The Letter U and the Numeral 2 | ||||
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EP by | ||||
Released | 1992 | |||
Genre | Experimental | |||
Length | 25:56 | |||
Label | SST | |||
Producer | Negativland | |||
Negativland chronology | ||||
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Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
Allmusic |
The Letter U and the Numeral 2 is a 96-page magazine and 25-minute CD by Negativland detailing their conflict with the band U2, over Negativland's EP of the same name. It was released in 1992 as a limited edition of 4000 copies. Two months after its release, SST Records blocked its distribution with a lawsuit claiming, among other things, copyright infringement based on reproductions of press releases sent to the press by SST; "in essence, suing the band for printing (their) threat to sue the band".[ citation needed ] SST's lawsuit is similar to the "Streisand effect".
Three years later, Negativland re-released this as Fair Use: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2 . It included "Crosley Bendix Discusses the U.S. Copyright Act" plus nine other tracks.
Napster is an audio streaming service provider owned by MelodyVR. It originally launched on June 1, 1999, as a pioneering peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing software service with an emphasis on digital audio file distribution. Audio songs shared on the service were typically encoded in the MP3 format. It was founded by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker. As the software became popular, the company ran into legal difficulties over copyright infringement. It ceased operations in 2001 after losing a wave of lawsuits and filed for bankruptcy in June 2002. Its assets were eventually acquired by Roxio, and it re-emerged as an online music store. Best Buy later purchased the service and merged it with its Rhapsody branding on December 1, 2011.
SST Records is an American independent record label formed in 1978 in Long Beach, California by musician Greg Ginn. The company was formed in 1966 by Ginn at age 12 as Solid State Tuners, a small business through which he sold electronics equipment. Ginn repurposed the company as a record label to release material by his band Black Flag.
Getty Images, Inc. is a British-American visual media company and is a supplier of stock images, editorial photography, video and music for business and consumers, with an archive of over 200 million assets. It targets three markets—creative professionals, the media, and corporate.
Over the Edge is a sound collage radio program hosted and produced in the United States by Jon Leidecker ("Wobbly") and Robert Cole ("KrOB"), who took over in 2015 after the death of longtime host Don Joyce.
Escape from Noise is the fourth studio album by Negativland. It marked the band's first release on an established independent record label, SST Records. On the album, they continued to develop their experimental style, as well as incorporating elements of pop music with shorter tracks and more conventional melodies. "Christianity Is Stupid", a track featuring samples from the propaganda movie If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?, proved to be an enduring signature song: the band and the release gained widespread attention a year later due to a SST press release falsely implying that murderer David Brom had listened to the song before killing his family members.
Helter Stupid is Negativland's fifth studio album, released in 1989. It is a concept album that focuses on a hoax that the band started, which claimed that the Negativland song "Christianity Is Stupid" inspired a teenager to murder his family with an axe.
No Business is the tenth album by the sound collage band Negativland. While the songs encompass a variety of topics, the overarching theme of the album is copyright issues, especially those pertaining to peer-to-peer file sharing. Although the title track and especially the track "Downloading" are the only ones that explicitly relate to this topic, the rest of the album can technically be considered so, because they consist entirely of samples, unlike Negativland's other albums.
U2 is a withdrawn EP by the experimental music and sound collage band Negativland, released in 1991. The EP and the band gained notoriety when lawyers representing Island Records, the record label of the band U2, sued over misleading artwork and the use of unauthorized sampling.
JAMCON '84 was the first volume in the Over the Edge series, which distills portions of Negativland's radio program Over the Edge, broadcast on KPFA. This album was edited together from at least three different broadcasts recorded between January and July 1985.
Donald S. Joyce was an American musician who was a member of the experimental music group Negativland. He also hosted a weekly radio program called Over the Edge on the Berkeley, California, radio station KPFA, for more than 30 years.
Fair Use: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2 is a 270-page book and ten track CD released in 1995 by Negativland detailing their lawsuits with U2's record label Island Records for their EP U2, including many legal documents and correspondences.
A Big 10-8 Place is the third album by Negativland, released in 1983. It was the first album with the involvement of band member Don Joyce. The album's title is a reference to the radio ten-code "10-8," which means "back in service" or "available for next call" in the context of common CB radio usage. The lyrics and collage sound clips on the album make frequent reference to the CB radio hobby, as well as mischief like jamming.
Negativ(e)land: Live on Tour is a 1997 live album, released by SST Records. It was released against the wishes of the band, who had left SST following the U2 Scandal. It was released to compete with Dispepsi, a Negativland album.
These Guys Are from England and Who Gives a Shit is the 2001 re-release of the U2 EP by Negativland. It contains both tracks from the original EP, plus some tracks from the 1989 Over the Edge broadcasts on which the original EP was based, as well as live tracks recorded at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. The album was called a "bootleg" and released under "Seelard Records" as a joke, but in fact it was a real release by the band. Several of the live tracks on the album contain the same samples of a profane Casey Kasem as had appeared on the U2 EP set to a different musical arrangement, which includes a spoken portion which in part borrows from the lyrics of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction". Other live tracks made reference to the band's battle with SST Records and to the 1960 U-2 incident.
Negativconcertland is a 1993 recording of a live concert by Negativland. It is a bootleg recorded from the audience. At the time of its release, Negativland had never officially released a live album. SST later put out "Negativ(e)land: Live On Tour" against their wishes to compete with Seeland's Dispepsi album. In 2006, they released an official live recording, It's All In Your Head FM, made on the tour of the same name.
Dick Vaughn's Moribund Music Of The '70s is a collection of recordings edited from a wealth of material broadcast on KPFA's Over the Edge radio show, hosted by Don Joyce weekly and featuring members of Negativland, as well as material recorded at a Live Negativland show just after the "U2 Scandal." The recordings are broken up into two discs, and within that contain bits and pieces of many different Over The Edge Shows.
Crosley Bendix Radio Reviews is a collection of recordings edited from a wealth of material broadcast on KPFA's Over the Edge radio show, hosted by Negativland member Don Joyce weekly. Each recording on this particular disc comes from a different broadcast, all featuring the character Crosley Bendix.
Seeland Records is an independent record label created by Negativland in 1979 to release their own recordings. It is a reference to the song "Seeland" by the band Neu!, who also gave Negativland the basis for their name, Sea-Land Corporation, a freight company, and the micro-nation of Sealand, which in early history was home to radio pirates.
Plunderphonics is a music genre in which tracks are constructed by sampling recognizable musical works. The term was coined by composer John Oswald in 1985 in his essay "Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative", and eventually explicitly defined in the liner notes of his Grayfolded album. Plunderphonics can be considered a form of sound collage. Oswald has described it as a referential and self-conscious practice which interrogates notions of originality and identity.
Negativland is an American experimental music band which originated in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1970s. They took their name from a Neu! track, while their record label is named after another Neu! track. The core of the band consists of Mark Hosler, David Wills, Peter Conheim and Jon Leidecker.