DISPEPSI 1997 (Seeland 017) CD
THE ONION
Negativland is known for taking on formidable targets; after all, it was sued
by U2 and Island Records for unauthorized sampling and use of the band's name
and song on its 1991 U2 EP. With DISPEPSI, Negativland takes on a bigger and
potentially more litigious subject, with a far greater creative success. As
you can probably figure out, DISPEPSI is an album about Pepsi, a collection of
jittery sound-collages packed end to end with samples of statements by
celebrities (Michael J. Fox, Bill Cosby, Max Headroom and many more) and
advertising executives, as well as chilling statements like a child recounting
the plot of his favorite Pepsi commercial. But this isn't some preachy
homework project, or a mere prank on a faceless corporation: DISPEPSI is
alternately, and often simultaneously, hilarious and chilling, and it's about
more than just the relentless placement of the Pepsi name and logo in our
lives. It's about the nature of celebrity, and public trust, and corporate
thinking, and what can be done about it all. And though it'll tire you out in
large doses-It's a lot of Pepsi in one sitting-DISPEPSI gets better and better
the more you listen to it. It's a great album; here's hoping Pepsi gets the
joke and lets it live.
ROLLING STONE Six years have passed since veteran West Coast media guerrillas and anti- copyright champions Negativland were sued by Island Records for their "unfair" use of a sampled fragment of a U2 song. But judging by the relentless spirit of their latest found-sound polemic against the Pepsi empire, DISPEPSI, not even bank-account-draining lawsuits can stop the evolution of what they've named "culture jamming": the cut-and-paste, counter corporate art of using the media to critique itself. DISPEPSI is not the first album on which Negativland have set their sights on the disposable world of corporate advertising, but it is certainly their most compelling. Beginning with the sound of an aluminum can being opened and ending with the sound of one being crushed, DISPEPSI stealthily recycles and manipulates a deep, decade-spanning archive of commercials, jingles, celebrity endorsements and other Pepsi-related media blips into a pointed series of collaged musical commentaries.
Wielding their knack for parody and satire as a grass-roots weapon of consumer
resistance, Negativland take on Pepsi's use of black athletes ("Why Is This
Commercial?"), relive the marketing battles and blindfolded taste tests of the
great '80s "cola wars" ("All She Called About" and "I Believe It's an L"), and
even piece together a rousing chorus of celeb Pepsi boosters that include
everyone from Ricardo Montalban to Marion Ross to Michael J. Fox ("A Most
Successful Formula"). The group's attack is so exhaustive and so cleverly
rendered that even after one listen to DISPEPSI, you'll never think of soft
drinks in the same way again.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
SODA POP. Negativland are at it again. Six years ago, the Bay Area satirical
group was forced by Island Records to recall and destroy copies of its
controversial U2 EP (which used the Irish band's music in a profane aural
collage). Now, Negativland are taking on the cola industry with a new album,
DISPEPSI, whose 13 tracks fuse jingles, dialogue, and music in a Zappa-like
parody of soft-drink marketing. Although the cover unmistakably resembles the
Pepsi logo, the company has no plans to sue. Says an amused Pepsi spokesman
of the album: "It's no Odelay, but it;s a pretty good listen."
FACTSHEET 5 #62
After a long wait, Negativland rewards us with this exciting new recording
devoted to everyones favorite brand of sugar water, Pepsi. You wouldn't know
it from the album title, though. Due to legal restrictions the actual title
of the CD is being held in limbo, but can be uncovered by dialing the info
line at (510) 466-5253. Thirteen cuts make up this full length CD. With a
prolific use of appropriation, sampling, cutting, tape layering, and even some
singing and original music, the Negativland crew have produced an album that's
melodic yet thought provoking. Taken as a whole, the album is more about
advertising in general, but it's examined though the example of Pepsi. The
pick hit has got to be "The Greatest Taste Around" which starts off "I got
fired by my boss-Pepsi. I nailed Jesus to the cross-Pepsi." and continues
from there. It's combines a poppy upbeat style with lyrics that come much
closer to describe the reality of commercial advertising. The final cut,
"Bite Back," critiques capitalism as a whole with thoughtful phrase "we can
control the corporations, all we have to do is stop buying what they're
selling."
SPIN Past legal troubles be damned, Negativland spent the last couple of years crafting an album practically celebrates copyright infringement. DISPEPSI is begging for a fight, but there's one thing the West Coast group haven't prepared for: What if the execs at Pepsi actually like the album? Sure ditties such as "The Greatest Taste Around" leave little doubt of Negativland's intentions, giddily stringing together odd horrors and punctuating them with a rejoicing chorus ("I got fired by my boss-Pepsi! / I nailed Jesus to the cross-Pepsi!"). But self depreciation in advertising is "in" now. If ABC can base an ad campaign around the idea that TV makes people stupid, couldn't the Pepsi Challenge include a little self-aware ribbing.
Negativland may be shooting for yuks when singing " My mind is filled with
Pepsi," but the real-life campaign for Pepsi's Mug Root Beer claims that "the
foam goes straight to your brain." Like previous Negativland works,
DISPEPSI's plan of attack is to help their targets hang themselves. Rather
than argue explicitly, the band hilariously juxtapose and layer sound bites
and jingles. There's no discussion here of Pepsi's trials with Tibet; no easy
judgments or pedantic rantings. Nope, DISPEPSI entertains with a barrage of
noises, purposefully repetitive sound loops, and ironic sing-a-longs. Sorta
like a commercial.
MOTHER JONES
We've become inured to our favorite songs being used to deliver a corporate
message (the Rolling Stones shill for Microsoft, LL Cool J rocks steady for
the Gap). At this point, the background hum of marketing just feels natural-
maybe advertising is really just some atmospheric gas we've all learned to
breathe. On this provocative CD, Negativland plucks one element out of the
air-cola marketing-and makes it misfire horrifically: "Medicated ointment
being spread on painful rash/Old outdated software getting thrown into the
trash/Everything still tastes the same-PEPSI!"
They give an old picture unfamiliar outlines by showing that the work that
goes into making Pepsi part of our lives isn't nearly as disturbing as the
ways in which we live with it.
TAPE OP #9
As much as I like certain carbonated beverages, I'm not much of a fan of
sodas, and especially not Coke or Pepsi. Negativland should be required
listening for all you home-recordists out there as they've been recording
brilliant music and sound-collage work (with plenty of social commentary) out
of their homes since the late 70's. This CD examines soda marketing,
celebrity endorsements, consumer loyalties, and the evils behind it all. I do
have to say that by the end of this I really didn't want to even think of
drinking a pop of any sort. On the recording side, there's an amazing amount
of soundbites (which makes you wonder where they acquired them all from) which
are manipulated along with noise and music beds and the occasional song (not
my favorite part) to get all the points across. The skill with which they
use all these elements and balance them out is outstanding, and reminds me
that they once said they don't use samplers, instead using tape splicing and
delay lines. It's hard to imagine they don't use a computer editing system,
but then again they were doing this stuff years before that shit existed. And
doing it well.
THE BOSTON PHOENIX: Arts What's a bunch of audio terrorists and culture critics to do when they've been attacked by the Man? Negativland's response gets summed up in the title of the final track of their new DISPEPSI (Seeland): "Bite Back." As they explain in the disc's liner notes, "All of the cola commercials that were appropriated, transformed and re-used in this recording attempted to assault us in our homes without our permission." But as the global economy and consumer culture keep repackaging life for the approaching millennium, there's a more important question: can Negativland's bite (or ours) ever be worse than the barking voices emanating from our television sets? You might remember Negativland from their crash-and-burn experiment with U2. Whereas it was easy enough fro Leeds roughnecks the Mekons to mock Bono on 1989's "Blow Your Tuneless Trumpet," sardonically calling him "the Dublin messiah," Negativland's much more clever and vicious appropriations parody of U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," saddled the California- based group with legal hassles they barely survived. (For complete details, see Fair Use, a 270-page book and CD Negativland published in 1995.) So Negativland have been craftier with DISPEPSI. Unwilling (probably on advice of pro, uh, bono counsel) to use the trademark Pepsi in their new disc's title, the group have employed a number of acronyms-Diespisp, Eispspid, and my favorite, Pissdepi-and set up a "Word Of Mouth Line" phone number you can call to learn the "correct spelling and pronunciation of the title of this CD." (The final product doesn't feature any clearly printed title.) Negativland are decidedly less subtle when it comes to the collage-like tracks of samples, mock jingles, and occasional hip-hop beats they've created on this CD. From it's first sound (a can of soda being cracked open) to its last (a can being tossed away), DISPEPSI reaffirms how disposable our consumer culture is. "The Greatest Taste Around" swirls grotesque and surreal images around a chirpy mock Pepsi ad. "Drink It Up" offers a string of amusing product puns-"My Crystal Lite has just burned out/And Canada's gone Dry/My Yoohoo will not call to me/I am a loyal endorsee of Pepsi." A dizzying collage of recontextualized celebrity voices (including Michael J. Fox, Barbara Eden, Marion Ross, and Ricardo Montalban) creates a hysterical criticism of advertising on "A Most Successful Formula." And "Bite Back" is a classic Negativland dirge packed with spliced together bits appropriated from advertisements, talk radio, and other media channels, including advice form a talk show caller: "We can control the corporations, all we have to do is stop buying what it is they're selling." The corporate behemoth has not yet responded-perhaps PepsiCo has a sense of humor. Or is the corporation, which also owns Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut, simply too entrenched in our fast-food culture to be worried over a recording that uses it's trademark as a symbol of media over saturation and global economic onslaught? Maybe the CEOs are just flattered.
Actually Pepsi's not concerned for several reasons. Unlike U2, Pepsi is not a
musical entity. What's more, the cover art for Negativland's U2 was designed
to create confusion among the Dublin band's audience (U2's name was printed in
10-inch type on the '91 single, whereas Negativland was in smaller letters at
the bottom of the cover), thus incurring the wrath of Island Records, which
claimed that unwary U2 fans might be duped into buying the Negativland
product. And in the end, a multinational corporation like Pepsi has little to
fear from a mildly revolutionary group of culture critics like Negativland.
The recuperative powers of the global economy are stronger than ever.
In her 1994 book The sponsored Life: Ads, TV, and American Culture, cultural
critic Leslie Savan writes, "There is no human emotion or concern-love, lust,
was, childhood innocence, social rebellion, spiritual enlightenment, even
disgust with advertising-that cannot be worked into a sales pitch."
Negativland's message to consumers (that's us) is that we must remain vigilant
and active as we face the ongoing homogenization of culture. We can, and
should, bite back. Our response might start with a better understanding of
how advertising represents us at the height of the information age. As Savan
explains in her book, which describes how commercial culture sells our own
experiences back to us, "To lead the sponsored life you really don't have to
do anything." We can laugh at (and with) Negativland's wild, inspired rants
and critiques. But we have to do something.
BOSTON GLOBE Fallout from the Cola Wars My parents survived the Vietnam War and a domestic atmosphere of significant tumult. My grandparents had it rougher, weathering both the Great Depression and World War II and worrying about their poor immigrant parents and Prohibition. But I may be the true warrior. I survived the "Cola Wars." Growing up in the heat of Madison Avenue's carbonation battle, I did not realize the magnitude of my plight. Like most tykes of the '80s, I dutifully "moonwalked" for Pepsi, fervently debated the pros and cons of New Coke, and laughed at poor RC. Of the three, RC was my favorite when it came to taste, but it offered no image with its fizz. Corporate America's advertising blitz rages on today, creeping into every possible public crevice (I'm surprised there were no billboards plastered to Judge Zobel's courtroom walls). But nothing breeds sharp cultural criticism like decrepit culture. Hence, sneering publications like The Baffler, Suck, and Stay Free! have arisen in recent years to confront the ad industry, at times producing some of our most notable art about our least notable art. It may be too late to escape from a McDonaldized world, but at least we're going down with sparkling swings. The most eye-opening new salvo, however, is "Dispepsi," a new album by West Coast sound collagists Negativland. Previously best known for a U2 parody searing enough to elicit lawsuits from both U2's record label and Negativland's own, the audio hellions have a keen eye for potential legal jams: They devote "Dispepsi" to, well, dissing Pepsi through warped media and commercial sound bites as well as sardonic anti-jingles of their own. It's a momentous work that reaches far beyond its immediate subject matter, examining the nature of American celebrity, media, and consumerism through the dubious red, white, and blue swirl of PepsiCo. The wide scope of "Dispepsi" testifies to both Negativland's talent and the cultural ubiquity of the soda monoliths. From Mike Tyson to Ricardo Montalban to the O. J. Simpson trial to Bill Cosby to talk-radio conspiracy hounds to Michael J. Fox, the album plays like a disturbed, impersonal scrapbook of my life and times. But this nostalgia record has a major twist: True to its creator's name, "Dispepsi" is consummately negative, causing me to grit my cola-rotted teeth in anger as I view my existence as one big beverage commercial. Such pessimism belies the cheery role traditionally played by nostalgia records. Psychedelic works like "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band " and "The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society," as well as their post-hippie counterparts like the Velvet Underground's "Loaded," look at the past through rose-colored shades, hailing the innocence of early rock 'n' roll and small towns. Negativland, on the other hand, must reflect on rock music as a commercial jingle or a Michael Jackson endorsement spot. More disturbingly, "Dispepsi" lacks any sense of locale - whereas the Kinks turned to their village green, Negativland is trapped in the media village that has consumed the Western world.
Like the magazines that take swipes at these issues, Negativland offers scant solutions to the problems it so viciously scrutinizes. In all honesty, why should they bother? The advertising empire is like a spoiled preteen wound up in a temper tantrum as it vociferously pushes onward, ignoring all reproaches and almost always triumphing. To resist is futile. By the time I grew hip to the hype's baloney and decided to follow my taste buds to ol' RC Cola, it was too late - the George Harrison of the soda world was veritably unfindable, buried by the biggies' commercial war. All that's left to do now is kvetch eloquently to the converted.
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