Today, we end this week of Negativland, in observance of the death of Richard Lyons. I’m going to jump ahead to their 1997 album, Dispepsi. I want to end with it because when I asked my boss if she knew the band, she said, “Pepsi?” She is the hippest person I’ve ever known. Of course, Negativland doesn’t have a song called “Pepsi”; I’m sure she’s referring to “The Greatest Taste Around,” which is the song we are going to listen to today.

The funny thing about the album is that the band was apparently afraid of being sued by Pepsi. This was not unreasonable, because as a band that made heavy use of sampling, pushing the bounds of IP law was kind of the norm. So the album cover does not have the word “Dispepsi” on it. It does have all the letters on it in various combinations. The album’s song list is done as a food nutrition label with the headline “Ideppiss Facts.” But Pepsi, wisely I think, had no intention of suing. Such acts are usually self-defeating. So the band started calling it “Dispepsi.”

Although “The Greatest Taste Around” is about Pepsi most prominently, the whole album is about Pepsi, Coke, the soda industry, and the idea of having to advertise products people wouldn’t normally want. The song “Hyper Real” is about the selling of New Coke. “Aluminum Or Glass: The Memo” does seem to feature an actual advertising memo. The whole album is brilliant in this way. It sounds great, but it is also great political and social satire: and it is all on YouTube.

“The Greatest Taste Around” is such an upbeat song that it’s easy enough to miss how scathing it is. “Tractors plowing down the hills: Pepsi! Ghastly stench of puppy mills: Pepsi!” All to a I-IV-V chord progression. Brilliant!