Negativland

Four years after U2 released The Joshua Tree, Negativland released an EP titled U2. The EP, which included a parody of “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” could easily have been mistaken for another U2 album, since “U2” took up nearly the entire cover of the album and “Negativland” was printed in a much smaller typeface. It didn’t take much time for U2’s lawyers to sue Negativland for copyright infringement, and the whole thing generated a fair amount of exposure for the band. For the past three decades, the San Francisco Bay Area-based group has been making musical collages (some of which are hilarious) by sampling bits of mass culture. For these two free shows at Old Main, Negativland will present “It’s All in Your Head FM,” which it describes as “a two-hour-long, action-packed look at monotheism, the supernatural God concept, and the all-important role played by the human brain in our beliefs.”