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"You can't fill a large stadium physically. You have to fill it with music." -- Adam |
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"You can't fill a large stadium physically. You have to fill it with music." -- Adam |
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Every Dog Has Its Day: Jacknife Lee Snuggles Up to U2
@U2,
March 31, 2004
Each artist walks a different path, often with strange companions, but how many of us can say that our road has been influenced by a group of take-no-prisoners pioneers of sampling and a dead dog? Jacknife Lee, currently working on U2's new album, was influenced by U2 long before he ever teamed up with U2. No, it's not a riddle; just a story of how artists sometimes intersect in unexpected ways.
After U2 announced Jacknife Lee's involvement in the new album, I went looking for more information about the producer and stumbled onto some of my own (somewhat ancient) U2-related history. Back in 1991, like every other U2 fan I knew, I was waiting, waiting, waiting for the new album (loving the band has been, among other things, a lesson in patience). In late August, I wandered into my local obsessive-collectors' music store and found a CD with a giant U2 label and, in smaller letters, Negativland. After the adrenaline rush passed (Ohmigod, I thought it was supposed to be called Achtung Something!), I learned what it was: a CD titled U2 from Negativland, an experimental music collective who since 1980 have created collage works of music, audio and "found sound" that critique culture and, in their own words, make "art about everything we aren't supposed to notice." In 1990, someone handed Negativland a tape of bootlegged outtakes from the syndicated radio program American Top 40. I listened to this show religiously in my childhood and adolescence, rooting for my favorite songs to climb the charts. Casey Kasem, the host, could sometimes be a little precious, but he was always upbeat and friendly, willing to reach out to fans by reading their letters on the air and recording personal dedications to songs. It turns out that Casey in production wasn't quite so much fun: the outtakes are impatient and profane, sometimes hilarious, but, I suspect, not a pleasant experience for the people working with him. This particular tape included a couple of choice morsels: Casey struggling with a dedication to a dead dog named Snuggles, and flubbing the introduction of "the first Top 40 hit for the Irish band from Dublin who call themselves U2." (The laugh-out-loud moment: "This is bullshit! Nobody cares! These guys are from England and who gives a shit?") The outtakes inspired Negativland to sample about 30 seconds of "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" and combine it with a spoken word parody of the song's lyrics, loops of Casey losing his cool, CB radio conversations, snippets of an interview with Bono, and other sounds, with a cover that they liked because it looked, "at first glance, like a U2 record." "Get it before they get sued," said the clerk, but I waited too long: when I returned a few weeks later, the CD was off the shelves and the wrath of Island Records was raining hard on Negativland and their label, SST. At issue were the copyright violation of the unauthorized sampling, and the trademark infringement of the misleading cover art (which was for Island the more serious matter, given that it was intentionally designed to create the false impression of a U2 release). Island's prosecution of Negativland and SST should have been a mop-up: a music industry megalith with heavyweight lawyers swatting a fringe found-sound group out of California whose releases averaged sales of 10,000 copies. But Negativland, faced with financial ruin, fought back the only way they could, parlaying a fairly (by legal standards) cut-and-dried case into a passionate and divisive discussion among industry, media, artists and fans about ideas of fair use and fair play. You couldn't read a popular or industry music magazine in late 1991 without running into the story: Negativland, a scrappy, snarky David facing the humorless twin Goliaths of Island and U2. And losing, of course: SST settled in, well, record time. But in the meantime, Island and the band themselves came in for a lot of criticism. The jabs at Island seemed fair to me: the label was within its legal rights, but came across like a schoolyard bully. However, many of the folks poking at U2 didn't realize, or conveniently forgot, that Island didn't need (and, by all accounts, didn't seek) the band's permission or blessing before taking action. The settlement required that all copies be recalled and destroyed; all masters be turned over to Island; and all rights become Island's property. Rather than running for cover, Negativland immediately set about trying to get the rights back. They used fax machines and Federal Express to become a thorn in the side of everyone they could find contact information for, including U2, Paul McGuinness, Chris Blackwell and Eric Levine of Island, Brian Eno and other friends of the band, and Casey Kasem (who, surprisingly, did not sue). They even persuaded psychedelic pop-poet Timothy Leary to intercede with Chris Blackwell ("Dear Chris -- I know these guys. They're OK."). Where was SST in all this? Busy lawyering up to sue Negativland to recover the costs of settling the Island lawsuit. The band and label parted company and began taking public shots at each other. The U2 connection here: Greg Ginn, the owner of SST, founded the group Black Flag, and for a time the group's vocalist was Henry Rollins, who perhaps holds the personal record for ongoing public attack on all things U2. Ginn seemed to have learned some of his public relations skills from Rollins: among other things, his tactics included calling for U2 to perform a benefit concert for SST at around the same time he was printing "Kill Bono" T-shirts (which didn't sell well because apparently they bled, in a triumph of metaphor over marketing). In June 1992, Negativland achieved contact: they ambushed the Edge. Edge agreed to do a telephone interview about Zoo TV with Mondo 2000 magazine. R. U. Serius of Mondo 2000, without Edge's knowledge, included two members of Negativland in the interview. Negativland's public relations strategy throughout the lawsuits was built on broadening the discussion of sampling and fair use (and downplaying the more serious issue of the cover art), so before they identified themselves, Negativland talked with Edge about the sampling of live (copyrighted) television broadcasts as an essential part of Zoo TV: "...I suppose when a sample becomes just part of another work then it's no problem. If sampling is, you know, stealing an idea and replaying the same idea, changing it very slightly, that's different. We're using the visual and images in a completely different context." (The Edge, Mondo 2000 interview).Edge was remarkably gracious when all was revealed, and Negativland went so far as to ask for a loan of $20,000 to start their own label. They didn't get it. In 1993, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (in a case involving 2 Live Crew and their roughed-up version of "Pretty Woman") that unauthorized commercial parodies may be protected from penalties for copyright infringement, in effect adding parody to the definition of fair use of copyrighted material. As Negativland's attorney pointed out, if that ruling had come earlier, Negativland's U2 "would most likely have been perfectly legal." Sampling with permission has always been perfectly legal. But what happens when you sample without it? You enter the realm of the bootleg remix, the mash-up, the anti-copyright "all use is fair use" counterculture that is currently thriving in this world of digital recording and peer-to-peer file trading. As I write this, everyone's talking about DJ Danger Mouse and The Grey Album, the startling and sometimes brilliant blend of Jay-Z's vocals from The Black Album with musical samples of the Beatles' The White Album. Danger Mouse has been told by EMI, who holds the Beatles' sound recordings copyright, to cease and desist, but the music's out here and cannot be undone. We've heard it, and the artists among us are hip to the potential that lives at the intersection of art and technology. Jacknife Lee is one of those artists. Where do we find him in this tangle of Negativland, Casey Kasem, the thermonuclear growth of mash-up culture, and U2? How about this: in 1998, a budding Dublin-born remix artist named Garrett Lee sampled Negativland's U2 for his first release, A Dog Named Snuggles -- and today, Garrett "Jacknife" Lee is in the studio working with U2 and Steve Lillywhite on an album for which I am waiting, waiting, waiting... For the interested: Negativland has an extensive web site, and has released the book Fair Use: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2, an exhaustive account of the lawsuits and the wider issues they raised about sampling and collage. In the spirit of honoring copyright, I'll tell you that all quoted material in this piece comes from either the web site or the book, and I won't tell you that you can hear both parts of the original U2 EP. You can hear Jacknife Lee's debut single, "A Dog Named Snuggles," in its entirety. The EP is available from Pussyfoot Records, the label founded by Howie B., whose production credits include Passengers and Pop. © @U2/Eskridge, 2004.
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