Enjoy.
Voice:
It's 8pm...
K!z!K:
Pacific time of course! And we're on the phone right now with Mark
Hosler of Negativland, so, say hi.
Voice:
[Gurgling] "GGGH-GHGGHG-GGHGHGHHG-GHGHHGHGHG_GGHGMmmm..... GGHGHGGHGG-
GHGHGHGHHG-GHGHG-GHGHGmmmm"
K!z!K:
[laugh] Well, there you go... well, anyway, you released the Fair Use book
about a few months ago, and it ended on a somewhat positive note. You
reached an out-of-court settlement with SST. Island records and
affiliates finally agreed to give permission for the re-release of the
U2 single, provided of course that Casey Kasem give permission. So
that only leaves that one obstacle...the "Casey" barrier... I wanted to
ask how far you've gotten along in tackling that barrier, and in perhaps
convincing Casey to finally give the OK.
Voice:
[Gurgling] "GHGHGHG-GGGHGHGHGHG_GHGHG GOOOHHGmOGHGGHM GGGANNSWERR
GU GGHGAT GGGESTIONGGh.... GHIM GNONT GGHGMARGHGK GHGOOSLEGLER...
GHGHI GGHAAM GNOT.....[in background] he wants to know about...U2"
Mark Hosler:
Hi.
K!z!K:
[laugh] Did you hear my question?
MH:
No, I didn't hear your question. They...they wouldn't let me use the
phone. Someone else had the telephone, and I just...[LOUD BANG AND
CRASH] ...got it from him. That was, man... [LOUD TONE PITCH
BENDING].... wait a minute... you're going to have to repeat that
question. Real sorry.
K!z!K:
[laughing] No problem! The question was this: Fair Use was released
about a few... well, almost a year ago...
MH:
See, now everyone here is talking while you're talking...[CRASHING
SOUND]...and I can't hear...the question.
K!z!K:
Well, OK, then...now can you hear me? Am I coming through clear?
Voice [background]: I was not talking!
MH [to Voice in background]: Will you shut up? [SCREECH AND ANOTHER LOUD BANG] I'm trying to talk on the RADIO... in Southern California after a lame Sonic Youth song. [to K!z!K] OK, go ahead.
K!z!K:
OK, well the question is this: Fair Use left off on a potentially positive
note, with Island records and affiliates finally giving...
MH:
Oh, you're asking the "Where are things now?" question.
K!z!K:
Yes!
MH:
OK, you could ask the "Did The Edge ever lend you the money?" question.
[veiled laughter]
K!z!K:
[obliging pause] Did The Edge ever lend you the money?
MH:
No, he did not! He didn't even have the courtesy to just say "No, I've
changed my mind, I'm not interested." So did you finish your
question?
K!z!K:
Um, Ya. Where are things now in terms of getting Casey Kasem to give
the final OK or what not?
MH:
Well, he has continued to receive mail from Negativland fans; and he's
even gone so far as to call up one person who wrote him a letter. This
wasn't a journalist or anything; just somebody wrote him a very
thoughtful letter asking him to please agree to let Negativland have
their record back, and pointed out something I never thought of... which was
that everytime someone writes about a story about our U2 single, he/she
always ends up quoting what Casey said -- and so far more people, literally
thousands and thousands more people, have been reading his little
embarrassing outtakes in print than those who would ever hear our record
if he had just let us put it out, say, as a mail-order thing. So, Casey
actually called this guy up on the telephone to explain to him why he
couldn't do it. It's just unbelievably bizarre. But it's the kind of
guy he is.
I spoke to someone who was a DJ in Los Angeles for many years and who
actually worked in the same building as Kasem, and he said the outtakes
that we used on our single were more like an average day; they were
not that out of the ordinary. The engineers in this building were
really terrified to have to go work with Kasem, because that's how he
treated them. Now I don't if he still does that. In fact, I would have
a feeling, after all that's happened with our record, that he's probably
a lot nicer to all those engineers. [laughs] So my understanding is
that by flip-flopping his position on our record and basically suppressing
it after saying it was a free speech issue, Casey Kasem's not just covering
up a bad day; he's covering up a whole dark side of his personality. This
is why I feel that he will never, ever agree to let us release our
record. It's a little like Michael Jackson coming out and saying "You
know those things you thought about me and those 11 and 12 year old
boys? Well, they're true." Now, we all know they're true. But he's
never going to actually admit it. Anyway, next question! EEEEHHHH
[buzzer sound]!!
K!z!K:
Oh well, sorry about that. I was hoping to hear something positive about
that...
MH:
Well, with us, everything is always negative. At least according to
Casey Kasem. However, if anyone wants to help, you can write him a nice letter. What's that e-mail address of his?
K!z!K:
As far as I remember, it's "Casey4300@aol.com"
{K!z!K -- Don't ask how I remember these things.}
MH:
Yes, Casey4300..
Voice [background]: AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!
MH:
@.. oh, sorry..
K!z!K:
Oh, no problem. [laughs]
MH:
@aol.com. But please write him a nice letter, because one of the things
he got from one of our fans was a death threat, and he did call the FBI,
and had them investigate all the members of Negativland. We don't
really want to go through that again, so write him a nice, thoughtful
letter. Because I think he is, in some ways, a very nice and thoughtful
guy. He's just a little... mixed up. [laughs] He just spent too many
years doing the voices for Scooby and Shaggy, and it just got to him.
K!z!K:
I wanted to ask if you're hoping to set a precedent or use legal bait,
in hopes of going to court and settling the Fair Use once and for all,
so that you can make what you guys do and what, for example, the Evolution
Control Committee does and things like that OK without being
completely illegal.
MH:
Well, there are two things you should know. One, it's not automatically
illegal if you use someone else's work, whether it is audio or visual or
text or anything. It has to be contested by that person, and it's for
the courts to decide. Because you could claim it's a fair use. The
person suing you can say "No, that's piracy", etc. But it isn't
automatically illegal. It's an important distinction to be made,
because many people seem to think mistakenly that if you take a little
chunk of, say, a Nine Inch Nails song, or a little chunk of some talk
radio show guy, and use it, then you're automatically doing something
illegal. It's simply not true. It's a case-by-case basis to be decided
in the courts. Of course, the reality is no one has any money to go to
court and decide it; so, they're all settled out of court, and they're
always in favor of the big guys. To answer your other question... the
CD that comes in our book, as you may or may not have noticed, goes over
the top in who we're taking stuff from. We actually credit everybody.
This is the first time we've done this.
We're taking a cue from John Oswald, whose done the Plunderphonics
releases -- he based out of Toronto. He has always advocated crediting
people. "You don't get permission to use their material, but you at least
credit them." He always felt that was the ethically correct thing to do.
We decided he was right. We've never done this before. We've never actually
kept track of everyone we used; and so for this particular release, we did.
We pretty much figured out everyone whose material we used; we kept a
long list; and we printed it in the back of the book -- which makes it
that much easier for someone if they really wanted to go after us. We're
admitting publicly that we're using something by Led Zeppelin or Walt
Disney or whatever. So, in a way, we felt that this particular book was
the safest place to do that in. Because the book is about Fair Use. So
if somebody wanted to sue Negativland for the audio that we appropriated
on the CD in our book, our defense would be a Fair Use defense that's on
a CD called Fair Use, that's part of a collage about Fair Use, that's
in a book about Fair Use, that's called Fair Use. It even has the Fair Use
clause reproduced in the front of the book! I actually don't think
anyone would even want to go after us, because they'd think they
wouldn't have a strong case to make against Negativland. Because our
defense would be so clear-cut.
K!z!K:
So if they see the book, and see the sample, they say "A-ha! We're suing
you... but wait what's this in the book?....Oh, well whaddaya know."
MH:
Yeah. But that's just our case in that particular project. John Oswald
has done something where he took an entire Dolly Parton song, and all he
did was start out with it really, really fast; and the whole piece is
just the song slowing down from beginning to end, until it gets so slow
that it doesn't play anymore. It was called "The Great Pretender".
Dolly Parton starts off sounding like a little mouse, and then turns into
sounding like a woman, and then by the end sounds like a man, and then
sounds like a giant, and then a monster; slowly, she sounds like
somebody else as the song goes on. I think that was a totally OK reuse of
someone else's work. But I'm sure the courts wouldn't agree. That's
a pretty extreme example. It doesn't really make any point, like our
work does. It doesn't have any real obvious political/cultural point to make.
It's just a nice piece. So, someone like Oswald would have a lot harder
time defending it in court than we would.
K!z!K:
Well, if you are looking to get people's attention, Orange County is home of
Disney and Taco Bell! Actually, Taco Bell is just a mile away {from here}.
MH:
Taco Bell is owned by Pepsi Co. I believe?
K!z!K:
Yeah.
MH:
Well, we are working on a book called Negativland's Guide To Disneyland,
and we're also working on a project that's dealing with one of the
world's largest soft drink manufacturers.
K!z!K:
Well, there you go! [laughs]
MH:
I don't know what will happen with that. I don't know why we always keep
being drawn to these kind of ideas, but we are. I guess we just love to
lose money! We're doing other stuff though. We're working on an
all-instrumental record that's about nothing really. It's just about
sound -- which is one of the reasons why I started doing this in the
first place! It was because I loved playing with strange noises. It's
also why we've gone back to running our own record label. Because, we
don't want to worry about people telling us what to do. I don't want to
have an attorney from some record label poring over every audio track
that Negativland makes, and telling us what we can and cannot use, and
tying up records up for years trying to pay sampling clearance fees, and
all that. We just want to make what we're going to make. So, it seemed
a good choice to work that way. It also means we're not very well
distributed anymore, because we're not really aggressive business people.
K!z!K:
Well, I've managed to see a lot of the "Over The Edge" releases in a lot
of prominent stores. I was actually about to mention that, for as
independent as a label can be, your stuff does get around. I see them at
all the major chains.
MH:
That's good. I'm surprised to hear you say that because my impression is
that our stuff doesn't get around. It doesn't really sell very much.
People would probably be surprised if they knew how little we sell given
the amount of attention we've gotten. The tradeoff is we'd rather make
less money doing what we do and be able to creatively control it, than
make more money and relinquish a lot of the whole art aesthetic to some
attorney at some label. Plus, the record industry is so full of totally
reptilian, pig-headed, monstrous slug-like creatures [laughs]that we
don't want to work for them anyway, regardless of these copyright laws.
I wouldn't want to help put a dime in their pockets.
K!z!K:
Yeah, even independent labels... sometimes they can be worse, as we
very well know from the whole fiasco.. of course, we won't mention any
names...
MH:
They can be worse. There are some out there that I think are OK. But,
essentially, the problem I have with any record label is that you've got
a business man -- even if he's doing it because he loves the music--
you've got a business person in a relationship with an artist that
creates this really unequal power relationship that is inherently
exploitive. I just don't like it; I'm not comfortable with it. But
that doesn't mean that's how everyone else should be. It may sound like
we're trying to tell artists and musicians how they should act, but
we're not. It's just for us. We couldn't work that way.
K!z!K:
As you mentioned, going through legal channels... I've heard that when
the Flaming Lips had just one sample on one of their records, which was
supposed to be released in 1991, they had to wait for clearance a full
year in order to get that released. And that was just one sample off one
song.
MH:
Right. Well, De La Soul were sued by Flo and Eddy of the Turtles
for a sample on their album 3 Feet High And Rising; and coincidentally,
the guy who represented Flo and Eddy in suing De La Soul is the same
attorney that Greg Ginn from SST hired to sue Negativland. I don't know
what that means, but I thought that was an amazing ironic coincidence.
[laughs].
But anyway, the next De La Soul album was finished and was held up for
two more years while they tried to clear all the samples, because they
were so paranoid about getting nailed again. So you have a case where
you've got the evolution of an entire art form, in this case hip-hop,
being totally altered, because everyone is concerned about lawsuits or
worried about whether they can afford to pay the sampling clearance fees --
assuming people even agree to it. You can go to someone to clear a sample,
and they may say "No, we're not going to let you use it."
K!z!K:
Hopefully, one of these days, there'll be one case where a precedent
that's for the benefit of either the hip-hop artist or the "copyright
infringement" artists gets set.
MH:
Yes. It's got to come from the hip-hop world. Because people like
Negativland and the Evolution Control Committee... we're just these kind
of intellectual white guys in the underground. You've got to have
someone like Hank Shocklee or Chuck D. or somebody like that. Or
actually, for crying out loud, the Beastie Boys. They're smart. They
know that this is really screwed up. But nobody is going to come out and
go to the mat and fight over it, because there is too much at stake.
There's this system that you're a part of when you're playing that kind
of game -- trying to be popular and make money. You just accept the
rules of the system, and if you buck it too much, you may have some real
problems with your label and with the whole industry. Even though it
might help an individual artist if the rules could change, the major
labels would then be losing all the control and income they're deriving
from selling off samples of their old work. And of course, what they love
about all of this is that a lot of what's being sampled is from old
records... and who do you think owns all the publishing and all the
rights of those old records? Not the musicians; it's mostly the record
labels. So it's a lucrative little thing. And it keeps attorneys busy,
because this kind of thing is always good for the attorneys.
...
I really do think that a lot of this is really driven by lawyers. You've
got all these attorneys that work at record companies, and they have
what's called "bill-able" hours. They're kind of on-staff attorneys, and
they have to find something to be doing to justify the $400 an hour
they're being paid by their record label, so they just start coming up
with this stuff. And this was a great way to keep themselves busy and make
their bosses feel that they were worth being paid all the money they get.
K!z!K:
The whole U2 affair took that sentiment and blew it up 10 times
over for me when I was reading the initial reports that U2, Brian Eno, etc.
really had nothing against the single, and yet you had Chris Blackwell..
you had Paul McGuiness, you had all these people...
MH:
Well, I honestly don't know who to believe. Because quite honestly, I
don't believe that U2 had nothing against it. I think if they did, things
would have turned out differently a lot sooner than they did. If they
truly stood by their convictions, than they would have done something to
change the situation. And it wouldn't have taken Negativland three years
of writing them letters to finally change their minds. Practically
four years!
When we did that interview with The Edge, I actually was fairly hopeful.
I was quite surprised that he seemed to be as much on our side as he was.
We were then quite surprised, though we shouldn't have been, that he
proceeded to do absolutely nothing. But as I said, when you get into
that part of the curd of the culture industry, you play the game by certain
rules. You cannot rock the boat that much.
K!z!K:
Well, at least if U2 doesn't a get a real re-release...
MH:
...there are bootlegs of it out there. It's on the internet. There's
thousands of people who do have cassettes copies. There's 5000 CD copies of
it out there. So I think anyone who really wants to find it, he/she can
track it down. There are bootlegs out there that are printed up to look
like the original, but they're not. And you can tell. One of them spelled
Negativland wrong on the label, with an "e". And on both of them, the
UPC code, instead of being solid black which it is normally, if you look
up close is made up of little dots... because it's been screened for
reprinting. So, if you see them... pick them up, but you shouldn't pay
$50 or $100 for them, because then you're being ripped off.
K!z!K:
Well, when the single originally came out, it was around $12.. and that
was just for 12 minutes, but what could you do?
MH:
Yeah, that was overpriced too. But, of course, we couldn't affect that.
That was an SST policy.
In fact, if stores buy our new stuff now directly from our distributor and they
mark it up the normal amount that retail does, our CDs should sell for
$10.98 for a single CD, and about $14.98 for a double. We really try to
make them cheap, because CDs don't really cost that much to make.
They're just the most unbelievable rip-off.
....
But let's stop talking about that and complaining, and talk about the new
Negativland release coming out -- Sex Dirt! Sex
Dirt! It's all about
sex, dirt, and germs! None of this intellectual property crap! [laughs]
That's all behind us now!
K!z!K:
That's part of the "Over The Edge" series, correct?
MH:
Yes. And unlike the other "Over The Edge's that have come out, this one
is actually all music. The other ones had lots of talking and lots of
different characters -- a lot more like Firesign Theater. With this one,
it's almost as if Negativland has become this very bizarre screwed-up rock band
with the Weatherman as the lead singer. It's a whole hour's worth of new
stuff. It was recorded live over the summer on "Over The Edge", and
we edited it down from many hours of live radio down to a CD.
It comes with a specially patented Negativland moist toilette...[laughs]
K!z!K:
"Over The Edge" was something that, I believe, Don Joyce started back in
1981 or so?
MH:
Yeah, it was just a normal radio show. He played records, just like you
are, or I'm assuming that's what you do.
K!z!K:
Yeah.
{ Weeeell, I've done a rusty live-performance noise radio show years ago,
but let's forget I mentioned it. -- K!z!K}
MH:
Just one after another. He didn't turn them off on the air, or play them
backwards, or scratch them, or make tape loops. He just played normal
records. And then when he met with us, we started talking about the way we
mixed our records. He said "Why don't you come up to the radio station
and bring some gear and maybe we could do something on the air?" And we did.
That week, that was the first time he turned a record off on the air,
and since that July in 1981, he's never gone back to doing a normal show
again.
K!z!K:
How did KPFA react to it when they started listening to the show, and
things weren't exactly what they were intended to be?
MH:
KPFA is ostensibly a very progressive station. They're
progressive in their politics, I think, but not in their aesthetics. To
me, there isn't a difference between, say, having a Noam Chomsky lecture
on the air and having some kind of experimental mixed-live crazy radio
on the air. It's all part of having a little more open minded point of
view, both politically and aesthetically. But for KPFA, the show was
like "What the hell is this?". Fortunately, when we started, the show was
on Sunday nights from 2am 'til 7am. So we were in such a graveyard slot,
it wasn't being rubbed in the noses of the programmers too much...or
rather, the director of the station. At some point, I think in '86, we
moved to Thursday nights from midnight to 3 in the morning. By this
time, the show had built up a real listenership, and the music director
at the time seemed to enjoy pointing to our show as their one example of
this innovative experimental programming. As opposed to, say, playing
experimental music or unusual audio pieces on the air, we were actually
doing something with the radio station. Over the years, there have been
occasional complaints, but not very many. One time, we pretended that
KPFA had been taken over by right-wingers, and it was a right-wing talk
show. It was called "Talk Right". And we got in a little trouble for
that. [laugh]
K!z!K:
When was this?
MH:
I don't know when this was... '87. There are other things that had happened.
We've played commercials, and we're not supposed to do that. I think one
time, in the early 80's, we pretended there was an earthquake that was
destroying the entire Bay Area. [laugh]
K!z!K:
[laugh] Well, uh, later on, that would actually really happen..
MH:
Yup, that's true, but this was back in '84. The other thing we did once
was... there used to be a guy that would come on the air after us; this
is when we were on 'til 7 in the morning. He had this real mellow
show where he played Windham Hill, folky, yuppie muzak -- real pretty,
George Winston, pretty piano, acoustic guitar... and there was one week
where he came into the show, and we always had everything switched
differently when we're on the air than most programmers would, because there
would be anywhere from three to six people on the air at once mixing live
and bringing in instruments and turning everything on and off all night.
So he came in; and when he went on the air we had forgotten to switch
everything back to normal, he got all flustered and
confused because the things were switched wrong. And since we were
still recording our air-check at the time, we ended up with a tape of him
saying, "Oh hi, this is... Denny Smithson...on.. wait a minute, am I on the air?
Hold on, just a sec, uh, wait! Hold on uh", and he's all confused, and
he's trying to switch things, and you hear us telling him what to do. So we
had this tape. A month later we did this show where we actually ended
the show at a quarter to 7 in the morning, but we said it was 7 o'clock
on the air -- "It's 7am. You've been listening to 'Over The Edge' and now
it's time for the next DJ". And then what we did was we turned on the
tape recording of him messing up from the previous show. Then, we turned
up all the mikes in the studio so the ambiance of the tape would mix
with the real ambiance of us live, which was us just tearing our
equipment down and leaving and chatting. So the real DJ wanders in
around 5 minutes to 7, doesn't know that all the mikes are up, and
assumes that this decoy record that he sees playing is what's going over
the air.. but it isn't. It's just him and us in the studio talking. He
finally comes on the air at 7 and never had any idea that this whole
thing had been going on over the air. Maybe that was a mean thing to do,
but it seemed like a funny idea at the time and stuff like that makes
great radio ...
When "Over The Edge" moved to Thursday nights, we also did a show that
was the last 'Over The Edge' ever. The show was canceled.
And that was a lot of fun. We got everyone who had ever been on the
show to come up, and we had a big reunion party. Of course at the very
end, we got saved by C. Elliot Friday, who moved us to a new time slot.
K!z!K:
Is there a way to get a copy of any show that's ever been broadcast?
MH:
Well, no... The CDs we've put out are edited versions of select shows we
think are interesting enough that they can work as a CD release. But,
again, they're edited; they're telescoped from longer shows. But Don has
actually been making available complete shows from beginning to end --
an entire 3-hour or entire 5-hour show. They're each around $20 or
something like that. He has a list of, I think, 70 shows now. So
they're select. We're not making any available that are duds. I can
give you an address, if people are interested, or you're interested...
K!z!K:
Oh yeah! Go ahead.
MH:
Well, you can get the "Over The Edge" CD releases through Negativland's
mail order or through a store. But with these full shows, we custom-make
tapes for people. You write to:
Over The Edge Tapes
497 43rd St.
Oakland, CA 94609.
K!z!K:
We were just going to take a break here, and play a song off
Dead Dog Records, and continue the interview shortly after, then wrap
it up. First off, here is "Gimme The Mermaid". Any story behind this track
in particular?
MH:
No... but if there's anything we could get nailed over, the one you're
playing is probably it. [laugh]
K!z!K:
All right! Well, ur..
MH:
You're actually playing my favorite track on the record. I'm quite
pleased with how that one turned out.
K!z!K:
Here it is, "Gimme The Mermaid" on KUCI... here doing an interview with
Mark Hosler of Negativland.
MH:
RAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRR!!
MH:
...there's more information than you could ever possibly want. And it's
put together in a delightful easy-to-read format with plenty of pictures
and makes great toilet reading! Because you can just read one or two
pages at a time as you follow the ups and downs and all the delightful
hi-jinx of those lovable flop-tops Negativland, as they.. [laugh]
...
So I was going to tell you that the end of the song you just played..
you hear a voice that comes in and says "Yo Man! Shut Up! I ain't goin'
out like that! I'm makin' music for the people!" That is Marky Mark
from Marky Mark And The Funky Bunch and their album Music For The People.
That track, ["Music For The People"], starts out with a 5 or 10 second
sample from Negativland, from our album Escape From Noise. Of course,
Marky Mark, who does pay clearances for all the recognizable samples he uses,
did not contact us for that. He just took it and used it. That is a
million-selling record, or more than that -- that release had
his big hit version of "Walk On The Wild Side", the Lou Reed song. So we decided
to sample from the track in which Marky Mark sampled from us. Of course,
we've never approached Marky Mark for money or anything. He makes stupid
records, but he's entitled to take our music and do whatever he wants
with it.
K!z!K:
I remember watching the MTV Music Awards, I think, in 1989?...
MH:
Oh yeah! We've been used on the MTV Music Awards too. And our stuff has
shown up on a bunch of different acid house records and dance records.
Someone told me there's a B-side of a UB40 single -- I'd love to find out
what it is -- and the B-side has a sample from Negativland in it.
K!z!K:
It seems that most people end up sampling from Escape From Noise.
I know that's what most people end up suggesting as a first Negativland
album. What is your favorite Negativland album? Or are they all like
your children?
{ I admit, a sleazy change of subject. -- K!z!K }
MH:
I don't know... I wouldn't listen to any of them! [laugh] They're too
difficult! What a pain in the ass! You can't do the dishes. You can't
have a conversation. You have to actually sit down and put on the
headphones and listen to them like you're watching a movie. How annoying!
The truth is when I listen to music, I like to have it on when I'm doing
the dishes, or having dinner, or writing, or working on something. I
don't often sit down and just listen to music. I used to.. when I was a kid.
I loved to pull out the headphones and put on my favorite Yes album or
Pink Floyd or Mike Oldfield album or whatever I was listening
to...[laugh] I make this stuff.
It doesn't mean I'd want to go and listen to it. People always wonder
what we listen to. We spend so much time making such a godawful
racket that I want to listen to stuff that's pleasant. I hope that
answer doesn't disappoint you.
K!z!K:
Aw, not at all! What are you listening to, nowadays?
MH:
Let's see. While I was making dinner, I was listening to The Cars'
Greatest Hits; that was a lot of fun. After that while I ate dinner,
I was listening to Neroli, which is a Brian Eno ambient thing which is
one drifty piece that goes on for an hour. What else do I like? I love
old jazz from the 20's and 30's. I love old Hawaiian music from the 20's
and 30's -- all that slide guitar... I like all kinds of music from The
Sudan, Korea, Mozambique, Zaire, and all over the world. I don't listen
to much experimental music.
K!z!K:
You mean you don't listen to Controlled Bleeding?! or Nine Inch Nails?
or Ministry?! [laugh]
MH:
No! Well come to think of it, I did pick up a copy of the newest Nine
Inch Nails record used but I haven't listened to it yet, because I was
just curious. I don't care for his lyrics, but a lot of the sounds that
that guy makes are actually really cool. I met him, and... what's his name?
K!z!K:
Trent Reznor.
MH:
Yeah, Trent Reznor. I met him in Los Angeles and gave him all of our
propaganda about copyright stuff. I said "Look, you sample from other
people's work on your records, right?", and he said "Yes", and I asked
"Do you pay clearance fees on everything? Or only on the stuff that's
recognizable?". He said "Well yeah, only on the stuff where you can
tell, because the rest of it is so mutilated or distorted that it doesn't
matter." It's one of these things where everyone in the industry follows
the rules if they can't get away with it. But if they can get away with
it, then they'll break the rules. So it's like a
The Emperor Has No Clothes thing.
Everyone's pretending this is the way it is. It's pretty silly.
So I handed it to him, just because I thought he's a big guy in the
industry who's obviously involved with appropriating stuff, and it'd be
great to stick our little ideas into his head.
I actually do want to try and give copies of our book to the Beastie
Boys, because I have seen them in interviews talking about some of these
issues, and they do seem to be pretty aware that there's something
a little screwed up with the way these laws are being applied when it
comes to music and the arts.
...
Oh! There is one other thing I want to say, since we're broadcasting
over the air in the cultural black hole of the universe there in Los Angeles.
K!z!K:
Well, Orange County, which is even worse, but anyway...
MH:
Well, unfortunately, if you don't live in that area, you tend to think of
all that area as being L.A., all the way from just below Santa Barbara
down to Orange County. [laugh]
K!z!K:
Uh oh.
MH:
It is just one huge continuous scab of cement on the face of the
planet, right? I mean it doesn't really ever stop.
K!z!K:
There are a few churches and fields that separate Orange County and L.A.
{Actually this is a fib. There are fields and churches but they don't
separate Orange County and L.A. -- K!z!K}
MH:
There are fields? I didn't know that.
K!z!K:
They're all plowed though.
MH:
The one thing I'd like to say, if anyone is listening and thinking "Why
should I care about what this guy's yammerin' on about?" If you're not
directly involved in making the stuff, the reason it might be of interest
to people is much like the Spotted Owl and old growth forests. It isn't like "How terrible, the
Spotted Owl is extinct." It's that the Spotted Owl is an indicator species.
Losing it indicates that something's going on in the forest that's not
very good. The ecosystem is collapsing. I think that the stuff that's happening to Negativland is
sort of an indication, and one of many indications, that we're living in
a world that's become so completely owned, controlled, and physically and mentally colonized
by corporations and corporate interests. We wear corporate logos on our
bodies as fashion! Everywhere you go, there's more and more messages
being crammed down your throat from more and more places. There's never
less; there's always more of them. The more you think about this and
notice it, it really is affecting the quality of life. And it's very
disturbing, and really sad to me. There you go. That's my boring, dry
little political complaint there.[laugh]
K!z!K:
You mentioned that you read The Emperor Has No Clothes. Are there any
other books that you've read that have been influential and inspiring to you?
MH:
Certainly in the music industry, that book Hit Men by Frederick Dannen
is excellent. Another book I read that I highly recommend to people -- it's
not that well written but it's got great ideas -- is called
In The Absence Of The Sacred. It's by Jerry Mander. He is writing
all about the blind acceptance of technology -- "Technology is God." --
and that we are never questioning when new technologies come along.
Right now, we've got computers and The Information Superhighway. The
people who are proselytizing about all this new technology talk about it
like a Jehovah's Witness talking about finding Christ or something! It's
got that almost religious air to it...that it's going to solve all our
problems and make the world better for all of the 35-year-old white guys
who can afford all this technology and read WIRED magazine. So this book I'm mentioning,
In The Absence Of The Sacred by Jerry Mander.. he does, I think, a good
job of raising a lot of questions about all of this: with computers, with
new technologies, with genetic engineering, etc. So that one's
pretty cool. What else? I just finished the new Clive Barker book. I'm in the middle of reading Sugar Blues
which was written in the early 70's. It's all about the scary, nasty
things that refined sugar does to your body. A lot of stuff I didn't know
that's very surprising.
K!z!K:
Like animals bones that are used in the process of refining? This is
something I heard and I've always wondered why.
MH:
I don't know. Relatively speaking, I'm the hippie new-age freak in the band.
I'm the vegetarian, and the others in the band smoke and eat TV
dinners and drink soda pop all the time. [laugh] If you give me any book
on Buddhism, I'll read it! Or anything by Ram Dass. I love that guy.
K!z!K:
I imagine you guys do have jobs. {Duh! -- K!z!K} What do you guys do
when you're not involved with Negativland?
MH:
[Cracks up, speaks in dopey voice] "I lay around all day! I get real
stoned, and make tape loops!"
No, of all the people in the band, I actually make a living from this.
It's a rather precarious one, and I keep thinking I'm going to have to
go back to a regular job. But for the last five years, I haven't had to, which has been
really surprising and amazing to me. It's really stressful sometimes, if
you don't have health insurance or whatever. And the other guys either
have regular jobs -- like David is still a cable TV installer/repair guy;
he still does that.
K!z!K:
And he's happy with it, I assume?
MH:
He is, in his own way. Can you imagine if you were a fan of Negativland
and you called to have someone come repair your TV reception, and he came
to the door? [laugh] It'd be kind of interesting!
K!z!K:
I'm sure there's one household who moved to Martinez just for that purpose.
MH:
..and Chris does freelance work. He's done sound editing for movies, and
he's done some computer stuff. Don sometimes has done graphics; he used
to refinish furniture. Don and Chris take freelance work on and off, and
aren't having regular jobs lately.
K!z!K:
You're the one guy who lives in Olympia, and the others live in the Bay Area.
How do you work that out? Do you have meetings every now and then?
MH:
It's not a lot different than when I lived down there. Negativland never
got together to record, rehearse, and compose songs in any normal rock
band fashion anyway. When we all lived in the same area we always used
to work on separate things. I would work on a track and say "Here, Don,
listen.. I made this rhythmic thing. What do you want to do with it?" or
"I've edited up this razor-tape of this
talk radio thing but I don't know what to do with that." We would trade
ideas that way. And now that I live up here, it isn't that much
different. The phone bills are a little higher, and I ended up getting a
fax machine. I am still not on the internet, but obviously that would be
a good thing for us to do just to be able to work on ideas, press
releases, and what not. I go down to the Bay Area every few months and
I hang out for a week or two. We'll mix or work on whatever we need
to do... And I stay with my mom and dad...and they like that.
K!z!K:
Are you involved in other projects while you're up there in Olympia?
MH:
I've played a bunch of shows in Olympia and Seattle with various people.
I've done these improvised noise trios -- just total improvisation, no
plan at all, and that's been fun. There's been some theater that I've been
involved with. There's a film society here that I've done some stuff with.
There's KAOS, a radio station here where I did a show. Community stuff.
K!z!K:
You also did a tour in North Carolina?
MH:
Oh yeah, I actually did something that was on my own. It wasn't as
Negativland. It was just me and some other folks in North Carolina, and
we collaborated. I don't make enough money to travel and do stuff, so
I wanted to pay my way out there. I did six shows with which I was
able to make enough money to hang out in the Blue Ridge mountains for a
month. And that was great; I loved it. It was beautiful. So we had film
loops, slides...we had three people on stage doing records, tape loops, bass,
violins, synthesizers, my CD player, etc. I did a couple of Negativland
things, but almost completely new stuff. We traveled around into
Georgia, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina. How did you know
about that anyway?
K!z!K:
There was this release I saw, on Seeland, by Silica Gel called
50) Noisy Children Party. I asked for info on them on this mailing list
on the internet. People responded right away with the full scoop.
MH:
Right. It was a collaboration with those guys.
K!z!K:
I want to remind the listeners that this is KUCI 88.9fM in Irvine.
This is an interview with Mark Hosler of Negativland.. so just in case
you're wondering what's going on.
MH:
Meow? Meow! Now I think you need to play some more of that ALTERNATIVE
ROCK!
K!z!K:
I guess so. [laugh] Well, if there's anything else you want to get off your
mind... So there are definitely up and coming projects. Is there any
"album" coming out in the near future?
MH:
Like I said, we are putting out this record called Sex Dirt, and it is
all about sex, dirt, and germs. That's coming out real soon. We are
working on a book that's a guide to Disneyland. That's
coming out...I don't know when. We're in this perpetual last 5% stage.
We just have a little more to do, but we can't seem to ever finish it.
So that's a whole other book we want to publish. There's a whole record
of songs I've been working on, which may turn out as a Negativland
project or might even be a total solo side project by me -- I'm
not sure what's going to happen. Let's see -- instrumental stuff. A big
project taking on a major soft drink manufacturer. Don's working on
something about UFOs, etc.
Actually, we've always been working on 4 or 5
things at the same time. It just that things come up like lawsuits, and they
tend to take a lot of your attention, and you have to put other projects
on the back burner. In fact, we've been working on one of these
projects, about advertising, since '89. It got put on the back shelf
because of the ax murder hoax. And then we started working on it again,
and it got put on the back shelf because of the U2 thing.. [laugh]
So we just keep on.
K!z!K:
Yeah, perhaps Disney workers were cruising by Irvine, and listening to
"Gimme The Mermaid", and then you'll have that. Ah well. [laugh]
MH:
I'm proud of the fact that with all we've been through, we didn't dry up
and blow away. We actually have come out of it stronger than we went
into it.
K!z!K:
It's an amazing thing to see that after all that, you've had more
releases in one year than most bands, who could easily afford it, have
had in two. For example all the Over The Edge releases and Free. And
you toured as well. Are you guys going to tour again anytime soon?
MH:
I don't know. It's really hard on us. It's kind of a lifestyle that we're
not interested in.
Being on the road is pretty rough, and none of us are really into it.
On the other hand, I think the whole Sex Dirt project we're doing would
be really fun to go out like we're a band in a more conventional sense of
the word. And get David. You see, David hasn't played live with us
since '86! He comes out on the road as a talking head on a TV monitor.
And he's done that for years! [laugh] Because he really is so neurotic
about dirt and germs. He doesn't like to go on the road. He doesn't
want to take time off from fixing the Playboy channel. So he stays home,
and he appears that way. But I think we talked him into the idea of maybe
doing some shows! He's amazing once you get him on stage; it's just so hard
to get him there.
K!z!K:
Well I'm sure there'd be lots of people who'd send their support and
persuade him to come along.
MH:
Yes, we keep telling him this. We say "Everyone loves you, David. You
have all these fans. You should go out." And he just says [in great
Weatherman impression] "Oh no, I don't think so. I think I'm just too
dumb. I don't think anyone wants to hear me. I've got to stay home and
take care of my father; he's not doing well." All of you out there send
him your prayers, love offerings, and good energy; and maybe it will help
him change his mind. Well, anyway, thanks for letting me blabber on the
air as long as I have, but I have to go.
K!z!K:
Oh, no problem!
MH:
Weren't you going to ask me out on a date?
K!z!K:
Oh yeah, I forgot! Sure, what time, Saturday?
MH:
You know, no one ever asks us personal questions, other than about our jobs.
We've been doing this for 15 years, and no one ever asks us anything
about our personal lives, which I think is
great! We just get to talk about stuff like the music industry,
corporations, the legal system, and copyright, and this stuff! [laugh]
K!z!K:
Well, I'm hopefully breaking that important barrier by going ahead and
asking you out on a date, so how about it?
MH:
Weeeeell,...I don't know....I'm kind of... mmmmmm... I'm kind of this
busy this Saturday. [laugh]
K!z!K:
OK, well another time then.
MH:
You've got to catch me when I'm not so busy. How about the Saturday after that?
K!z!K:
Score! [vicious thumbs up]
MH:
I'll get my travel agent to book a flight!