I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: NEGATIVLAND-A Big 10-8 Place (1983).

After the cut-and-paste craziness of the first two Negativland albums, this third one was a bit more thought through as a whole.  It’s still a bizarre pastiche of samples and sounds, but there’s a more unifying theme.  And a lot of cursing.

There are six tracks on the disc.  It opens with “Theme from a Big 10-8 Place.”   Many of the sounds that you’ll hear throughout the disc are sampled here, but the main point of this song is a simple drum beat and David speak/singing “very stupid, very stupid” as well as some other thematically appropriate lines.

One two stupid
Three four dumb
Five six idiotic
Seven eight seat bee sate
Very stupid very stupid very stupid very stupid!
I like Concord
And 180-G
I like Pleasant Hill
No other possibility

The track ends with fascinating instructions like, “I want you to put parakeet feathers into your television set if you’re watching MTV” and “I want you to trip over your grocery cart if you’re shoplifting from Safe Muffins.”

The bulk of side one is “A Big 10-8 Place –Part One”: 13 and a half minutes of samples placed back to back.  These include: A woman screaming “Tommy?”; a clip from what sounds like a butchering video (“the second thing that happens is that the butcher loses control”) ; car commercials (“then the door closes behind you in safe and secure comfort”) ; house shopping commercials and the piano from “Clowns and Ballerinas.”  After about 6 minutes the bad language comes in–insults from what sounds like a CB radio.

“Clowns and Ballerinas” is 90 seconds of a little girl singing the song “Clowns and Ballerinas” to a simple piano accompaniment.

“Introduction” brings David out as he prepares us for him to talk about 180 and the Letter G.  “In a few moments we’re going to be 10-8.”

“Four Fingers” is a surprisingly catchy song played on an acoustic guitar with a whistling solo.  The vocals are smooth and clean and the lyrics are almost creepy but are actually funny:

I am a man, a man with two fingers
A man with two fingers on my hand
I am a man, a man with two fingers
But that doesn’t count my middle finger, my index finger, or my thumb.

Then comes “180-G: A Big 10-8 Place –Part Two” a 16 minute pastiche of David telling us how to get to 180 and the Letter G.  There’s cut up music behind them with choice lines like this:

Okay people we are 10-8 and the number is 180 and the letter is G.  There is no other possibility.

But before you get onto the bridge, around one big turn, you’ll come up to the place where the sex chemicals burned up.

First of all it’s very important that you turn on your AM radio. Set it to 1010 on your dial, and let the radio frequency energy from K-101 overload your little tuner until it distorts very highly [crazy extreme distortion] . And right at the point of that extreme distortion, there’s the big chairs. I’m not exactly sure, but I think that’s where all the sewer water from Oakland goes.

my favorite ham radio repeater station — that’s WR6 Automatic Bowel Movement.  And any of you who are into jamming, keep talking, keep jamming, because I’ll be listening on my scanner radio, and just maybe…you’ll be on the next album.

And just before you get to the top of the hill, you’ll notice the green slime oozing out from under the house at 180 and the letter G.

I repeat, you’re gonna have to shoplift the HR Steam Cleaning System from Safe Muffins.

About half way through it turns more jazzy (with guitars and bongos)

The door opens automatically, and the first thing you see is the orange carpet inside 180…and you’ll see the dog juice, the horrible dog juice all over the orange carpet at 180 and the letter G.

And then comes another well-known section from Negativland, a lengthy argument between David and his mother about where he put her cigarettes.

“I think I’d like to have a cigarette now. Where are my cigarettes, David?”
“They’re on top of the refrigerator.”
“I looked on top of the refrigerator. They aren’t there. will you please tell me what you did with my cigarettes?”
“Maybe you left them in the car.”
“I haven’t been in the car all day. You must have put them somewhere and I can’t find them. You better tell me now or I’m going to really get mad.”
“Oh yeah, I think I know where they are. They’re in back of the TV set, where all the parakeet feathers are.”

It’s all crazy and bizarre, but it’s kind of fun as a fractured narrative.

[READ: April 19, 2019] “Le Mooz”

This story is set in Ojibweg land.  Margaret has survived three husbands.  Nanapush has survived six wives.  They got together, “they were old by the time they shacked up out in the deep bush.”

They were both heated and passionate–both in love and in anger, “they made love with an amazed greed and purity that astounded them.  At the same time it was apt to burn out of control.”

To survive their passions, they rarely collaborated on any task, finding solitary work was more productive for both of them.  One day Margaret came swiftly home.  She beached the boat and was running up shouting “Le Mooz!”

Nanapush was sleeping and was irritated to be awoken by the yelling.  But if there was a Mooz, a moose, that would be meat for them for a long time.

At first he wasn’t sure how serious she was–they liked to aggravate each other with crazy demands and by offering the reverse of what the other wanted.  But soon enough Nanapush saw that there was a moose in the river.  They worked together for a change and got up close to the fine, juicy moose.

She imagined all the ways she would cook the moose and insisted that he shoot it immediately.  But Nanapush had other ideas.  He decided that they should turn the moose around and have it walk back toward their home so that it would be a lot less distance to drag–let the beast do the work for them.

She was shocked to realize that he had a good idea, but she wouldn’t admit it,

After getting the rope around the moose’s antlers, they managed to have it walk back to their landing.  But Nanapush was a sloppy man and the fishing coils in the bottom of the boat tangled in his feet.  So when the moose found purchase and started to climb out, Nanapush fell, his gun going off.  This spooked the moose who took off running which caused Margaret to fall out of the boat.  In addition to the fishing line, the boat also had fishing hooks in the seat and they wound up hooking into Nanapush who was now stuck and going for a ride over land.

A day passed and the moise kept going. It eventually slowed down which made Nanapush happy, Until he saw why the moose was slowing down.  There in front of them was a female moose who seemed ready for coupling. And there was Nanpush attached to the back of the moose, “thrilling thrusts that swung Nanapush from side to side but did not succeed in dislodging him from the terrible grip of the fishhooks.

It was not until one more day that the moose finally collapsed from all of his activity.  Margaret and the rescue party had been following him.  They were able to take the hooks out of his bottom and Margaret was able to finally kill the moose.  But after all of that exertion, the moose was no longer juicy and plump–it was exhausted from the running and the love making and it was now certain to be stingy and tough.

The couple loved to punish each other for their transgressions and this was Margaret’s opportunity to punish him for this colossal screw up.  She ignored his advances, yelled at him constantly and…cooked for him.  She under-cooked beans which played havoc with Nanapush’s insides. This wound up punishing her as well as he farted with volume and odor.  Because of the odor she kicked him out of the bed and made him sleep in a draft.

One night, a particularly bad night for him, she covered herself up from the noise and the smell only to wake up  and find him dead.

He was stiff as a doornail, including his penis.  Bereft, “she climbed aboard and commenced to ride him until she herself collapsed.”  But it did not revive him.

This story is wild and funny–very dark and twisted.  And the way it ends (for that scene above is not the end) is even funnier.  This story would be wonderful to hear read aloud.