping malls, mostly white people, four channels on the TV and pretty dull radio stations. It was very limited in what you could hear and see, but some time in the early Seventies, they opened up the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), a new train system which made it much easier to travel around the whole area. There was a stop that wasn’t too far away from where we lived, and from there I was able to travel over to Berkeley or to San Francisco and, fortunately, I was just old enough that my parents would let me do it by myself. So I started doing that and began to hear little bits of music here and there that seemed to have something going on that really excited me. Just certain tracks, really, like ‘Uncle Albert Admiral Halsey’ by Paul McCartney, which simulates a phone-call in the middle of the song. I thought that was just the coolest thing! And I remember hearing the radio-edit of ‘Tubular Bells’, which had this strange phase-shifted upright bowed bass sound which, to my ears, was incredible. I started enjoying film soundtracks and, in particular, a film called ‘Sorceror’ which was scored by Tangerine Dream. They were using something called ‘synthesizers’ - I didn’t even know what they were at the time. I also started getting into prog-rock, like early Genesis, Pink Floyd, Gentle Giant, King Crimson…the Firesign Theatre…I was interested in everything.
Then someone told me about a record store over in Berkeley, called ‘Rather Ripped’, which sold records imported from other countries. I found out that there were records by the bands I was interested in that had only been released abroad, which made no sense to me, so I went to this store and found all these imported records that I’d never seen before. And because I was interested in Tangerine Dream and Mike Oldfield, the people at the store started to recommend things like Klaus Schulze and Cluster, followed by Neu and Faust. Then the first Pere Ubu album came out and things like ‘Duck Stab’ by The Residents, the early Cabaret Voltaire records and Throbbing Gristle… At the same time, Punk was starting to happen… I thought the Sex Pistols were alright but a little too conventionally rock’n’roll for me, I suppose, while the first Clash album was a bit more interesting, and then things like the first Talking Heads album came out, and especially the first Devo album. I was very interested in that and over the next year or two, I was able to buy imported copies of things that weren’t coming out in America, like the first Siouxsie & the Banshees album, or the first Cure album. Getting to hear all of these different things was so exciting, like sticking your finger in a light socket! And I was also starting to discover things like Steve Reich and Phillip Glass and Terry Riley, all that minimalist stuff. I never understood all the snobbery that people have about music. I can like something that only has one chord for 10 minutes and at the same time I love more musically elaborate things like ‘Relayer’ by Yes. If something is composed and played in an interesting way, then I want to hear it. I also found out around that same time that people were starting to record and release their own music and the idea of do-it-yourself really appealed to me. I learned about Rough Trade records in London and I was impressed by the way they did things and especially that their releases were so diverse. Then I found out about Industrial Records and that it was run by the actual artists, which was really inspiring. All of this was really expanding my mind to the possibilities that were out there. When I was 16, I ended up with an after-school job where I was calling people on the telephone, asking them questions about their favourite TV shows… which was incredibly appropriate as the place where Negativland began! While I was working there, I used to keep a piece of paper with a list of records that I wanted to buy next. One day, I’d written down ‘Picture Music’ by Klaus Schulze and, as chance would have it, a co-worker named Richard Lyons walked by, saw this note, and commented that he had that album. Now, where I was living, the idea that someone had that obscure import only record or even knew what it was, was incredible to me. I’d found someone who was into the same weird music that I liked, so there was an instant connection. We started talking and it turned out that his home was actually near where I lived, so one day he offered to give me a ride home. He had a small portable cassette deck in his car and he started playing a tape of orchestral music with someone singing these absolutely ridiculous lyrics over the top. It turned out that he had a mixer and he’d mixed his own voice onto an instrumental piece from the movie ‘Born Free’. At that point, I had no idea how you could do that… how could you combine one sound with another ? It was all very mysterious to me, but he knew how to do it.
At that same job, I met David Wills, who was friends with Richard, and it turned out that he knew how to make tape loops and echo, and he had also built something called a Booper, which is a homemade electronic noise-making device, built out of little clock-radio amplifiers with various resistors and capacitors attached to knobs and switches which he’d use to modulate the feedback it created. He could use it to make these crazy, alien-insect noises which were very funny and quite extraordinary. We started hanging out and listened to things like ‘It’s a Bit of a Pain’ by Faust… it’s a really lovely song, but then this horrible sixty cycle hum comes in during the chorus and I just loved that. It was such a great set-up… a lovely song and then they just fuck it up, which I thought was so great. There was a track called ‘Thriller’ on ‘Dub Housing’ by Pere Ubu, which had the same effect on me. There were certain tracks here and there and it seemed that I was getting little glimpses of a sonic universe that I really wanted to hear more of, but I couldn’t find it. As much as I was enjoying all of the music that I was listening to, it seemed as if there was one record that I couldn’t find and at some point, I decided that I’d have to make it. Not necessarily an actual record, but I just wanted to make the music that I wanted to hear. So I borrowed a bunch of stuff from a local guitar shop and talked my High School Musical Department into lending me a Mini-Korg synthesizer that they had… I still don’t know how I managed to do that, because I wasn’t even in the Music Department at school ! Then I took all of the money I’d saved-up from my paper route and, over a Christmas vacation, I rented a guitar, a bass, a drum-set, a saxophone, a cello, and an electric piano. I had a little mixer and some microphones and a Bad Stone phase shifter and a distortion box, and I just started screwing around with all of this equipment. The three of us each had these little set-ups in our houses and we’d go around from one to another and work on stuff together. I was still pretty ignorant about the deeper history of avant-garde music and experimentation, so a lot of what we were doing felt to me as if we were inventing it, when in fact similar things had already been done back in the Fifties and Sixties, even the Forties… There’s a lot to be said about knowing the history and the vocabulary of whichever medium you’re working in, but there’s also a lot to be said about being naïve and not knowing shit about all that stuff, just making things up for yourself. Paradoxically, by not knowing that similar things had already been done, we ended-up making a record that seemed to be something kind of new. If we had known that a lot of what we were doing had already been done, I think we may well have been discouraged and maybe wouldn’t have made a record at all. But instead of having that kind of knowledge, we had so much excitement and enthusiasm about what we were doing. Also, I was coming from a world where, at school, things were often horrifically violent and there was verbal bullying almost constantly, to the extent that I think that I still have some amount of post-traumatic stress disorder from what I went through. Luckily, my home life with my parents was okay… they didn’t support what I was doing very much because they didn’t know what to make of it, but they didn’t try to discourage it either. But what was happening while I was at school pushed me into wanting to create my own little world. If I couldn’t control what was going on in the outside world, perhaps I could make a world of my own which I could control in my room… Obviously, I’m not speaking for the other guys, but I’m sure this was part of what gave me the motivation to do this and eventually resulted in us making the first record.’
It must have felt very vindicating when the first record came out…
‘It felt like a triumph ! It was released before I even got out of High School and it came in these hand-made covers, basically because we didn’t understand how printing worked. We had no idea of how record labels printed the sleeves for their albums, but we stumbled across this place where we could buy plain white record jackets, so, in my art class at school, I ended up making 500 covers for 500 records using pieces of black paper for the front and then cutting out pictures from old magazines and samples from old wall-paper books. So the record came out and each of them had a one-of-a-kind cover. We did it basically as a simple solution to a problem, but inadvertently we’d done something that, when people got to see it in the two local record stores we consigned them to, it drew attention to itself and people wondered what it was. They were very unusual and I think that people in the record stores helped by telling customers we were a bunch of teenagers from the suburbs making something really strange and they should check it out. From that kind of start, the records started selling a bit… We’d had very modest goals and thought that we might be able to sell a few-hundred copies over two or three years, but then a local indie distributor heard it and called us on the ‘phone, saying that they’d like to take a hundred copies, which was mind-blowing to us ! Two weeks later, they called again and said that the 100 copies had been sold and this time they’d like 200 more ! I was really confused as I didn’t realize at that point that they would be selling the records to shops in other cities across America. I thought they’d just be selling them around the Bay Area, but they’d been selling them to stores in Los Angeles, New York, Berlin, Tokyo and London… my head was exploding when they told us this. It was so incredible that the record was selling in all of these places and we were so energized to be getting that kind of interest… that’s really why we kept doing it. I mean, we’d never performed live and this was something that only really existed in our bedrooms, but then a couple of venues around San Francisco got to hear about us and assumed that we were ‘a band’… which I’m still not sure if we are… and said that they wanted to book us for a show. That was really mind-blowing because we didn’t even know how we could do that. There was no way that we could perform onstage what we were recording, so we had to figure-out what we were going to do and, from the very-first show, we never tried to perform anything directly from our records. We just tried to perform stuff that we could play live with the limited gear that we had, making sure that it would still be sonically-interesting to us and I think we still follow that aesthetic approach to this day. But the important thing was that all of these different things had come into play and because of that, we just kept going.’
‘It felt like a triumph ! It was released before I even got out of High School and it came in these hand-made covers, basically because we didn’t understand how printing worked. We had no idea of how record labels printed the sleeves for their albums, but we stumbled across this place where we could buy plain white record jackets, so, in my art class at school, I ended up making 500 covers for 500 records using pieces of black paper for the front and then cutting out pictures from old magazines and samples from old wall-paper books. So the record came out and each of them had a one-of-a-kind cover. We did it basically as a simple solution to a problem, but inadvertently we’d done something that, when people got to see it in the two local record stores we consigned them to, it drew attention to itself and people wondered what it was. They were very unusual and I think that people in the record stores helped by telling customers we were a bunch of teenagers from the suburbs making something really strange and they should check it out. From that kind of start, the records started selling a bit… We’d had very modest goals and thought that we might be able to sell a few-hundred copies over two or three years, but then a local indie distributor heard it and called us on the ‘phone, saying that they’d like to take a hundred copies, which was mind-blowing to us ! Two weeks later, they called again and said that the 100 copies had been sold and this time they’d like 200 more ! I was really confused as I didn’t realize at that point that they would be selling the records to shops in other cities across America. I thought they’d just be selling them around the Bay Area, but they’d been selling them to stores in Los Angeles, New York, Berlin, Tokyo and London… my head was exploding when they told us this. It was so incredible that the record was selling in all of these places and we were so energized to be getting that kind of interest… that’s really why we kept doing it. I mean, we’d never performed live and this was something that only really existed in our bedrooms, but then a couple of venues around San Francisco got to hear about us and assumed that we were ‘a band’… which I’m still not sure if we are… and said that they wanted to book us for a show. That was really mind-blowing because we didn’t even know how we could do that. There was no way that we could perform onstage what we were recording, so we had to figure-out what we were going to do and, from the very-first show, we never tried to perform anything directly from our records. We just tried to perform stuff that we could play live with the limited gear that we had, making sure that it would still be sonically-interesting to us and I think we still follow that aesthetic approach to this day. But the important thing was that all of these different things had come into play and because of that, we just kept going.’
Do you think that the fact that you were releasing records on your own label gave you the time and space to develop your ideas in a more satisfying way ?
‘Well, our initial assumption was that there were other people out there who would be interested in the same things as us, so that there’d be a small audience for what we were doing. We just didn’t know where they were. I had this faith in that idea and I still don’t know where that came from, but I’ve always had it and still do. That
was part of the reason why we released the first record ourselves, but also we didn’t want to be in a position on someone else’s label where other people might be telling us what to do. That just wouldn’t make sense and, to be honest, why would anyone even bother to put out a record like ours ? There was no money to be made… there was nothing in the kind of music we were making between 1978-1980 that would have made anyone say, ‘Hey, I want to finance your records !’ I think we also had enough of a limited sense of the music industry and the machinery behind it to realize that it could quite easily push you, crush you, or try to mould you into something else, which was obviously not interesting to us. While we didn’t particularly like running a record label, and I still don’t as it’s an incredible pain in the ass, but I am glad that we learned how to put records out, from the printing and manufacturing to the mastering and whatever. You know, all the nuts and bolts of it. It would be much better if we didn’t have to do all of that work, but we didn’t think that we’d ever find a record label who would be happy to leave us alone to do what we do. As it turned out, after our third album, a guy named Ray Farrell who had worked at Rather Ripped Records started working for Sonic Youth. When they signed to SST records, he ended up moving to Los Angeles to work with them and he suggested that we send a cassette of our next album down to SST, when it was ready, to see if the owner Greg Ginn might be interested in working with us. The album was ‘Escape From Noise’, Ginn liked it, decided to work with us, and the
album went on to be our best-selling record. So, for a brief period, it seemed to be a really good situation but fairly soon it turned-out that things actually weren’t so great, because… Greg Ginn is a very troubled individual, let’s just put it that way. It’s not something I want to go into too much, but the worst kinds of people are those that have some kind of inner-justification for criminal and unethical stuff that they’re doing, where they convince themselves that it’s all fine and dandy to financially rip other people off.’
I’m afraid that I’ve heard similar stories from so many people who were once signed to SST…
‘You have to remember that, at the time that we signed to them, there was a sense that it wasn’t just music and it was something bigger than just a band with another record on another record label. It felt like you were connected to and part of something that was culturally and politically larger. Being on SST Records felt like being part of a larger cause. The bands on the label really believed in it, so when they started not paying bands the royalties they were owed, the bands cut them a lot of slack because they believed in what SST were doing and thought it was important for it to continue. There was something that felt very important about this oppositional culture that we were all a part of, and SST seemed to represent the best of that. Our work was obviously a lot more intellectual and conceptual than most of the things the label was used to dealing with, but they were happy to let us do what we wanted and we were fine with that. We thought it was perfect for us, but in the end it all went to Hell. One thing I will say, and this is something that’s been interesting for me to ponder, is that I can still look at what Greg Ginn and Black Flag did as being a very socially, culturally and politically important thing, regardless of what ultimately turned-out to be going on at SST as a business. That first Black Flag album, ‘Damaged’, is a great record, and they relentlessly toured across the USA, not just playing the big cities but also every little weird out of the way place that they could play, and by doing that they inspired thousands of kids to start bands, start zines and get a scene going within their own communities. That was an incredibly powerful, positive thing. So there’s an incredible irony and paradox that something and somebody who turned out to be so truly messed up and criminal was the guiding force behind that band.’
‘Well, our initial assumption was that there were other people out there who would be interested in the same things as us, so that there’d be a small audience for what we were doing. We just didn’t know where they were. I had this faith in that idea and I still don’t know where that came from, but I’ve always had it and still do. That
was part of the reason why we released the first record ourselves, but also we didn’t want to be in a position on someone else’s label where other people might be telling us what to do. That just wouldn’t make sense and, to be honest, why would anyone even bother to put out a record like ours ? There was no money to be made… there was nothing in the kind of music we were making between 1978-1980 that would have made anyone say, ‘Hey, I want to finance your records !’ I think we also had enough of a limited sense of the music industry and the machinery behind it to realize that it could quite easily push you, crush you, or try to mould you into something else, which was obviously not interesting to us. While we didn’t particularly like running a record label, and I still don’t as it’s an incredible pain in the ass, but I am glad that we learned how to put records out, from the printing and manufacturing to the mastering and whatever. You know, all the nuts and bolts of it. It would be much better if we didn’t have to do all of that work, but we didn’t think that we’d ever find a record label who would be happy to leave us alone to do what we do. As it turned out, after our third album, a guy named Ray Farrell who had worked at Rather Ripped Records started working for Sonic Youth. When they signed to SST records, he ended up moving to Los Angeles to work with them and he suggested that we send a cassette of our next album down to SST, when it was ready, to see if the owner Greg Ginn might be interested in working with us. The album was ‘Escape From Noise’, Ginn liked it, decided to work with us, and the
album went on to be our best-selling record. So, for a brief period, it seemed to be a really good situation but fairly soon it turned-out that things actually weren’t so great, because… Greg Ginn is a very troubled individual, let’s just put it that way. It’s not something I want to go into too much, but the worst kinds of people are those that have some kind of inner-justification for criminal and unethical stuff that they’re doing, where they convince themselves that it’s all fine and dandy to financially rip other people off.’
I’m afraid that I’ve heard similar stories from so many people who were once signed to SST…
‘You have to remember that, at the time that we signed to them, there was a sense that it wasn’t just music and it was something bigger than just a band with another record on another record label. It felt like you were connected to and part of something that was culturally and politically larger. Being on SST Records felt like being part of a larger cause. The bands on the label really believed in it, so when they started not paying bands the royalties they were owed, the bands cut them a lot of slack because they believed in what SST were doing and thought it was important for it to continue. There was something that felt very important about this oppositional culture that we were all a part of, and SST seemed to represent the best of that. Our work was obviously a lot more intellectual and conceptual than most of the things the label was used to dealing with, but they were happy to let us do what we wanted and we were fine with that. We thought it was perfect for us, but in the end it all went to Hell. One thing I will say, and this is something that’s been interesting for me to ponder, is that I can still look at what Greg Ginn and Black Flag did as being a very socially, culturally and politically important thing, regardless of what ultimately turned-out to be going on at SST as a business. That first Black Flag album, ‘Damaged’, is a great record, and they relentlessly toured across the USA, not just playing the big cities but also every little weird out of the way place that they could play, and by doing that they inspired thousands of kids to start bands, start zines and get a scene going within their own communities. That was an incredibly powerful, positive thing. So there’s an incredible irony and paradox that something and somebody who turned out to be so truly messed up and criminal was the guiding force behind that band.’
Most people interested in the band are familiar with the fact that Negativland were sued by U2, but it’s less-known that you were subsequently sued by Greg Ginn as well…
‘We were initially sued by U2’s label and their manager, but following that we were also sued by Greg Ginn. And going through something like that is like having a flesh-eating zombie attached to your shoulder
for five years, slowly eating you alive… But, as horrible as that was, I can still separate the music and culture that Greg created and inspired as a part of Black Flag from what he and SST eventually became. There is an argument made that one way to hold these people accountable is by dismissing all of their previous work. Which makes me think about situations we are experiencing now with #MeToo stuff going on. Do we as culture look at, say, a comedian like Louis CK and realize what was powerful and amazing about his work….and also realize that what animated his work was that he really was this very messed-up, fucked up guy? If you look back at his body of work, he was telling us that about himself all along. Yet a lot of what he was exposing about gender-issues and toxic masculinity to a very mainstream audience, at least in America, got people thinking about things in ways that I think had enormous value. He took some enlightened perspectives out of the fringes and used humour to bring them to a much wider audience. But while ultimately the fucked-up darkness that was within him was made public and destroyed him, and rightly so, does that also mean that we then discount everything that he ever did in his entire life? Should his entire body of work now be
completely ex-communicated from culture ? I don’t have an answer to that question and actually, as a male, it’s not a question that I should be answering. But it is something that I think about because I’m interested in the shifting ways that culture is perceived and consumed, especially in those edge zones where it might actually get people to look at things differently, and in ways that are positive and enlightening and encouraging.’
It’s something that seems to be becoming more frequent, as well. You’ll have an artist or musician who becomes popular and then it transpires that, offstage, they indulged in unsavoury or inexcusable habits. Obviously, if they’ve done awful things and been found-out, they get what they deserve, but does that mean you can no longer appreciate their previous work ?
‘It used to be that something like a biography of Picasso would come out many years after he died and reveal that he was a rather monstrous person in real life, but it’s so removed from the era in which he became famous and was putting out his work, that it doesn’t have the same kind of impact on the narrative of how his work is perceived. But nowadays, because we live in a world of instantaneous communication, if he was still alive and doing the things that he was supposed to have done, stories about him and his behaviour would be out there on social media in real time for people to make judgements on. So it’s a whole new situation that we’re grappling with now. Everything comes out in real time, someone posts something stupid and ill thought-out on Twitter and once it’s out there it can’t be undone, for good or bad. I think it’s symptomatic of the growing-pains of modern civilization trying to figure out what to do with all of these new ways that we can communicate. Inevitably, it’s really, really messy and there’s some amount of collateral damage. Going back to the subject of the #MeToo movement, it’s clear that it’s something that had to happen and it’s extremely important that it did and that it continues to happen. You can see that some people have been destroyed because they really deserved it, but other people have been destroyed who perhaps deserved it a little bit less. As soon as it started unfolding I realized that it was going to be messy, but the bigger picture is that we are, I hope, evolving towards a world where young men are growing up and realizing that the kind of shit that previous generations of men got away with, they’re not going to get away with anymore. I hope it’ll result in a new and more enlightened ‘normal’ emerging in relation to how men treat women, either in the workplace, on the street, at home, or in a pub. That bigger picture aspect of it is great.’
‘We were initially sued by U2’s label and their manager, but following that we were also sued by Greg Ginn. And going through something like that is like having a flesh-eating zombie attached to your shoulder
for five years, slowly eating you alive… But, as horrible as that was, I can still separate the music and culture that Greg created and inspired as a part of Black Flag from what he and SST eventually became. There is an argument made that one way to hold these people accountable is by dismissing all of their previous work. Which makes me think about situations we are experiencing now with #MeToo stuff going on. Do we as culture look at, say, a comedian like Louis CK and realize what was powerful and amazing about his work….and also realize that what animated his work was that he really was this very messed-up, fucked up guy? If you look back at his body of work, he was telling us that about himself all along. Yet a lot of what he was exposing about gender-issues and toxic masculinity to a very mainstream audience, at least in America, got people thinking about things in ways that I think had enormous value. He took some enlightened perspectives out of the fringes and used humour to bring them to a much wider audience. But while ultimately the fucked-up darkness that was within him was made public and destroyed him, and rightly so, does that also mean that we then discount everything that he ever did in his entire life? Should his entire body of work now be
completely ex-communicated from culture ? I don’t have an answer to that question and actually, as a male, it’s not a question that I should be answering. But it is something that I think about because I’m interested in the shifting ways that culture is perceived and consumed, especially in those edge zones where it might actually get people to look at things differently, and in ways that are positive and enlightening and encouraging.’
It’s something that seems to be becoming more frequent, as well. You’ll have an artist or musician who becomes popular and then it transpires that, offstage, they indulged in unsavoury or inexcusable habits. Obviously, if they’ve done awful things and been found-out, they get what they deserve, but does that mean you can no longer appreciate their previous work ?
‘It used to be that something like a biography of Picasso would come out many years after he died and reveal that he was a rather monstrous person in real life, but it’s so removed from the era in which he became famous and was putting out his work, that it doesn’t have the same kind of impact on the narrative of how his work is perceived. But nowadays, because we live in a world of instantaneous communication, if he was still alive and doing the things that he was supposed to have done, stories about him and his behaviour would be out there on social media in real time for people to make judgements on. So it’s a whole new situation that we’re grappling with now. Everything comes out in real time, someone posts something stupid and ill thought-out on Twitter and once it’s out there it can’t be undone, for good or bad. I think it’s symptomatic of the growing-pains of modern civilization trying to figure out what to do with all of these new ways that we can communicate. Inevitably, it’s really, really messy and there’s some amount of collateral damage. Going back to the subject of the #MeToo movement, it’s clear that it’s something that had to happen and it’s extremely important that it did and that it continues to happen. You can see that some people have been destroyed because they really deserved it, but other people have been destroyed who perhaps deserved it a little bit less. As soon as it started unfolding I realized that it was going to be messy, but the bigger picture is that we are, I hope, evolving towards a world where young men are growing up and realizing that the kind of shit that previous generations of men got away with, they’re not going to get away with anymore. I hope it’ll result in a new and more enlightened ‘normal’ emerging in relation to how men treat women, either in the workplace, on the street, at home, or in a pub. That bigger picture aspect of it is great.’
Another media related issue that’s very much in the mainstream at the moment is the subject (or excuse, depending on who’s applying it) of ‘fake news’. But Negativland actually explored this whole idea back in 1989 with the album ‘Helter Stupid’. You issued a press release back then stating that the band were being investigated following a series of murders supposedly inspired by the track ‘Christianity is Stupid’ on the previous album, ‘Escape From Noise’. Although the murders had actually occurred, there was no real connection to Negativland but various media outlets took the press release at face value and broadcast the story. The old adage may say that you can’t fool all of the people all of the time, but it does seem as if you can fool a lot of them as long as they’re told to believe it…
‘Well, it was harder for people to fact check things back then, but the thing is that, in America, our country is now being ruled by a guy who is basically a culture-jammer. Media manipulation and media criticism are now being used to instigate cruel and evil things, and we never really thought about what would happen if that was the case. Back then the culture jamming we were doing was coming from a kind of leftist, progressive, ‘speaking truth to power’ kind of place, so the idea that somewhere down the line there would be some Alt-Right person using those same techniques was something that we never imagined. It’s all very problematic, but the point that we were making with the ‘Helter Stupid’ album and its liner notes about so-called ‘fake news’ was that people shouldn’t simply trust the mainstream media and should be asking questions, reading widely and thinking more deeply about it and that we should strive to be ‘media literate.’ But now we’re in a world where many people are going around thinking that everything in, say, the New York Times or Washington Post, or everything on CNN, is automatically a lie just because it’s in that newspaper or that news report. That’s terrible ! You realize that, if you take the logic of our old points all the way, you end up in a world where there’s no truth and no facts anymore because now ‘facts’ are just whatever we’d like them to be. Obviously, you can’t run a town or a city or a country or care for a planet like that… it would be the death of everything. But that’s the situation we’re now in, the so-called ‘post-truth world’. As a group of people who were interested in these ideas, and have been grappling with them since ‘Helter Stupid’ came out thirty years ago, the whole thing has been flipped on its head and we’re very aware of that. We did a tour back in 2000 called ‘True/False’, and our new album is instead called ‘True False’… that slash has gone and there’s a reason for that. There are elements of this record that go all the way back to that tour but have now been re-worked and re-thought because what we were getting at, on that tour, has really changed. To the best of our ability, we have to reflect that. I spend time reading news reports and the comments sections from left-wing websites, middle-of-the-road websites, right wing websites and extreme right-wing websites. It’s like torturing myself, but I try to read all of it and you soon realize that the Internet, which in the Nineties we thought was going to be so amazing and utopian and would expose us to so much diversity of thought and culture and perspectives and knowledge, has turned into a world where web site algorithms simply show us more and more of what they think we want to see. We get trapped by these filter-bubbles into a hall of mirrors, and it reinforces many peoples worst thoughts and impulses. It’s certainly not something that we could’ve predicted.’
‘Well, it was harder for people to fact check things back then, but the thing is that, in America, our country is now being ruled by a guy who is basically a culture-jammer. Media manipulation and media criticism are now being used to instigate cruel and evil things, and we never really thought about what would happen if that was the case. Back then the culture jamming we were doing was coming from a kind of leftist, progressive, ‘speaking truth to power’ kind of place, so the idea that somewhere down the line there would be some Alt-Right person using those same techniques was something that we never imagined. It’s all very problematic, but the point that we were making with the ‘Helter Stupid’ album and its liner notes about so-called ‘fake news’ was that people shouldn’t simply trust the mainstream media and should be asking questions, reading widely and thinking more deeply about it and that we should strive to be ‘media literate.’ But now we’re in a world where many people are going around thinking that everything in, say, the New York Times or Washington Post, or everything on CNN, is automatically a lie just because it’s in that newspaper or that news report. That’s terrible ! You realize that, if you take the logic of our old points all the way, you end up in a world where there’s no truth and no facts anymore because now ‘facts’ are just whatever we’d like them to be. Obviously, you can’t run a town or a city or a country or care for a planet like that… it would be the death of everything. But that’s the situation we’re now in, the so-called ‘post-truth world’. As a group of people who were interested in these ideas, and have been grappling with them since ‘Helter Stupid’ came out thirty years ago, the whole thing has been flipped on its head and we’re very aware of that. We did a tour back in 2000 called ‘True/False’, and our new album is instead called ‘True False’… that slash has gone and there’s a reason for that. There are elements of this record that go all the way back to that tour but have now been re-worked and re-thought because what we were getting at, on that tour, has really changed. To the best of our ability, we have to reflect that. I spend time reading news reports and the comments sections from left-wing websites, middle-of-the-road websites, right wing websites and extreme right-wing websites. It’s like torturing myself, but I try to read all of it and you soon realize that the Internet, which in the Nineties we thought was going to be so amazing and utopian and would expose us to so much diversity of thought and culture and perspectives and knowledge, has turned into a world where web site algorithms simply show us more and more of what they think we want to see. We get trapped by these filter-bubbles into a hall of mirrors, and it reinforces many peoples worst thoughts and impulses. It’s certainly not something that we could’ve predicted.’
A few years ago, I re-read ‘1984’ by George Orwell, for the first time since I was at school and I found it a lot more disturbing this time around. It’s almost as if some politicians in this country, and I’m sure in America as well, have read it almost like an instruction manual rather than a warning… The idea of ‘Newspeak’ is certainly a valid concern in the way that the media is constantly being manipulated…
‘Oh yeah, I’d agree. That’s more or less going on for real now, especially the way the media so often implies that the past is what they say it is. The reality that we’ve got is a blend of ‘1984’ and ‘Brave New World’. We have elements of both in the U.S., for sure, what with skyrocketing levels of alcohol use, anti-depressants, suicides and opioid abuse. It all tells me that we have created a society that is not meeting our needs as human beings, so we want to numb ourselves or cover up how alienated and meaningless we feel with drugs or anger or religion, and slowly kill ourselves. Add climate change to that and it’s just as confusing as hell, so, at least for me and my friends, one of the things that we think to do is make records and radio and performances about all of this crazy stuff. Maybe that’s all we can think to do in response, to make something in some kind of strange, creative, surreal and hopefully poetic, funny and intelligent way. We try to make art that in some way addresses and grapples with this stuff that makes all of us very anxious. And I think, even though the things we deal with can be pretty dark, my sense after doing this for forty years, is that there seems to be something surprisingly positive and cathartic about being in a room full of people where these ideas are being articulated. Somehow, it seems to have some sort of meaning that doesn’t just make people want to slit their wrists ! It can be great when you make that connection and realize that someone else also thinks and feels the way you do.’
Well, Negativland has always had a strong sense of humour in its work, which in many ways undermines the topics that it deals with…
‘Of course. If there’s anything we can do with something that we’re working with to make it funnier, we’ll do that. You have the bitter with the sweet, the vinegar and the honey… But it’s not a contrived thing, it’s just our usual inclination. The fact that our records feature a sense of humour is just because we like things that are funny. I mean, who doesn’t like things that are funny? So why not put it into your art ?’
It also makes things more inviting, so that listeners will be more willing to consider your more serious ideas or concepts…
‘True, though we’ve never done this because our primary goal was to get people to think about things differently. You might assume that we were from some of the things we’ve been talking about, but it’s not the case. We’re really trying to make what we do work as works of art first, and the thought provoking bits come next. That’s the first thing, does it work conceptually and as an aesthetic experience ? Does it point you in directions that have some meaning, but also confuse you at the same time ? We’re big fans of Dada and confusion and chaos, mixed in with intent and concept and something very brainiac… Hopefully, there’s this whole blend of stuff in our work that will make you go, ‘What the Fuck ?’, but mixed in with, ‘Oh, I think I get that…’
‘Oh yeah, I’d agree. That’s more or less going on for real now, especially the way the media so often implies that the past is what they say it is. The reality that we’ve got is a blend of ‘1984’ and ‘Brave New World’. We have elements of both in the U.S., for sure, what with skyrocketing levels of alcohol use, anti-depressants, suicides and opioid abuse. It all tells me that we have created a society that is not meeting our needs as human beings, so we want to numb ourselves or cover up how alienated and meaningless we feel with drugs or anger or religion, and slowly kill ourselves. Add climate change to that and it’s just as confusing as hell, so, at least for me and my friends, one of the things that we think to do is make records and radio and performances about all of this crazy stuff. Maybe that’s all we can think to do in response, to make something in some kind of strange, creative, surreal and hopefully poetic, funny and intelligent way. We try to make art that in some way addresses and grapples with this stuff that makes all of us very anxious. And I think, even though the things we deal with can be pretty dark, my sense after doing this for forty years, is that there seems to be something surprisingly positive and cathartic about being in a room full of people where these ideas are being articulated. Somehow, it seems to have some sort of meaning that doesn’t just make people want to slit their wrists ! It can be great when you make that connection and realize that someone else also thinks and feels the way you do.’
Well, Negativland has always had a strong sense of humour in its work, which in many ways undermines the topics that it deals with…
‘Of course. If there’s anything we can do with something that we’re working with to make it funnier, we’ll do that. You have the bitter with the sweet, the vinegar and the honey… But it’s not a contrived thing, it’s just our usual inclination. The fact that our records feature a sense of humour is just because we like things that are funny. I mean, who doesn’t like things that are funny? So why not put it into your art ?’
It also makes things more inviting, so that listeners will be more willing to consider your more serious ideas or concepts…
‘True, though we’ve never done this because our primary goal was to get people to think about things differently. You might assume that we were from some of the things we’ve been talking about, but it’s not the case. We’re really trying to make what we do work as works of art first, and the thought provoking bits come next. That’s the first thing, does it work conceptually and as an aesthetic experience ? Does it point you in directions that have some meaning, but also confuse you at the same time ? We’re big fans of Dada and confusion and chaos, mixed in with intent and concept and something very brainiac… Hopefully, there’s this whole blend of stuff in our work that will make you go, ‘What the Fuck ?’, but mixed in with, ‘Oh, I think I get that…’
Whether we succeed or fail, one of our goals is that we always want to create something that doesn’t allow you to reduce the work to one simple level of meaning, because we think that complexity is where people become really engaged. If you’re willing to take the time to try to figure out what’s going on in our work, which I’ll admit in this day and age is probably unusual to even have the time to do, then we hope you’ll find something that’s rewarding and engaging rather than something that’s didactic or wagging a finger at you. We try very, very hard to strike that balance. While there will always be certain people who prefer getting a message by being hit on the head with a black and white sledgehammer, we’ve never cared for that approach. If it works for some people, that’s fine, but to us it would feel dishonest to make work like that as the world is a very, very complicated place and very grey… a bit like the skies here in London ! Things are very grey and confusing and that’s something that’s important to acknowledge. You try to muddle through every day, trying to do your best as a human being and with your actions every day. You try to be kind to one another and think about where you spend your money and where you throw your garbage, when and if to fight back and how one does that. But one thing that everyone in Negativland loathes is any kind of fundamentalism, whether it’s on the right or on the left. It’s the cause of everything that’s bad in the world. Black-and-White thinking is the Devil and is to be avoided at all costs. Sadly, the people who rise to power tend to think that way, and they also tend to be sociopaths. Don’t forget that the reason why people in power seem to be crazy is because they literally are crazy ! They are sociopaths, psychopaths and malignant narcissists. Clinically, that’s how they can be diagnosed and that’s how they got into power, because it’s that kind of person who has the will and the lack of empathy, compassion or sense of connection to any other humans, to do the shit that they do and hurt so many people. That’s the real problem.’
You were talking about when Negativland started and David was building his own machines to create the sounds that you wanted…
‘Yeah, he did that and still does. In fact, a guy called Adam Shaw, who was kind of like Davids’ apprentice, got involved and now there’s probably about twelve Boopers, between the ones that David made and the ones Adam made under Davids’ tutelage. On stage, I have an original Booper made by David and another made by Adam. I love that you can’t predict what they’re going to do. You just have to work with what they come up with because they’re always going to surprise you. When I’m onstage, a lot of my hardware is intentionally unstable because I really like the idea that I can’t completely control what’s going on. It’s always as if I’m dueting with my gear. If it does something that I can’t predict, then hopefully I can still use it and follow it where it takes me.’
You were talking about when Negativland started and David was building his own machines to create the sounds that you wanted…
‘Yeah, he did that and still does. In fact, a guy called Adam Shaw, who was kind of like Davids’ apprentice, got involved and now there’s probably about twelve Boopers, between the ones that David made and the ones Adam made under Davids’ tutelage. On stage, I have an original Booper made by David and another made by Adam. I love that you can’t predict what they’re going to do. You just have to work with what they come up with because they’re always going to surprise you. When I’m onstage, a lot of my hardware is intentionally unstable because I really like the idea that I can’t completely control what’s going on. It’s always as if I’m dueting with my gear. If it does something that I can’t predict, then hopefully I can still use it and follow it where it takes me.’
Yeah, and that’s the exciting side of using electronic equipment, but since the early days when bands like The Residents or Throbbing Gristle were literally building equipment to do the things that they wanted to do, things like sampling have become mainstream and are now used in very bland, uninteresting ways. Does it disappoint you that this is the result of something that you helped to pioneer ?
‘It’s easier than ever to do ‘experimental’ music, that’s for sure, and I really think that, in many ways, Punk Rock won. In terms of gaining the means of production to create our own culture, it’s completely in our hands now. That’s been true for many years, but it turns out that when anyone can be a generator of culture and ideas, the noise level goes up so high that it becomes harder and harder for things of true value to get through. I think that the reasons our first record stood out when it came out in 1980 was both because of what it sounded like and also because of the distinct packaging, as there just wasn’t that much other weird stuff coming out back then and it stood out a bit. But now, there’s a constant deluge of creativity and it’s wonderful that people can get into experimenting with sound and visuals, yet, as a fan and a consumer of this stuff, you’re wading through piles and piles and piles of muck to get to some good stuff. Going back to our early records and the idea of standing out, just the very act of taking something that wasn’t ours and using it in a new way was, regardless of what we were doing with it, pretty transgressive and felt like something that had meaning. But that isn’t true anymore and hasn’t been for a long time. I always knew that, with what we were doing creatively, one day things would shift in terms of technology and culture and the way people listen to things, and that what we were doing wouldn’t be so avant-garde anymore. Of course the world’s going to catch up, that’s inevitable. But as that shifted over time, I think back to what Don Joyce used to say about our efforts, that continuing to do good work was all to do with ideas. Do we have a good idea or not ? If we have a good idea, then, yes, let’s do it ! With our new album, for example, I like what we’ve done musically and we haven’t sampled any music on this record at all apart from a tiny little bit on the last track… We’ve moved on from that and the music is all written and played by us, while the spoken bits are all sampled from various media and there’s a lot of ideas on every track. It’s very dense and very much meant for repeat listens to work out what we are on about. I think it does take you on a journey to a lot of interesting places and hopefully it leaves you somewhere new and thoughtful and interesting, maybe even emotional, when you get to the end. And as Don Joyce also used to say, ‘Never underestimate the power of interesting !’ But I’m not worried about it sonically being the most out-there, experimental, avant-garde thing ever, like I used to be in our earlier days. I’m more concerned about whether we have something to say and that we’re saying it in a complex, interesting, weird, funny and smart way, that feels like it ought to exist. Otherwise, we should just quit. I hope that we’re self aware enough that if and when we get to a point where we know we’re not speaking to the moment, because we’re getting too old and too out of it, then I hope we know enough to stop and the Negativland experiment will be over. Although I also hope, conversely, that I’ll still be Booping and making weird noises by the time I’m in a wheelchair ! I certainly don’t want to stop being creative, but it will be a case of what kind of work do we make that we still feel comfortable calling Negativland. Especially as we’ve lost three members in recent years, it’s become a very serious question for us these days. But with the current and the next album we’ve plundered our own archives and we’ve used hundreds of bits that were originally created by Don, Richard and Ian, so the records are filled with hundreds of things from our older radio and live performances that they created butwere never used on our studio albums. So I think these new records very much sound and feel like everyone is there on them.’
‘It’s easier than ever to do ‘experimental’ music, that’s for sure, and I really think that, in many ways, Punk Rock won. In terms of gaining the means of production to create our own culture, it’s completely in our hands now. That’s been true for many years, but it turns out that when anyone can be a generator of culture and ideas, the noise level goes up so high that it becomes harder and harder for things of true value to get through. I think that the reasons our first record stood out when it came out in 1980 was both because of what it sounded like and also because of the distinct packaging, as there just wasn’t that much other weird stuff coming out back then and it stood out a bit. But now, there’s a constant deluge of creativity and it’s wonderful that people can get into experimenting with sound and visuals, yet, as a fan and a consumer of this stuff, you’re wading through piles and piles and piles of muck to get to some good stuff. Going back to our early records and the idea of standing out, just the very act of taking something that wasn’t ours and using it in a new way was, regardless of what we were doing with it, pretty transgressive and felt like something that had meaning. But that isn’t true anymore and hasn’t been for a long time. I always knew that, with what we were doing creatively, one day things would shift in terms of technology and culture and the way people listen to things, and that what we were doing wouldn’t be so avant-garde anymore. Of course the world’s going to catch up, that’s inevitable. But as that shifted over time, I think back to what Don Joyce used to say about our efforts, that continuing to do good work was all to do with ideas. Do we have a good idea or not ? If we have a good idea, then, yes, let’s do it ! With our new album, for example, I like what we’ve done musically and we haven’t sampled any music on this record at all apart from a tiny little bit on the last track… We’ve moved on from that and the music is all written and played by us, while the spoken bits are all sampled from various media and there’s a lot of ideas on every track. It’s very dense and very much meant for repeat listens to work out what we are on about. I think it does take you on a journey to a lot of interesting places and hopefully it leaves you somewhere new and thoughtful and interesting, maybe even emotional, when you get to the end. And as Don Joyce also used to say, ‘Never underestimate the power of interesting !’ But I’m not worried about it sonically being the most out-there, experimental, avant-garde thing ever, like I used to be in our earlier days. I’m more concerned about whether we have something to say and that we’re saying it in a complex, interesting, weird, funny and smart way, that feels like it ought to exist. Otherwise, we should just quit. I hope that we’re self aware enough that if and when we get to a point where we know we’re not speaking to the moment, because we’re getting too old and too out of it, then I hope we know enough to stop and the Negativland experiment will be over. Although I also hope, conversely, that I’ll still be Booping and making weird noises by the time I’m in a wheelchair ! I certainly don’t want to stop being creative, but it will be a case of what kind of work do we make that we still feel comfortable calling Negativland. Especially as we’ve lost three members in recent years, it’s become a very serious question for us these days. But with the current and the next album we’ve plundered our own archives and we’ve used hundreds of bits that were originally created by Don, Richard and Ian, so the records are filled with hundreds of things from our older radio and live performances that they created butwere never used on our studio albums. So I think these new records very much sound and feel like everyone is there on them.’
This is the first time that Negativland have played in London, although you’ve been here before, either doing a spoken / lecture appearance about the group or collaborating with other musicians. Why has it taken Negativland so long to perform in the UK ?
‘It’s the first time that Negativland-proper has ever performed in London, although I did a sort of lecture in London about our work, years ago. We also did a thing called Negativwobblyland at Café Oto about four years ago, and Don Joyce was over here at one point and did some kind of audio presentation… I think that was in the Nineties. But Negativland-proper have never played here before. I don’t know why it took so long, but we’ve never toured relentlessly and the money we get offered is usually… I mean, just to fly over here and pay for the transport to take us around, and the hotels, it all adds up. We come over for two or three weeks, work 24/7 traveling and performing, and then go home with about $1000 if we’re lucky. That aspect is pretty
challenging, although the fact that people want to book us and make a tour happen is always amazing to us and we’re very, very appreciative about it. If we could bring over more merchandise that would help because that’s one way you cover more of your expenses. But it’s difficult and expensive to bring merchandise with you to Europe and the UK. Another issue for us is that, in Europe, I think it’s difficult for us to perform effectively in places where the audience may not speak English, as our work is so dependent upon that. I expect that’s why we’ve never been asked to play in Japan, because it wouldn’t make any sense over there. We’d just be a mystery to a Japanese audience!’
‘It’s the first time that Negativland has ever performed in London, although I did a sort of lecture in London about our work, years ago. We also did a thing called Negativwobblyland at Café Oto about four years ago, and Don Joyce was over here at one point and did some kind of audio presentation… I think that was in the Nineties. But Negativland-proper have never played here before. I don’t know why it took so long, but we’ve never toured relentlessly and the money we get offered is usually… I mean, just to get over here and pay for the transport to take us around and the hotels, it all adds up. We come over for two or three weeks, work 24/7 travelling and performing, and then go home with about $1000 if we’re lucky. That aspect is pretty challenging, although the fact that people want to book us and make a tour happen is always amazing to us and we’re very appreciative about it. But trying to work out the numbers is always a problem. If we could bring over more merchandise, that would help because that’s the way you cover more of your expenses, but you can’t do that because it’s so difficult and expensive to bring merchandise with you. So it means the practical aspects of touring over here can be daunting. The other thing is that, in Europe, I think it’s difficult for us to perform effectively in places where the audience may not speak English, as our work is so dependent upon that. I also expect that’s why we’ve never been asked to play in Japan, because it wouldn’t make any sense over there. We’d just be a mystery to a Japanese audience!’
That seemed to be an appropriate place to end the interview, as I had already agreed to take Mark to a few tourist-landmarks in central London (let’s face it, there’s not a lot to see in Dalston !) and I end-up taking him to Buckingham Palace, St James Park, Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, although he seems just as fascinated by the various Brexit protestors outside Parliament and a strange homeless guy on the corner of Whitehall singing slurred songs through a traffic cone…
‘It’s the first time that Negativland-proper has ever performed in London, although I did a sort of lecture in London about our work, years ago. We also did a thing called Negativwobblyland at Café Oto about four years ago, and Don Joyce was over here at one point and did some kind of audio presentation… I think that was in the Nineties. But Negativland-proper have never played here before. I don’t know why it took so long, but we’ve never toured relentlessly and the money we get offered is usually… I mean, just to fly over here and pay for the transport to take us around, and the hotels, it all adds up. We come over for two or three weeks, work 24/7 traveling and performing, and then go home with about $1000 if we’re lucky. That aspect is pretty
challenging, although the fact that people want to book us and make a tour happen is always amazing to us and we’re very, very appreciative about it. If we could bring over more merchandise that would help because that’s one way you cover more of your expenses. But it’s difficult and expensive to bring merchandise with you to Europe and the UK. Another issue for us is that, in Europe, I think it’s difficult for us to perform effectively in places where the audience may not speak English, as our work is so dependent upon that. I expect that’s why we’ve never been asked to play in Japan, because it wouldn’t make any sense over there. We’d just be a mystery to a Japanese audience!’
‘It’s the first time that Negativland has ever performed in London, although I did a sort of lecture in London about our work, years ago. We also did a thing called Negativwobblyland at Café Oto about four years ago, and Don Joyce was over here at one point and did some kind of audio presentation… I think that was in the Nineties. But Negativland-proper have never played here before. I don’t know why it took so long, but we’ve never toured relentlessly and the money we get offered is usually… I mean, just to get over here and pay for the transport to take us around and the hotels, it all adds up. We come over for two or three weeks, work 24/7 travelling and performing, and then go home with about $1000 if we’re lucky. That aspect is pretty challenging, although the fact that people want to book us and make a tour happen is always amazing to us and we’re very appreciative about it. But trying to work out the numbers is always a problem. If we could bring over more merchandise, that would help because that’s the way you cover more of your expenses, but you can’t do that because it’s so difficult and expensive to bring merchandise with you. So it means the practical aspects of touring over here can be daunting. The other thing is that, in Europe, I think it’s difficult for us to perform effectively in places where the audience may not speak English, as our work is so dependent upon that. I also expect that’s why we’ve never been asked to play in Japan, because it wouldn’t make any sense over there. We’d just be a mystery to a Japanese audience!’
That seemed to be an appropriate place to end the interview, as I had already agreed to take Mark to a few tourist-landmarks in central London (let’s face it, there’s not a lot to see in Dalston !) and I end-up taking him to Buckingham Palace, St James Park, Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, although he seems just as fascinated by the various Brexit protestors outside Parliament and a strange homeless guy on the corner of Whitehall singing slurred songs through a traffic cone…
When we return to Dalston, Mark has to go and soundcheck while I head-off to feed myself. I get back to the venue a couple of hours later by which time the first artist, Yuko Araki, is already half-way through her set. The electronic sounds that she produces are powerful, atmospheric and interesting, somehow reminiscent of Throbbing Gristle more intense moments. It perhaps needed to be a lot louder, but I was certainly impressed. The next performer is Irene Moon, an American entomologist (the study of insects) who presents a surreal performance-art piece taking the form of a bizarre Lecture about… insects ! It’s a little bewildering at times, but also pretty amusing. I have certainly not seen anything like this before.
Finally, it’s time for Negativland and I’m very glad to say, they lived up to all of my expectations. As Mark was saying, the set is based mainly around new music rather than more familiar tracks from the past, but the whole performance is enthralling from start to finish. As the band members generate their sounds, visuals are provided on a large screen at the rear of the stage by video-artist Sue-C, adding further dimensions to the aural assault. There’s plenty going on to keep you on your toes, trying to pick out all the reference points, but it’s also very entertaining and at times hilarious. A few older tracks are reworked into this set (‘Michael Jackson’, ‘Time Zones’) but done in such a way that they fit with the more recent material. Towards the end of the set, The Weatherman (aka David Wills) makes a virtual appearance on-screen via video-link. He gets a very enthusiastic response and proceeds to have a disjointed and highly peculiar conversation with Siri ! I do have to say that Café Oto probably wasn’t the ideal venue for this concert (the sound was great, but as the place was packed it was difficult to get a good view of the proceedings) but I still have to say this was one of the best gigs I’ve been to this year and I’m so glad that I’ve finally been able to see them. I just hope they don’t keeping us waiting another forty years before they play in London again !
Finally, it’s time for Negativland and I’m very glad to say, they lived up to all of my expectations. As Mark was saying, the set is based mainly around new music rather than more familiar tracks from the past, but the whole performance is enthralling from start to finish. As the band members generate their sounds, visuals are provided on a large screen at the rear of the stage by video-artist Sue-C, adding further dimensions to the aural assault. There’s plenty going on to keep you on your toes, trying to pick out all the reference points, but it’s also very entertaining and at times hilarious. A few older tracks are reworked into this set (‘Michael Jackson’, ‘Time Zones’) but done in such a way that they fit with the more recent material. Towards the end of the set, The Weatherman (aka David Wills) makes a virtual appearance on-screen via video-link. He gets a very enthusiastic response and proceeds to have a disjointed and highly peculiar conversation with Siri ! I do have to say that Café Oto probably wasn’t the ideal venue for this concert (the sound was great, but as the place was packed it was difficult to get a good view of the proceedings) but I still have to say this was one of the best gigs I’ve been to this year and I’m so glad that I’ve finally been able to see them. I just hope they don’t keeping us waiting another forty years before they play in London again !
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