I still think Dick Vaughn is a Prostitiute

Helter Stupid - Negativland

Decades ago, some kid in Minnesota went mad and killed his family, as sometimes kids do. Negativland, on the cusp of a US tour, decided that they'd cancel the tour with a press release saying that the FBI told them to not leave town, suggesting that a track from their Escape From Noise album, "Christianity is Stupid", inspired the murders.

OK, not the best way to get out of something, but that's what they did. And the press jumped on it. Tracks one and two, or the first side of the album/cassette Helter Stupid, are their take on the media feeding frenzy over it.

But that's not what interested me.

Side 2, "The Perfect Cut", is far more interesting as text and also more interesting as music, and had me hitting rewind far after I stopped caring about Side A. It's a supreme deconstruction of the record industry and a source of many of my favorite non sequiturs. Like the title, above.