Stupidland

Here you go! All the early Negativland tracks fom the out-of-print and cassette-only compilations listed in the ESCAPE FROM NOISE discography.

• "1-20" from LOCAL INTERNATIONAL (1984)
• "Paul McCartney's Penis" from NORTHERN CALIFORNIA IS A NOISY PLACE INDEED (1987)
• "Radio Advertising" from OBJEKT 3 (1987)
• "General Cavendish" from ZAMIZDAT TRADE JOURNAL (1987)
• "Play It Again" from UNSOUND's last issue (1987)
• "Perfect Scrambled Eggs" from POTATOES (1987)
• "Edit of All Things Considered show" from the June 1989 OTE show "Where Are We Now?", taken from the Over the Edge compilations available from Negativland. Don and Chris were interviewed by an NPR reporter, and they offered to edit the interview for NPR. This is the three-minute-plus edit that Don turned in; note the stereophonic edits throughout the piece, indicating that actual tape splicing was being done.
• "TDK New Music Report promo" (1991). This is not strictly a Negativland recording, but I include it here out of completeness. It's a short track from a CD of an episode of the TDK New Music Report, an hour-long show that TDK was sending off to college radio stations around 1991. I seem to recall that it didn't last for very long; maybe a year or so. This particular promo was a short news item on the "U2" single, and included some unexpurgated audio from the Radio Edit track. TDK, of course, alerted people to the raw language with a brief disclaimer (34 Kb PDF).
• "Tribal Mandate" from BOB'S MEDIA ECOLOGY 2 (1993)
• "You Must Choose" from LIVE AT THE KNITTING FACTORY VOL 3 (1993)
• True/False tour (2000) promotional spots:
  • "Stealing" (1:03)
  • "Wrong!" (1:00)
  • "Wrong!" (0:30)
  • "Electric Mud" (1:05)
  • "Insult" (1:03)
  • "Day In, Day Out" (0:34)

This section is for printed documents from Negativland's history.

Negativland press kit, circa September 1983

Thanks to an eBay seller, I am able to bring you this look at how Negativland were promoting themselves in the early years!

• Press release in PDF form (12.4 MB)
• Text of page 1 (introduction)
• Text of page 2 (Contra Costa Times article, RECORDINGS article, Op article)
• Text of page 3 (Puncture article, BAM article)
• Text of page 4 (Op article, "Negativland by Negativland")
• Text of page 5 (Over The Edge essay by Don Joyce)

Negativland catalog from 1991

A 1991 letter/catalog from Negativland, via T.E.C. Tones. The date on this letter is September 1991, which places it right at the time that the U2 single was released. Indeed, the catalog description of the single includes the frivolous-sounding (yet totally accurate) sentence, "this one might actually get us into the most trouble yet." Available as a PDF (2.18 MB) or plain text file.

FU2 / Stupidland

The namesake of this Website! The FU2 compilation was announced just after the Island Records/Casey Kasem nonsense as documented in Negativland's FAIR USE book. Hosted by Archive.org.

Snuggles mail list

Where it all began. The traffic has died way down in recent years, but you can still find people around if you send your query to the list.

Negativland's official site

This is your best bet to try to get Negativland albums, but don't expect too much in the way of updates. Negativland isn't too focused on keeping people in the know, not even their fans.