Negativland and Chumbawumba: 20 years of anarchy

If I were to list off my favorite bands based solely on their onstage antics, gimmicks, and overall performance of hijinks, Negativland would easily be in my top three. In 1991 they released their EP U2, containing an extensive sampling of the Irish group’s hit “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” which ultimately got them sued by Island Records, and dropped by their own label, SST. A few years prior, they put themselves in the spotlight by issuing a public apology in response to claims (false claims, may I add, that the band themselves perpetuated) that their song “Christianity is Stupid” had inspired the real-life ax-murderer David Brom. The ensuing publicity whirlwind it generated was used as source material for their next album, Helter Stupid (1989). More recently, the group included the cremated remains of deceased band member Don Joyce in select copies of Over the Edge Vol 9: The Chopping Channel (2016). Their onstage antics include (but are by no means limited to) staged amputations, the reading of fake obituaries, and all sorts of other fun hijinks. However, underneath all this strangeness is a unique and progressive philosophy that specifically embraces the virtues of creative reuse.

Today marks the 20th anniversary of one of the Concord group’s much weirder releases, namely a collaborative effort with Chumbawamba called The ABCs of Anarchism (1999). I’m going to decline to give my own summary and instead defer to the one on the Seeland Records site, ‘cause it’s edgier than I would dare to write and also funnier than anything I could come up with: “A very unusual 22-minute collaboration between two groups on opposite sides of the corporate culture fence….Chumbawamba was flying first class on a plane traveling from England to America. Negativland checked themselves in as baggage on a plane traveling from America to England. As they collided, they produced 22 minutes of the hottest black box recordings since TWA Flight 800.”

This is, dare I say it, one of the weirder things Negativland ever recorded, and in my book that makes it one of their best. Beginning with the cover art — which looks and feels straight out of a children’s book nightmare with its crude graphic design, bunnies which for some reason aren’t cartoons, and comically gross sewer pipe centerpiece — the listener is immediately alerted that something isn’t right here.

Sonically, the two long-form pieces presented quickly upstage the cover art in terms of strangeness. Of the two, the title track is a Negativland staple, a 13-minute fever dream of news samples, bits and pieces of pop songs that I can best describe as chopped and screwed, and the theme song that Chumbawumba recorded for the show Teletubbies, all setting the stage for spoken word that actually details the philosophy of anarchism for an uninformed listener. The second track, titled “Smelly Water,” is shorter and just as weird, battering the listener with an onslaught of information by way of spoken word samples in a surprisingly catchy fashion.

Now, I can’t confidently say that this release is any more important than anything else Negativland ever put out because that would just be silly, and they’re all different. This EP, which, yes I know, is a collaboration, but nonetheless has Negativland’s hallmarks (read: extensive sampling and obnoxious spoken word) all over it, is a reminder of the joys of free speech and creative reuse, which can — like most things in art — be taken for granted. All I can say for sure is when I listen to it, I want to start a pirate radio station and wreak havoc broadcasting homemade industrial noise all over the Bay, and there’s a part of me that thinks Negativland would be happy to hear that.

Article by Kieran Zimmer