Negativland is playing in Palo Alto, CA on Sunday at Cubberly. In keeping with their attitudes about copying, I will now lift from their web site a topically amusing story:

Note: The track “Michael Jackson” from this Fatboy Slim CD samples from the Negativland track “Michael Jackson” from our 1987 release “Escape From Noise” on SST Records. Stupidly, Fatboy Slim went to SST Records to get permission to use this sample. SST charged him $1000, which they are keeping all for themselves, of course. Besides the fact that Fatboy could have kept his $1000 and taken the sample from us without permission and we wouldn’t have cared, the Negativland sample he used was itself appropriated by us without permission from a religious flexi-disc originally issued in 1966. (In fact, a Negativland member LITERALLY stole this record from the basement of a church in Concord CA.) The Fatboy Slim track has now been licensed by Fatboy to be used in a Coca-Cola commercial!!! So Negativland now finds itself to actually be in a REAL cola commercial and Coca-Cola unwittingly engages in copyright infringement ( or is it a fair use?)…..too bad it wasn’t Pepsi…….