Negativland, Middle East Downstairs, August 1, 2007
By JIM SULLIVAN | August 7, 2007
![insideNegativland-773578[1]](http://thephoenix.com/secure/uploadedImages/The_Phoenix/Music/Live_Review/insideNegativland-773578[1].jpg "insideNegativland-773578[1]")
CULTURE JAMMER: Negativland like nothing better than to muck with our ways. |
Because Negativland were ostensibly staging a “radio show” at the Middle East a week ago Wednesday, blindfolds were handed out to patrons. Meaning, you didn’t need to see Mark Hosler, Dan Joyce, and Peter Conheim on stage manipulating LPs, CDs, tapes, and the like from their three-sided makeshift studio. (The banners on their table read Universal Media Network.) This wasn’t theater. You needed ears, not eyes, a fact reflected by the show’s title, “It’s All In Your Head FM.”
Negativland are not averse to humor, but this show — heck, just about everything they’ve done since the ’80s — had a serious aspect. The guys, who made little eye contact, played no instruments. They occasionally spoke but mostly were sonic manipulators. Their mission: to juxtapose sampled statements and bits of music, to reconfigure phrases and riffs in ways that make us reconsider what we think we know.
Negativland invented the term “culture jammer,” and they like nothing better than to muck with our culture and upend it, to show its evil underbelly. At the Middle East, they had it in for religion. They explained that they would establish a “pseudo musical fellowship to spend the time we have left reminding the world that when it comes to God, just like radio, humans invented it and it’s all in your head.” Early on, a sampled voice said, “Let us have faith.” Immediately, “Because” from the Beatles song of the same name, floated in, and then came a wail of “There is no God!” Later, “Christ is the only way” floated on a soft synth line and was followed by intonations of “Some would call religion an illusion” and “There are no proofs of God.” Negativland are relentless in its pursuit, but they’re even-keeled. Talk of an afterlife triggered a snippet of Talking Heads’ “Heaven.” When someone professed the belief that all Americans go to Heaven, Jefferson Starship’s “Miracles” popped up. Negativland preach “headism” and want to put a “righteous emphasis on common sense.” Mission accomplished.
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This article originally appeared in the February 27, 1979 issue of the Boston Phoenix .
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