Negativland

Formed in Concord, California in 1979 by high-school students Mark Hosler and Richard Lyons, Negativland took its name — and, later, the name of its own Seeland record label — from “Negativland,” a track on Neu!’s 1972 debut album. The group built a body of work — beginning with their 1980 debut LP — from tape collage, hoax, and broadcast interception. Radio host Don Joyce, who joined soon after and ran the long-running KPFA program Over the Edge, introduced the term “culture jammer” on the group’s 1984 album JamCon ‘84. Their 1991 single “U2” paired kazoo parodies of “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” with an obscenity-laced outtake of DJ Casey Kasem losing his temper during a jingle session; Island Records sued over the packaging, arguing that “U2” printed larger than “Negativland” passed the record off as U2’s own, and a separate falling-out with their own label, SST Records — whose founder released a live album against the band’s wishes — severed that relationship entirely. Negativland documented the whole episode, together with essays on copyright and fair use, in the 1995 book-and-CD Fair Use: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2.