Don Joyce and Negativland

A couple of commissioned pieces from Negativland that they did for New American Radio in the late Eighties/early Nineties. Both pieces saw later release in truncated forms, yet neither has ever come out on disc in the form offered here. The most radically different ( and longer) of the two is Advertising Secrets, which is vastly different than the 7″ that eventually came out on Eerie Records. Guns isn’t that different, but varies somewhat in mix and sequence and doesn’t have the Then and Now/ A-side/B-side orientation, as it appeared on the SST issued vinyl EP.

Advertising Secrets utilizes a big chunk of the already bizarre concept album TM Productions: Tomorrow Radio as a launching point, so it’s doubly weird.

From New American Radio:

Don Joyce and Negativland: Guns! (1989)
A dense, pulsing “action song,” whose verses deal with America’s intimate relationship with firearms: “The gun and the Bible carved this nation out of the wilderness,” a man exclaims. A tradition unfolds that links the voices of the past as we know them through television cowboy movies and gangster films, to the modern Annie-Get-Your-Gun, the business woman of the ‘eighties with her handy sub-machine gun. An evolving patchwork of movie excerpts and TV ads, statements and information about guns, and of certain phrases repeated like bullets.
Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

Negativland: Advertising Secrets (1991)
A dynamic blend of rhythmic elements and original audio constructs — actual ad jingles, lines and phrases — commentary by and about advertisers — books on tape materials about how commercials are conceived and created — plus various out-takes from commercial productions which depict the sophisticated process (and elaborate cynicism) of the professionals involved. “My motivation is to inspect and depict some of the paradoxical aspects of media advertisement which both attract and repel me as an artist in America — a society whose entire economic well being rests solely on consumerism and the need to manufacture want.” (Don Joyce)
Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

Go get them here.

Note: I posted these separately last Summer, but am re-upping them by request.

Negativland’s Mark Hosler Interview

Mark Hosler was in town to present his Adventures in Illegal Art: Creative Media Resistance and Negativland lecture and multimedia show.
Mark gave a brief history of the ‘band’ (he says he doesn’t think of themselves as a band), told mainly through their many run-ins with the media and their lawyers. He also showed us the many, seldom seen videos the band has been doing in collaboration with others. Who knew that the infamous U2 single had a video? Not many since they have been court ordered to never, under any circumstance show it in any way. It was great.
After the show was a brief Q & A.

Mark was kind enough to drop by the KBOO studios and man a mic on The Outside World, this week hosted by Dr. Zomb, who used to be an occasional contributor to Negativland’s Over the Edge program. The interview is very informal and Mark plays some real Negativland rarities, including the bizarre acapella, gospel-tinged cover band The 180-Gs.

You can download the program here:

Mark Hosler Interview.mp3 (80.75 MB)

Negativland’s MySpace page (more up to date than their official website)

Repost: Firesign Theater’s Dear Friends

Dear Friends
Columbia (Original Masters Series)

Originally released as a multi-LP set, this compilation offers some of
the best bits from their syndicated radio program, Dear Friends that was condensed from a twelve hour LP package sold to radio stations across the US in the early seventies.

No standard characters or long sketches, just four guys sitting around a table and messing with our – and each other’s – minds. The largely improvised verbal jam sessions will tie your brain in knots like a pretzel. Falling asleep with this playing will severely tax your ability to maintain any semblance of normal human cognition the following day.
This is probably the rawest (philosophically speaking) form to experience the power of the hellish brains of Ossman, Austin, Bergman and Proctor, still at it after forty years.

Toad Away.

http://rapidshare.com/files/8867665/Dear_Friends.zip.html

Repost: Goran Bregovic’s Underground OST

Goran Bregovic
Mercury, France

An excellent soundtrack to one of the greatest movies of all time, Emir Kusturica’s Underground, aka Once Upon a Time There Was a Country.
If you’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing this film from the former Yugoslavia, the sound of the Gypsy brass band that is in virtually every other scene will be stuck in your head for months. The raucous sounding Kalasnjikov, which is heard throughout the film, is here, as is the haunting War, complete with a tragic children’s choir.
Here, rather than simply lift the songs from the soundtrack, many have been recreated and in some cases rearranged completely by Bregovic and his band.
Some songs are a beautiful fusion of Balkan folk with electronica, such as The Belly Button Of The World with great sounding Middle Eastern percussion as well as a pulsing electronic beat, which sounds oddly appropriate for a film that covers fifty years of the history of Yugoslavia.
Missing in action is the German hit song Lili Marleen that crops up throughout the film. First heard when the protagonist’s city falls to the Nazis and later when the Allies defeat them, it’s used throughout the movie to underscore the tragi-comic events. I’ve included it inside as a bonus track.
Lovers of traditional Balkan music, Euro-Folk, Klezmer or any exotic music will find this soundtrack enjoyable whether they’ve seen this film or not.

“A catastrophe!”

By request.

un

Laura’s Brain

Something I made with my Kaoss Pad.

Is it done yet? I don’t know.

Guest vocals by Laura Bush.

Enjoy. 

Some Brian Eno Demo Fragments from My Life in the Bush of Ghosts

  I have upped a small bundle of early demo versions of songs that eventually made it to MLITBOG. Eno played these on the radio in an interview (worth listening to in itself) during the period he and Byrne were recording it.
Some songs are early sketches of songs that appeared on the album and in the interview he alludes to the song that would become ‘America is Waiting’ (he was calling the stripped down instrumental “Garbage Disco‘, at the time) was recorded by him prior to the Byrne collaboration idea.

Obviously there was no need to include these on the  latest reissue, as they are simply the skeletal workings of the actual songs.

But not to get your hopes up, kids, it’s but three really small excerpts, but I thought you’d find them interesting, nonetheless.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=L4IKEEE5

I also have the remix contest source files, if anybody is interested.
If you are handy with GarageBand or any other similar, multitrack music app., you can roll your own remixes of A Secret Life or Help Me Somebody.

Ken’s Last Ever Radio Extravaganza

Ken of K.L.E.R.E. has dropped me the following line:

two new live shows to be created
one: in a few hours (friday june 8, 4:30-6pm CT / 5:30-7pm ET)
the other: in a few days (monday june 11, 12-1pm CT / 1-2pm ET)

both via live webcast: http://counterfolk.com/lastever
and both on live radio in austin, tx: 91.7-FM
*thanks to gary and john for airtime

live, improvised sound collage experiment
wherein you may participate via contributing sounds with telephone during show
or other ways you may devise
then/now/later

mixing combining existing playing happening
free from plan or thought

may also be listenable later on web page if you miss it

live listening, past archives, ‘podcast’:
http://counterfolk.com/lastever
(try a blue show from the upper-right corner)

If you’re a fan of live, improvised collage radio, be sure to check it out.
It’s his last one ever, so you have to.