It was a volunteer organization but still, I almost managed to get fired from WCBN, 88.3 FM in Ann Arbor, for playing Kenny Loggins.
I actually don't recall playing anything by Kenny Loggins but when I got a call about my next shift at the station that was the crime for which I was accused. George Hardnett was on the phone. Before I worked for the station I used to have hours of fun listening to his show—actually taping him talking since he invariably screwed up. I would later use these on mix tapes, "uh, hold on, we're having technical difficulties, oops." I would call him to request The Revolting Cocks—just because it got a rise out of him.
Now he was my co-worker and he was telling me that "they" were debating on whether or not to give me another slot on "their" station (he and the other "board members"). On one hand there was Kenny Loggins...
"You don't really seem to have a point to your show."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you just don't really have a point to what you're playing."
I was doing free-form, you see, and the definition that I was given was that you could play just about anything and experiment (this is known also in the biz as Adult Album Alternative according to Jeff Allen of WBER in Rochester, NY). I just couldn't understand what he was saying.
"What do you mean, 'a point?'"
"It just doesn't seem to have one. So, we almost declined asking you back but Brandon (the famous-in-his-own-mind raver DJ BMG for you Detroit club-types) told us that one night you were using something like eight turntables so we gave you another chance."
On the other hand... It was true. I often would go crazy and turn on every turntable, cart machine, cassette, and disc player in the station to see what would happen. Sometimes they'd have themes: in late December I had a dozen different X-mas songs playing. Other times they'd just be sound effects albums and whatever took my fancy. I liked doing it occasionally—when you have so many things going on, some bits rise to the surface and your mind kind of tries to sort it all out.
It's a good thing that I enjoyed these little experiments and that BMG was around, or else I would have never had the chance to make Dinosaur Jr.'s "Pointless" my theme song and to start off my new show with an hour long block of Kenny Loggins! Oh, celebrate me home.
Don't worry, I didn't think I was being some "avant-garde artist," I knew it was old hat to some people. It was the kind of stuff some bands specialized in; some being exact and trying to control the noise and others just letting it roll randomly. One such band is Negativland.
It was right around the time that I started at WCBN that I heard about Negativland's album U2. In a nutshell, Negativland put out an album named U2 and a few cover versions of "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," which incorporated an outtakes tape of Wayne State's Casey Kasem. It was pretty damn funny.
For the whole story I recommend tracking down the book The Letter U and the Numeral 2 or seeing the film Sonic Outlaws, which played at the Chicago Underground Film Festival.
Sonic Outlaws was directed by Craig Baldwin, but real cheers go to the editor. S.O. was put together in the same way as my kind of turntable experiments: a barrage of video and audio bits that your mind had to sort out. It's the kind of thing that Oliver Stone would have done with Natural Born Killers if he had any balls & complete over-stimulation. It was totally appropriate for the subject matter.
As I sat there I realized how ironic it was that Sonic Outlaws was playing at the CUFF but not my video, Who Do You Think You're Fooling? In Sonic Outlaws, Negativland's record label, SST, were portrayed as being even bigger villains than U2 or Island Records. Why? Because SST abandoned their own group and charged them for all the legal costs. Ironic? Sure, I was seeing this film for free, courtesy of CUFF, but they still had my $30 entrance fee and they balked at showing my video. I had been shut out of a festival featuring a film on censorship.
S.O. wasn't just about Negativland—in fact it suffered because it tried to make them the main topic but they were abandoned for quite a while and the "tying up of all the loose ends" epilogue just didn't work. Negativland should have just been one section in this vignette-structured film. Other artists featured include John Oswald, Emergency Broadcast Network, The Situationists, and (for some reason) the Barbie Liberation Organization.
I felt so much a part of the film since I had come across all of the terms they were using—"recontextualizing," "plagiarism," "fair use doctrine," "copyright" et cetera—and that I was being suppressed by a larger corporation and unsupported by the community.
This was a very informative and fun film and I hope that it soon becomes available for rent or purchase—even though it's probably in violation of at least two-dozen copyright laws—I'm sure permission wasn't secured for all the clips and that someone somewhere is going to eventually make some money off of it being shown.
Sonic Outlaws is a thought-provoking piece. And, although I sympathize with them, Negativland have to be a quartet of dumb-asses if they actually thought that they could package an album the way they did and not have people buying it by mistake. I'm not sure how well the photo-copy (!) turned out but the album—which came out in that dry period between "Rattle and Hum" and "Achtung Baby"—was made to look like it was an album called "Negativland" by U2 instead of the other way around. Sure, they had every right, but it was just a big mess of bad judgement and ass-covering all around.
I highly recommend it and I would definitely make a point of going to see it again. For more information write to Craig Baldwin at 992 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110 or call 415-648-0654.