Negativland was asked to be guest editor of MAGNET this week, which poses a challenge to such a large collective of members with extremely disparate tastes and obsessions. Members Peter Conheim and Mark Hosler came forward to share what’s been on their minds lately and, indeed, what’s informed their thoughts and work over the years. The group’s new album is entitled It’s All In Your Head and, being entirely about faith, monotheism and why humans believe in God, comes packaged inside of an actual King James Bible. And while religion and intolerance are posing the biggest and toughest dilemmas facing the world today—well, excepting that climate business—Negativland will focus instead this week on such things as sounds, pictures and books. And the impending death of everything due to digital technology.
Peter Conheim: It’s really high time for “celebrity vanity LPs” to come back into fashion. It seemed in the mid-1990s the fever for them peaked, but these platters—and there are lots and lots of them, arguably beginning in the late 1950s and continuing unabated—will never grow tiresome. There will never be a time when I don’t want to put Sebastian Cabot, Actor / Bob Dylan, Poet on my turntable, and enjoy Mr. French from A Family Affair deconstructing “It Ain’t Me, Babe.” Likewise, the hair shall always stand up on the back of my neck at the dulcet tones of Leonard Nimoy singing Judy Collins’ “Both Sides Now.” But none of these hold a candle to John Wayne’s immortal America: Why I Love Her (1973). It all comes down to “The Hyphen,” a heartfelt poem that compares the hyphen (as in “African-American,” “Irish-American,” “Italian-American,” “Jewish-American”) to the swastika and the Russian hammer and sickle. Yes, that little dividing line is a harbinger of hate, says Wayne.
Video after the jump.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6N4zKM2cZs
