I Am a Tremendous Geek
In the early 90s, artsy collage band Negativland created an odd song which extensively sampled U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name”, then mixed it with people humming, a goofy reading of the lyrics, and– in some versions– samples of Casey Kasem bloopers full of swearwords. As one might expect, U2’s record label promptly sued Negativland.
The culmination of this conflict was this brilliant interview in which U2’s The Edge is bragging about his band’s copyright-abusing video display for their Zoo TV concert tour, when the sneaky interviewers bring out Negativland to ask him how what U2 is doing is different from what Negativland got sued for. And then they ask the justly embarrased Edge if he’d loan them enough money to get out of bankruptcy. It’s pretty priceless.
Anyhow, fast forward to 2004 and U2’s rather bizarre cross-promotion with iPod, creating some sort of special U2 model of the device.
So what would be more fitting than to put a fake U2 vs. Negativland iPod for sale on eBay?
Having the iPod company turn around and make legal threats against the prankster, that’s what.
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