Teenagers do stupid and pointless things in their perpetual state of boredom. I recall trying to make audio collages by recording the radio while randomly scanning the radio dial, hoping I might accidentally capture some sort of interesting or humorous juxtapositions. As one likely will conclude, the results were disappointing. I have a feeling the members of Negativland past and present would never tire of doing that, especially now that I have seen the 2022 documentary about them, Stand By For Failure: A Documentary About Negativland.
This was a group I was familiar with beforehand, though I wouldn’t say I was ever a fan. I was most aware of them through their spats with U2 and Casey Kasem after they covered “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and mixing into that a recording of Kasem losing his shit, repeatedly flubbing an intro he was doing about U2. The recording was released in what I will concede is a deceptive sleeve, with “U2” in letters filling the entire space and “NEGATIVLAND” in a smaller font along the bottom.
The result is U2’s management sued SST, the label Negativland was on at the time (rather incongruously, given such labelmates as Black Flag and Dinosaur, Jr.). SST then passed the legal fees they incurred straight to the group, which was in no position to pay the exorbitant losses. An interesting moment in this documentary has two members of the group engage in what is ostensibly an interview with U2 guitarist The Edge, only to hit him up for money. To his credit, The Edge laughs, saying this is the first time he has ever been asked for money as part of an interview. In the end, U2 convinced their management to drop the matter. Something I find interesting is the record is still in legal limbo to this day because Kasem refused to withdraw his complaint.
I actually have an original copy of the vinyl, bought at a record show in the mid-90’s. It set me back $80 and, while I’m happy I bought that the only time I have seen one in the wild, the marketplace on Discogs reveals this wasn’t an investment. Fortunately for me, I never buy records with the intention of one day reselling them.
The U2 incident wasn’t the first time they made news. In 1988, teenager David Brom killed his parents and siblings with an axe. Negativland chose to exploit that tragedy by distributing a press release claiming the motivation for those murders had been an argument between Brom and his father concerning the band’s track, “Christianity Is Stupid”. It is no surprise when it is revealed the teen did not, in fact, own any of the group’s recordings.
Let’s face it: there has never been much demand for the output of a group whose work could be best described as “sound collage”. Member Don Joyce acknowledges on camera the group is on the fringe of the fringe. I agree with that assessment, as I am not really a fan of theirs, despite being predisposed to liking them through my interest in the Church of the Subgenius, with which they are associated.
Another association that should have been a gateway for me to better appreciate them is their connection to The Residents. But being a fan of one group does not necessarily translate to being a fan of the other, regardless of how far each is outside the mainstream. The only connection between them shown here is The Residents letting Negativland use their Ralph Records facility as a rehearsal space after their own is destroyed by fire. As I have heard before, that anonymous band that didn’t have much money, either, making this offer even more generous.
One aspect of the collective which is unusual is how difficult it is to define exactly what they are. Founding member David Wills seems to paraphrase Groucho Marx in expressing confusion as to how he, the person least likely to be in a musical group, could be in the band.
I find Wills to be a divisive figure, somehow the spirit of the group while also being its most irritating component. I’m not sure if his voice is distinctive or grating. Most likely, it is distinctly grating. Nor do I find his demeanor appealing. Simply put, he’s not somebody I think I would care to spend time with. One anecdote that stands out in my mind is fellow member Mark Hosler talking about when he was a teenager, and how his mother must have wondered what the 35-year-old Wills was doing all night in the bedroom of a 17-year-old boy. Hosler says she need not have worried, as they were only eavesdropping on baby monitors, something I found very creepy.
Something I did not find creepy, but the mainstream media did, was what the collective did following Joyce’s death. They once again made national news when they distributed his cremated ashes in tiny packets included in copies of their next release. What appalled many others felt like a genuinely loving tribute to me.
Stand By For Failure has a fair amount of interesting details in it about the group, but it is deliberately muddled in the telling, emulating their collage approach in both audio and video. I understand one wanting to channel the band’s aesthetic for a film about them, but it still makes for a frustrating experience. In that regard, I guess it is an accurate way to present the work of the organization.
Dir: Ryan Worsley
Documentary
Watched on YouTube, which seems like the only appropriate outlet through which it should be viewed