Negativland - These Guys Are From England And Who Gives A Shit




Generally, I find that an itch needs scratching and I'm clearly not the only one.

"An official reissue of Negativland's infamous U2 single, which is deliberately presented as a bootleg. The label's name was changed to SEELARD for this release.

Contains 2 original full tracks from banned EP and several bonuses: early run-throughs of U2/Casey Kasem material on "Over The Edge" radio show, live versions from before and after the lawsuit and some tracks from "Music For Lawyers" 1993 tour.

Liner notes, published on label's website:

Negativmailorderland has discovered what can only be described as the ultimate "reissue" of some music that made Negativland rather (in)famous: the two track EP originally released by SST Records featuring cover versions of a Very Famous Irish Rock Band's hit song. If you've gotten this far you undoubtedly know what we're talking about, so we won't bore you with the details.

Several "bootleg" versions of our banned single have appeared over the years since it was sued out of existence, including some forgeries for sale on Ebay that are so well-designed that it's hard to tell them apart from the original, but none of them have come close to encapsulating the bloody history of that old release as this CD, released on the suspicious sounding "Seelard Records" label. We don't know where this so-called "label" is actually located, but we were so impressed with the extreme high-fidelity and professional presentation of this material that we decided to distribute a bunch of copies of it ourselves.

"These Guys Are From England And Who Gives A Shit" arrived at our warehouses on the tenth anniversary of the original lawsuit, and it's an album-length collection of just about every darn musical gasp, sonic squelch, and audio twitter made by Negativland which relates to the notorious and banned "U2" single. From early run-throughs of the material (taped from our weekly radio show, Over The Edge), to live versions both pre-lawsuit and post, and to the actual single itself, we are convinced that this overly attentive-to-detail release will exhaust your interest in this subject forever and provide the Negativ-fan with some top-notch legally impossible entertainment, all at the same time. Also includes the only top-notch stereo recordings available from our "Music For Lawyers" tour of 1993 (several lawsuit-related compositions which never saw the light of day on any other legitimate Negativland album).

Track 11 has a bonus 16 second Kasem collage after approx. 8:55 of silence following the ''Edited Special Edit Radio Mix''. N©2001. seelardrecords@netscape.net"

A CD released on Seelard in 2001.

Who Gives A Shit

6 comments:

rev.b 20 October 2021 at 01:52  

Best band ever. No, not those guys, these guys. Well played as always and much appreciated.

Anonymous,  20 October 2021 at 04:16  

Thanks for this. The lawyers had forgotten about them by 2001. Shows how stupid the whole issue was in the first place.

Anonymous,  20 October 2021 at 16:19  

For their first few records, one could write negativland and they would send you their records for free. They sold tapes of this release for 5 bucks at their live shows, at which they threw eggs and carne asada at the audience and concluded their shows by burning toast in a defective toaster until flames shot out of the toaster and thick black smoke filled the room forcing everyone to evacuate the room - end of show!

magnetic vessel 21 October 2021 at 15:51  

Thanks for this and all you post! I love negativland and too have been inspired to jab at those turds with a stinky noisy dedication of my own. it's here https://magneticnorthwest.bandcamp.com/album/new-war

badgerstump 21 October 2021 at 18:18  

that's nice!

i'm not quite done with those four cheeky rascals yet ... been a bit busy.

in the next 36 hours, i'll be putting my cherry on the turd that is the stinking sphincter of the numeral and the letter ... who could it possibly be?

you'll find out in the next episode of ...

Anonymous,  22 October 2021 at 13:45  

Hello,
first of all: I love your blog!
Thanx so much for all the great and rare music/noise... especially the japanese stuff. Speaking of which, I'm the proud ower of comps Galax 2 & 4, and I noticed that you have published n°1 & 3 some time ago... but the links are dead now. Damn. Would you be kind enough to do a reup? And post more japanese noise-grind-rock madness?

Thanx anyway,
Loïc