Today everyone is talking about Prince. And it's right that he's honoured.
But we shouldn’t miss the passing of the brilliantly maverick sampling pioneer Richard Lyons from Negativland today.
We take sampling for granted now but Negativland were as much founders of the genre as any hip hop artists. Even if they took their name from Neu, their influence from the concrete music experiments behind Faust, and were on SST – the most punk of all labels.
Along with John Oswald (whose Grateful dead masterpiece Grayfolding we’ve talked about before) they were pioneers of “Plunderphonics” - a new style of music made up of other audio sources and arguably that step has had more influence in current music than almost anything else.
They were innovative, political and totally irreverent. Their most famous work was this kazoo “version” of U2’s “I Still Haven’t found What I’m Looking For” which cut up featured a bizarre rant by a famous US radio DJ cut with covers of the famous song.
It's brilliant, different and was the future then (even if U2 and their label didn’t think so!) and still sounds great now.
And in an amazing twist Negativland posed as journalists to interview U2’s The Edge – who was then on the Zoo TV tour built around found sounds and samples – and called him out on the law suit. It's pretty funny and you can find a transcribe of it online here.
In the light of Prince’s death maybe all the focus will go there, but Richard Lyons is a massive influence no one really knows about. So let's put things right and give the copyright pioneer his due.
-TH
