Negativland - "Aluminum or Glass"

The tile of the book is "Fair Use: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2". It's a chronological collection of letters, press releases, news articles, legal documents, telephone transcripts and faxes about the Negativland/U2 case. What I found amusing was that Casey Kasim sent Negativland a copy of "How To Make Fiends and Influence People", and N-Land sent him a expose of the music industry's seamer side entitled "Rock Bottom".

1997. "Dispepsi"

Uhh no they lost their case with U2; ironically it was those well known digital anarchists 2 Live Crew (??!?!LOL) who won that one...hence sampling in hiphop and other music is easier in the States. Sadly that ruling doesn't work anywhere else...we have no Fair Use in the UK.

Great video...and a virtual David Wills? LOL.

I think people tend to forget Negativland create good if pointed/subverted pop songs...I mean FourFingers or Theme from a 10-8 Place are evil earworms!

It looks a lot like Second Life too, presumably as like them they are modelling via Poser...

haha thank you..reeb

this is beautiful. That you for putting this. what year did this song come out? I never heard them sound this "normal".

yes you are correct. there is a book called FAIR USE about the who thing. Its fucking amazing and EVERY artist should read it. Really everybody should.

Monnie, I believe Negativland had a landmark trial that protected them and other artists to utilize samples from licensed music in order to compose a piece of music. No one has to fight anyone to use samples, its legal. Aaron Funk wouldn't have a career if he didn't sample.

Negativland doesn't sample: they use tape and splicing. Having done both, I can attest that the tape-and-splice method is much, much harder and time-consuming than sampling.

yeah, and they rap to other peoples already famous songs that they bought the rights to with all their diamonds.. i dont know how p diddy started out but i really doubt it was in the ghetto or that he got to the top by rapping since he has no original shit.
someone told me negativland got the shit sued out of them by U2 and lost almost everything they had made with the band LOL.. then they made that one song making fun of that songs lyrics i guess because they already had the legal battle.. ha

Yeah I heard about that... Funny how it just backfired really bad and now everyone goes to the internet to get their free music LOL.. Dumb businessmen thinking they can turn art into a material commodity haha

You sound like me. We just have to stand up and fight. Keep going. Their are plenty of scenes out there and as we know, money isn't everything. I never want to end up like those MTV Rap videos who forgotten their roots and just brag about how many diamonds they got. Blood Diamonds mined by slaves in other countries.

Major corporate labels and the RIAA are the reason. It's not easy to fight multi-million-billion dollar gorillas. They basically own the airways so all people know is your MTV music. Remember in the 50's when it was considered bad for DJ's to take bribes? Now it is perfectly fine by Major Label standards to get paid to play mostly majors i.e. resulting in your Top 40.

btw, why the hell did sampling die off so much? seems like the only people that really do it now are tool and shitty rap acts.. and i guess ministry but who hasn't thrown a crappy george bush sample in there, politician samples are probably responsible for the death of it

lol this made me think of xavier too, i wonder if they're connected somehow

i no longer go on living for no other reason than that someone has not killed me, for i once again believe in art

wonderful good montage to one of my favorite songs by them

ubik is the new primetime but it's not as good as strawberry

is this Y i luv Xavier?

The preaching dude reminds me of my art teacher.

we are sad creatures; brilliant video.

i love negativeland genious pure geniuos

I wish this kind of stuff would bring enough people together to change things. It definately helps. But damn I wish people would spend less time online and more time rioting. This country could use some massive roits.

Wow ... this is a truly moving song. I didn't even know this band existed until today. I am hypnotized by their awesomeness.

This is my favorite track on the album for the awesome guitars alone. And of course the content is great stuff too, I love Negativland.

Is that Ebichu? XD