By their third album,
Negativland had started to hit their stride. Named after the citizen's band code for "on the air,"
A Big 10-8 Place made good use of recordings of people talking over the airwaves. In its entirety, the album served as a kind of documentary of Contra Costa County, where the bandmembers lived (there was even a piece with directions on how to get to Concord from San Francisco, if you were interested in visiting). The album fired the opening volley in
Negativland's ongoing challenge against copyrights and what is considered public domain. How much does something have to be changed before it's original? If you say something over the air, is it public domain? Although
A Big 10-8 Place posed some of these questions, it was just a warm-up for the albums to come. The album's packaging featured many fun bonuses, including Contra Costa lawn clippings (or wood chips). ~ Sean Carruthers