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Can I recommend here John Higgs’ excellent book ‘The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned a Million Pounds’ [0] It’s ostensibly a bio of the band The KLF

Can I recommend here John Higgs’ excellent book ‘The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned a Million Pounds’ [0] It’s ostensibly a bio of the band The KLF (or the justified ancients of Mu), who somehow had a successful music career by taking discordianism as far as it could go. However, the book widens to Robert Anton Wilson, Timothy Leary, the Illuminatus and most of the second half of the 20th century. If you haven’t heard of the KLF, they’re well worth looking into: after having a load of hits in the early 90s, they retired by machine-gunning the BRIT Award audience (with blanks), deleting their entire back catalogue and setting fire to all the money they’d earned. [0] https://www.amazon.co.uk/KLF-Chaos-Burned-Million-Pounds/dp/1780226551/ https://www.amazon.co.uk/KLF-Chaos-Burned-Million-Pounds/dp/...

the_other 7y ago
Seconded. The book is a joy. Also, the current UK discordian undercurrent is producing some fnord wonderful things. Daisy Eris’ Cosmic Trigger play has opened some excellent locks (perhaps not flood gates yet). And the KLF have recently gone into businesses as undertakers [0]. [0]: https://www.mumufication.com/ https://www.mumufication.com/
- mattkevan 7y ago
  I dunno, pretty sure the last few years with fake news, antivax, birthers, preppers, qanon, deepfakes, troll armies, bot farms and the like is proof that Operation Mindfuck has been more successful than the wildest dreams of the acid-soaked hippies that thought it’d be a lark in the 60s. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mindfuck https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mindfuck
enkiv2 7y ago
Higgs has another book, perhaps even more philosophically aligned with discordianism, called "Stranger than We Can Imagine", which has as its thesis that the central defining trait of the 20th century was that it resisted making sense.
- brylie 7y ago
  Sounds similar to the BBC documentary "Hyper-normalization": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation
rladd 7y ago
There's also the KLF's classic book, "The Manual: How To Have A Number 1 The Easy Way" which describes how to make a record that goes to #1 without having any talent or money: https://archive.org/details/TheManualHowToHaveANumber1TheEasyWay https://archive.org/details/TheManualHowToHaveANumber1TheEas...
checktheorder 7y ago
>they retired by machine-gunning the BRIT Award audience (with blanks) I thought you were joking. Holy cow. (And holy chao.) https://youtu.be/h_I0b05zpJ4?t=160 https://youtu.be/h_I0b05zpJ4?t=160
sp332 7y ago
And in 2017 they had a comeback event, where they launched a new book, and had people tell them why they burned all that money. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/aug/24/the-klf-take-liverpool-bill-drummond-jimmy-cauty https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/aug/24/the-klf-take-l... Edit: I also recommend reading "The Manual" which is their guide to making a #1 pop hit.

the_other 7y ago

Seconded. The book is a joy. Also, the current UK discordian undercurrent is producing some fnord wonderful things. Daisy Eris’ Cosmic Trigger play has opened some excellent locks (perhaps not flood gates yet). And the KLF have recently gone into businesses as undertakers [0]. [0]: https://www.mumufication.com/ https://www.mumufication.com/

mattkevan 7y ago
I dunno, pretty sure the last few years with fake news, antivax, birthers, preppers, qanon, deepfakes, troll armies, bot farms and the like is proof that Operation Mindfuck has been more successful than the wildest dreams of the acid-soaked hippies that thought it’d be a lark in the 60s. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mindfuck https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mindfuck

enkiv2 7y ago

Higgs has another book, perhaps even more philosophically aligned with discordianism, called "Stranger than We Can Imagine", which has as its thesis that the central defining trait of the 20th century was that it resisted making sense.

brylie 7y ago
Sounds similar to the BBC documentary "Hyper-normalization": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation

rladd 7y ago

There's also the KLF's classic book, "The Manual: How To Have A Number 1 The Easy Way" which describes how to make a record that goes to #1 without having any talent or money: https://archive.org/details/TheManualHowToHaveANumber1TheEasyWay https://archive.org/details/TheManualHowToHaveANumber1TheEas...

checktheorder 7y ago

>they retired by machine-gunning the BRIT Award audience (with blanks) I thought you were joking. Holy cow. (And holy chao.) https://youtu.be/h_I0b05zpJ4?t=160 https://youtu.be/h_I0b05zpJ4?t=160

sp332 7y ago

And in 2017 they had a comeback event, where they launched a new book, and had people tell them why they burned all that money. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/aug/24/the-klf-take-liverpool-bill-drummond-jimmy-cauty https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/aug/24/the-klf-take-l... Edit: I also recommend reading "The Manual" which is their guide to making a #1 pop hit.