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Stupidland/FU2 CD back online!

In 1992, when the U2/Negativland shemozzle was happening, a Canadian artist using the pseudonym 235 put out a call for an anti-U2 tribute CD. In the poster calling for submissions, the artist warned "They F-ed Negativland ... They F-ed John Oswald ... and they could FU2."

Well, F-ed they were! After hearing about the compilation plan, a representative from the Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Association threatened the project with legal threats, postponing the release of the album to 2001. But it was eventually released, and copies made it out and about.

A digital copy was being hosted on the Sensory Research Network site, but the contents of that site were lost several years ago. I had some MP3s and a PSD of the liner notes, and I always wanted to get the album back online, just so this little bit of Negativland's legal history could be saved.

A few months ago, I stumbled across a poster on Facebook who had uploaded FLAC files of the album, and it was only just this weekend that I realized, "Aha! We can upload this content to Archive.org and make a permanent archive!" And that's what I did this weekend.

So you can see the full album at the archive.org site and download it if you like. For further information on Negativland's U2 single & legal troubles, please see the Fair Use book which is also at archive.org.

And if you're a fan of Negativland ephemera, please check out Stupidland.com which has a bunch of early Negativland tracks from various compilations (those tracks will probably also make it over to archive.org at some point). There's also a great collection of Negativland media on Archive.org that's got some nice finds, including the original multitrack files for the U2 single.

This article is my 90th oldest. It is 294 words long