Negativland – Negativland

Wonderful album! My copy is numbered 273. A pretty early one!

My copy is number 2364: like many people in Europe I received this album from the legendary Recommended Records UK in the early 80s. I was very lucky with the artwork (it's the BODY BY FISHER cover I share it here on discogs), it seems like a real full cover! It's a 1965 advertising page of a modern car (the caption says Chevrolet Corvair Monza Sport coupé) with a lady wearing a gown by Christian Dior - New York (!). The music was exactly what I had always dreamed of: a wonderful collage of electronic sounds, noises, radio tapes, instrumentals, telephone conversations, treatments and fragments from this crazy planet. About the artwork: in a world where the association of sound and image was now consolidated, Negativland had created a revolutionary idea: every single copy had to be unique to the person who received it. Pieces of vintage magazines were pasted on the front and surreal wallpaper on the back. I had never seen anything like it but it seemed perfectly in tune with the sound-collage; it questioned the very concept of marketing representing the other side of Warhol's multiples, the endless variations. Recently I had to restore parts of the cover because the glue had not held up over the decades, but to this day I preserve that artefact and urge anyone to get that piece of pop counterculture before it disappears! (Alessandro Monti :: Unfolk)

My copy is number 5546. It has the double-sided insert. Front cover has a square sheet of black construction paper pasted onto a white piece of cardboard with the band name spray painted in black. The images on the black construction paper are a picture of a Norelco shaver, and an ment for a GE TV stand/storage rack. The back cover has a white, textured wallpaper sample, and the credits sheet printed on gray paper.

If everyone in the world listened to this on a pair of decent headphones, the world would be a different place... chew on that!

I had a fit of nostalgia and was looking through my Negativland vinyl and pulled out the s/t release. I realized that my copy is #3210. That gave me a smile. Loved it from the beginning. Truly inspiring.

This is an album I got from the Recomended Records catalogue sometime in 1980. I have quite an early copy: #1633. I didn't quite know what to make of it at the time, but I liked it ok and bought each subsequent album as they came out. The big one was Escape From Noise which was a big hit around my way in 1987.

At the time I was active in making records myself with a sampling-based outfit from Brighton so I got in touch with Mark Hosler from Negativland and sent him a record we had made which had some Negs samples on it (this one Coco Steel & Lovebomb - T.S.O.E. (The Sound Of Europe). He responded and said he was coming to the UK to see his uncle Rupert in Wales and I invited him to my house while he was over. He stayed for a few days around 1988. We were supposed to be doing some recording together but for one reason or another it never happened. He did appear on a radio show I was doing at the time. The tape is lost alas.

The CSL record was quite '70s sounding (the fallout from Rare Groove still being big around our way). It influenced Negativland somewhat as their next album was Helter Stupid - the second side of the abum having the 'Dick Vaughn Presents The Perfect Cut' '70s theme.

On another occasion Negativland did a 'From Our House To Yours' tour. They would hook up their studio to the telephone and do a worldwide tour that way. We broadcast around 15 minutes of live Negativland on our radio show. I still have the tape of that one.

Random memories: Mark Hosler danced in a really weird way at a club we went to. He pirouetted 'round the edge of the dancefloor quite oddly. He also thought British beer was too strong, he could only manage half a pint. He also seemed mildly annoyed sampling the Negs on the CSL 12". I thought this was odd as their whole schtik was based on appropriating bits of other people's records.

When the 1989 earthquake happened we got him on the breakfast news show to describe what had happened.

That just about concludes my Negativland anecdotes. Oh yeah - Mark was also quite impressed with my #1633 album - he said it was a very early one.

I have a plain white front sleeve with a covering black piece of paper glued on and a "The Maytag Company" ten-member family portrait pasted on top, a hand numbered (8.251) sleeve underneath, with spray painted "Negativland", and a "Prism three dimensional expanded vinyl wallcovering" back sleeve with the credits cutout pasted on top. The inner sleeve is a photocopy of a Better Homes & Gardens cook book recipe for a Coffee-Toffee Torte, with a cooking based conversation transcript on the other side ("Yeah, that's real bad, too, I always try to avoid boiling milk if I possibly can in a pan, 'cause that's terrible to get out...an' uh...this pan-I tell ya, I-I did make a mistake with those buns."). Great fun.