Raymond Pettibon’s portfolio is also full of the poster art he did for his brother’s band, which featured Manson as a central element of its visual palette. Black Flag brought Manson on the road with them by naming their first major tour their “Creepy Crawl.” Black Flag’s bassist has explained that the band got “arcane and emotional value from Manson.”17 Dewar MacLeod has suggested that Black Flag saw touring itself as an alternative to settling into the “safe suburban home” that beckoned in Southern California. Through its own “creepy crawl,” he writes, the band aimed to draw an “inscription . . . on the American landscape with the object to leave their mark and move on, not conquer markets or the masses.”18 Members of Black Flag have acknowledged that Pettibon was the driver of this concept. As his brother Greg Ginn puts it, “It was just basically a series of flyers and other stuff, just on the Manson theme, and the various things you can do with that.” Bassist Chuck Dukowski adds that the band very much embraced the creepy-crawl concept. As he explains, Black Flag was interested in finding out what would happen if they could make their audiences feel fear: “You threaten a lot of their values, and the potential for something to happen that they don’t understand, or they don’t have control of in their existing mental framework, makes it useful to throw them off balance and thus open people up.”19
If Pettibon’s film and his graphic work for Black Flag offered up a disorganized sort of media criticism, the most important piece of countercultural Manson art of the late 1980s—Negativland’s Helter Stupid (1989)—had a much more cogent argument to make about the crimes of the Manson Family and the motive ascribed to Manson by prosecutor and true-crime author Vincent Bugliosi. Let me make two things clear about Negativland’s appearance on the cultural landscape of Manson art right away: Helter Stupid is a major and thoughtful contribution to the evolution of this body of work and it is misleading to speak of Helter Stupid as a discrete piece of art—it was more like a gradually unfolding happening. Helter Stupid is, to be sure, the name of an LP released by Negativland in 1989 on SST records, a label founded by Greg Ginn of Black Flag. But “Helter Stupid” is also the name we must give to a chaotically deployed series of media events and articulations that took place over several years in the late 1980s, organized (but not completely controlled) by Negativland. As an interviewer for the magazine Mondo 2000 put it in an introduction to an interview with members of the band, “‘Helter Stupid’ is not just the audio ‘Helter Stupid.’ It’s also the chronology and it’s the essay on the events.”20
The chronology of Helter Stupid is a fascinating expression of what we have commonly come to call “culture jamming” (a phrase whose invention is often credited to Negativland band member Don Joyce). I cannot improve on this useful summary of Helter Stupid that came with the record:
10/20/87
Negativland releases their fourth album, Escape from Noise, and begin preparations for a national tour. The album includes the cut “Christianity Is Stupid,” which features the “found” vocal of Reverend Estus Pirkle from a sermon recorded in 1968.
2/20/88
Story appears in the New York Times, national wire services, and radio and TV network news relating the arrest of sixteen-year-old David Brom in the ax murders of his father, mother, sister and brother two days earlier in Rochester, Minnesota. The NY Times article mentions that David and his father may have argued over a music tape David had listened to. The Broms are described as a devout Roman Catholic family.
3/10/88
Negativland cancels the tour when it becomes apparent that the tour will lose money. The group decides to send their American label, SST Records, a phony press release for distribution which attributes the cancellation of the tour to pressure from “Federal Official Dick Jordan” who has advised the band not to leave town pending an investigation into the Brom murders. The press release implies that David and his parents had been arguing about Negativland’s song “Christianity Is Stupid” just prior to the murders. The NY Times article is distributed with the press release.
3/16/88
Negativland receives phone calls from Rockpool, Pulse, BAM magazine, and several other fanzines requesting more information about the link between Negativland and the Brom murders. The group maintains that the federal interference is indeed real, but declines to elaborate.
3/30/88
In Minnesota, Judge Gerard Ring “gags” media coverage of the David Brom case, pending his decision as to whether David will be tried as a juvenile or an adult. After entering no plea in a pre-trial hearing David Brom undergoes a series of forensic psychiatric tests.
4/20/88
Citing federal restraints against participation in any live promotion dealing with the Brom case, Negativland consents to a telephone interview with BAM magazine. When pressed for information by interviewer Steve Stolder, a group member mentions a “bloody cassette tape” in passing.
4/22/88
Judge Ring rules that David Brom be tried as a juvenile. The prosecution appeals.
5/6/88
BAM prints a full-page article on Negativland and the Brom case, despite Stolder’s inability to establish the existence of “Federal Authority Dick Jordan” and despite Stolder’s phone conversation with James Walsh, the Rochester Post Bulletin reporter assigned to the Brom case. In several months of covering the story, Walsh has never heard of Negativland. The article simply restates the “facts” from the Negativland press release with no trace of skepticism.
5/9/88
James Walsh contacts SST Records, requesting more information on the Negativland–Brom connection. SST sends him a copy of the original press release and puts Walsh in telephone contact with the group. Negativland declines to do more than restate the “rumor” that “Christianity Is Stupid” may have caused the argument among the Broms that precipitated the murders. Negativland now begins to draw back from direct stimulation of the media by claiming that a phony lawyer, Hal Stakke, has advised them not to discuss the case with anyone.
?/?/88
Negativland hires a press clipping service to gather copies of all articles pertaining to the Brom case. Articles on Negativland mentioning the Brom link eventually appeared in Rockpool, Boston Rock, Buttrag, Pulse, San Francisco Chronicle, Pollstar, Cut, Spy, Lyric, Penthouse’s Hot Talk, Trouser Press Record Guide and The Village Voice.
?/?/88
Tom Krotenmacher, who presents himself as a reporter covering the Brom story for Rolling Stone, sees the Twin Cities Reader article and calls Negativland seeking an interview. Negativland declines to comment.
5/11//88
After seeing the BAM article, a news producer for CBS Television’s San Francisco affiliate, KPIX Channel 5, calls Negativland to request a televised interview. Negativland does not decline this opportunity to reach millions with this message. TV reporter Hal Eisner arrives in the KPIX mobile Electronic News Gathering unit. During the interview Negativland maintains the rumored link to the Brom case, but continue to state that they are unable to discuss details of the case. Much of the interview time is spent discussing the American news media, their appetite for the sensational, their tendency to create their own “news,” and related topics. All of this discussion is cut from the aired tape. Like all the other reports to date, Channel 5 takes the purported connection for granted, but this time in a sensationalized feature piece emphasizing links between murder and music and including footage of the Brom family being carried from their home in body bags.
5/14/88
After seeing the Channel 5 News lead story, the San Francisco Chronicle religion writer calls Negativland requesting an interview. The group again claims they’re unable to discuss the case, but do describe various real and imagined effects that the onslaught of publicity has had on the group. The Chronicle prints an article restating the proposed connection, but gets many of the “facts” wrong as a result of their dependence on other media stories as their only source material. It’s now abundantly clear that the major source for new
s is other news.
6/3/88
David Brom is transferred to the Oakes Treatment Center for severely emotionally disturbed children and adolescents in Austin, Texas. The Village Voice publishes an article on the Negativland–Brom link. Music critic R. J. Smith recounts the original press release’s version of the rumored connection with some skepticism. In researching this piece, Smith and Voice media critic Geoffrey I. Stokes go so far as to track down a Negativland member at his job for confirmation of the story. The group, by now apprehensive that their monstrous joke may have become completely uncontrollable, refuses to answer questions on the phone, citing previous reporters’ editing and distortions of their comments. Negativland does, however, agree to send a prepared written statement. Smith also reports contacting San Francisco FBI spokesman Chuck Latting, who says of Negativland, “To the best of my knowledge, we’ve not had contact with them.”
6/19/88
The San Francisco Chronicle’s pop music critic, Joel Selvin, devotes two-thirds of his weekly column to the Negativland–Brom story. The group also declines to be interviewed in this article, and Selvin was sent a copy of the same statement the Voice received, which he accurately reproduced: “As to our uncertain association with the Brom case, we think it’s foolish and will comment on it no further. For a while, we made comments to the press and found that we were so misquoted and events so misstated to fit the writer’s need to grab attention and the editor’s need to abbreviate that we will now make no more statements whatsoever. Sensationalism reigns.”
8/1/88
Negativland decides to make a somewhat musical depiction of this entire media odyssey. It is begun as a 12-inch single, but quickly expands to a full LP side.
12/9/88
Minnesota Supreme Court rules that Brom be tried as an adult. Arraignment is set for January, 1989. David Brom awaits trial.
Brom was convicted and sentenced to three consecutive life sentences in October of 1989. Negativland continued culture-jamming, perhaps most notoriously with its attack on U2, released in 1992, for which the band was quickly and decisively sued.
The “facts” of the Brom case are not of particular moment in considering the cultural meanings of Helter Stupid. There was much talk in the press about how David Brom may have argued with his father about the music he liked to listen to and/or about his own personal punk stylings. Blogger Cory Frye has explained that a fellow student had informed the local sheriff that David Brom had fought with his father about “a tape he had bought” that his father “didn’t want him listening to.” Furthermore, according to Frye, “Newspaper accounts made note of the teenager’s ‘dyed punk haircut’ as a means to explain the contrast between the pleasant, friendly boy described by peers and neighbors and the desperate fugitive he had become.”21 Negativland was not interested in launching an investigation into the generation gap or the biography of this one family. This is guerrilla cultural criticism aimed, above all, at exposing “the sheer eagerness of the media to believe what seemed like such an obvious falsehood.” As Robert Barry has recently reported, one of the members of the band “even stared a TV news anchor in the face and told him it was a hoax” to no avail.22
The story concocted by Negativland as a way to draw attention away from the cancellation of the band’s tour (due to typical indie band financial exigencies) proved remarkably strong. Band member Mark Hosler has properly noted that what “really made the story work . . . and what gave it legs was that it was tied into the fears about backmasking and hidden messages in rock music.” The Bay Area affiliate of CBS news helped promote this angle with its early coverage, as Kembrew McLeod reports: “Topping Nightcast,” the story began, “a possible link between murder and music . . . four members of a midwestern family were murdered. The sixteen-year-old son is the prime suspect. Members of the experimental rock group Negativland have been drawn into the case.”23
Negativland did not explicitly draw on the magical power of Manson until the band released Helter Stupid in 1989, but then the occult power of the imprisoned Family leader was evoked with a vengeance. Helter Stupid: the title alone cleaves the history of Manson art in two. While after Helter Stupid there would continue to be all kinds of efforts to deploy Manson as a Magic Man in artistic form, it would never again be possible to do so without considering the possibility that perhaps too much was being made out of too little. Helter Stupid was wonderfully sophomoric in its response to Vincent Bugliosi’s overblown claims of certainty about Manson’s motive at the trial and in his true-crime book. Helter Skelter? More like Helter Stupid! Negativland could have used other formulations here—the Yinglish “Helter Shmelter” seems one obvious choice (film director Spike Lee made it “Helter Swelter’ in Do the Right Thing), or the fake-hard-of-hearing “Helter What?”—but “Helter Stupid” captures a critical position at once critical of Bugliosi’s above-it-all certainty about Manson’s motive and of the generational peers of Negativland who were having a little too much fun with superficial allusions to Manson and the Family. (Here we might think particularly of the Dickies’ 1979 “I’m OK, You’re OK” and its couplet that imagines the singer taking Manson’s associate Squeaky Fromme on a special date—to the senior prom! Or the Jim Carroll Band’s 1980 song “It’s Too Late,” which opens with a reminder—maybe unnecessary?—that falling in love with Sharon Tate is no longer a viable option. Think how easy it would be to write your own couplet about Family members or their victims.)
The Lemonheads’ 1988 Manson cover may have been on the minds of Negativland’s members; Sonic Youth’s art project/song/video “Death Valley ’69” (featuring Lydia Lunch and released on the band’s 1985 album Bad Moon Rising) certainly would have been. Sonic Youth never said “Helter Skelter” in its song, but it did say Death Valley, it did quote Manson’s use of the phrase “coming down” and the word “rise” and mentioned Sadie (the nickname of Susan Atkins). The video is full of monstrous violence and bloody writing on the wall (and the band did hire Raymond Pettibon to do the cover for its 1987 release Sister). Sonic Youth did not have much to say about Manson or the killings. The band’s work in this project is simply to capture some of the sense of doom that so many have said permeated the air of Los Angeles’s canyons, over Spahn Ranch, and out to Death Valley’s Barker Ranch. Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon, who grew up in Southern California in the 1960s, has written of Los Angeles having “a desolation about it, a disquiet. . . . There was a sense of apocalyptic expanse, of sidewalks and houses centipeding over mountains and going on forever, combined with a shrugging kind of anchorlessness.” “Death Valley ’69” is not a pro-Manson song, Kim Gordon wants her readers (and Sonic Youth’s fans) to know, but simply an effort to capture the ways that Manson’s desert came to represent a certain cultural engagement with destruction in the late 1960s.24
Sonic Youth’s performance of “Death Valley ’69” in 1985, especially the elaborate vocal twining of Thurston Moore and Lydia Lunch (who uses her relative affectlessness to echo and then comment upon Moore’s lead), is also clearly meant to summon the sound of Los Angeles’s seminal punk group X.25 Led by John Doe and Exene Cervenka, that band—whose dark vocal blend helped signify what critic Greil Marcus has called X’s “readiness for violence”—hit the Los Angeles scene in the late 1970s prepared to evoke the apocalyptic vibe Kim Gordon would later describe in her book26 The band’s name, the simple X, may have been inspired, as John Doe says, by his reclamation of a large “X” from the signage at an Ex-Lax building in Brooklyn. That story, with its wicked suggestion of the band coming along to clear out all the clogged cultural shit of the 1970s, is wonderful. It seems just as likely, as Exene Cervenka claims, that the X was mean to cross out the “Christ” in her given first name Christene. But to use an “X” in this way in Los Angeles in the 1970s would have to invoke the Family’s tattooing of their foreheads during the 1970 trial, as an announcement (per Manson) that doing so was a sign of having “X-ed” themselves out of the world. The Nation of Islam ha
d, long before Manson made a public splash, innovated the use of the “X” as a sign of the stolen African name and a way to call attention to the renunciation of the slaveholder last names that African Americans had been force to accept.
Negativland’s work on Helter Stupid serves, simultaneously, as an acknowledgment of the awesome cultural power Charles Manson had accrued in the twenty years since he first came to public awareness, and as an effort to take some of the wind out of the sails of the various efforts that had served to mystify Manson’s presence on the American cultural landscape and had bestowed him with something like superpowers. Robert Barry has helpfully explained that the linchpin of Negativland’s LP release is “a single 22-minute track mashing up all the various news reports about the incident with clips from one of Lenny Bruce’s rants from Religions, Inc., suggestive B-movie dialogue, interviews in which Charles Manson name-checks The Beatles, as well as ‘Helter Skelter’ itself, along with an extended take from the Reverend Pirkle and perhaps most curiously of all, Bebu Silvetti’s 1977 instrumental disco smash ‘Lluvia de Primavera.’ The result is a complex, multilayered narrative as well as a rich and compelling work of sound art.”27
It is perhaps somewhat difficult from our contemporary vantage point to appreciate how remarkably challenging Negativland’s multimedia project was in terms of its basic form. What Aram Sinnreich has taught us to understand as “configurable culture” was in an early stage of development in 1989—at least in terms of widely available audio art.28 Robert Barry has correctly noted that while Negativland had few peers in its own heyday,” in our time the band’s “febrile blend of archive crunching and avant-trolling seems almost commonplace.”29 Negativland’s own Mark Hosler has himself argued that in giving lectures to college audiences he used “to have to carefully walk through this argument as to why it was OK for us to quote-unquote ‘steal’ things and re-use them.” Partly due to Negativland’s own influence, Hosler was able, after a decade and a half or so, to omit this part of the presentation; modern college students “just know” that the type of cultural work done by Negativland is legitimate.30
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