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The KLF: Chaos, magic and the band who burned £1M
- zoklet-enjoyer 4y agoI recently listened to a podcast about these guys and their attempt to meet ABBA. Thanks for the reminder I need to actually listen to their music
- jamal-kumar 4y agoI always thought it was pretty hilarious how they managed to get Tammy Wynette to sing a song about the Illuminatus! Trilogy
- h2odragon 4y agoCertainly my favorite of all her performances.
- yborg 4y agoI believe it ended up as her highest charting performance ever.
- wpietri 4y agoI loved it then; I love it now. And clearly Tammy had a blast: https://ew.com/article/1992/02/07/tammy-wynette-and-klf/ https://ew.com/article/1992/02/07/tammy-wynette-and-klf/
- stareatgoats 4y agoGreat story (1992/02/07?!)
- tragomaskhalos 4y agoThere was a documentary on the KLF on tv just last night - apparently Bill went over to the US to do the audio with Tammy and it was very nearly unusable because she wasn't in time with the track - she was used to working with her own band who adjusted to accommodate her, and this obviously wouldn't work with an electronic track. Fortunately though the studio had just got in a bit of kit that allowed them to subtly adjust her voice timings to fit (the details are a little vague but they didn't go into exact details)
- anigbrowl 4y agoIt's not so much that they 'couldn't say why' as that they don't care to repeat themselves. The KLF have explained themselves at great length in their own publications, which I heartily recommend: http://klf.de/home/publication/manual-number-one-easy-way/ http://klf.de/home/publication/manual-number-one-easy-way/
- ilamont 4y agoI used to work for Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond's record label. This book looks interesting ... but I really wish the focus was on the art and the music, and not the "the guys who burnt 1 million quid" incident. One thing that the media have a tough time recognizing is the fact that Bill and Jimmy are legit experimental artists, and still love making art of all kinds. And they also happened to have some amazing musical talent and experience (Jimmy: The Orb; Bill: Big In Japan and early manager of Echo and the Bunnymen). So, they decided to take their talents into areas where few experimental artists had ever gone before, taking over the pop charts ... and then proceeded to do what experimental artists are wont to do in such a situation. They gave a huge middle finger to the industry, by barnstorming the big UK music industry award ceremony (the '92 Brit Awards), playing a death metal version of one of their dance hits while Bill fired blanks from a machine gun over the heads of the crowd. Later in the evening they dumped a dead sheep outside one of the after-parties, and shortly afterwards deleted their entire back catalogue. They proceeded to do lots of other experimental stuff, ranging from writing some excellent books (I recommend Bill's "45") to activities such as Jimmy's model English village a few years back. And the music, 30+ years later, is still fantastic! Not just the pop hits. Listen to The White Room. Dig up the club singles and experiments like the Abba and Whitney projects and It's Grim Up North. Yet after all that, what does the media remember them for? More often than not, it's the one-off act of Burning a Million Quid in 1994. Their ground-breaking music, the books, the anti-establishment statements and art ... it's almost an afterthought. It's like releasing an otherwise interesting book about Ozzy Osbourne - a seminal figure in the history of heavy metal with an unusual groundbreaking role in reality TV - and positioning it around a single sensational incident from 1982, "Crazy Train: Ozzy Osbourne, the Man Who Bit The Head Off A Bat"
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Baeocystin 4y ago>More often than not, it's the one-off act of Burning a Million Quid in 1994. Their ground-breaking music, the books, the anti-establishment statements and art ... it's almost an afterthought. The pain of not having enough is a fundamental human experience, and to see someone who had more than most will ever see in their lifetime literally burn it away hurts. I thought it was deeply selfish stunt then, and still do now. They earned that black check on their reputation by their own actions.
- Minor49er 4y agoThe White Room, Chill Out, and Jimmy Cauty's Space have all been on my recent rotation. They are so good. Long live The KLF!
- nineteen999 4y agoI never understood the attraction. But then again I didn't understand what all the fuss was about over the Prodigy and "Firestarter" either. Or Underworld after they moved from rock to dance. All seemed vastly overrated to me. There is something I must be missing.
- alasdair_ 4y ago>Both seemed vastly overrated to me. There is something I must be missing. Drugs, probably. Firestarter is an amazing track when it comes on at 3am and you've been dancing for hours. In the cold light of day, not so much. EDM of that era was very much designed to be experienced with MDMA and the KLF in particular really needed a stadium full of people in a similar state to fully appreciate them. All the extra Discordian stuff was just icing. Hail Eris!
- jerrysievert 4y agoall hail discordia.
- jimjimjim 4y agofnord
- atchoo 4y agoFirestarter was way past the "second summer of love", m25 party circuit days that was pure gurning pillheads getting crazy to samples of 80s cartoons. It's when the Prodigy had become mainstream and this was was dance/indie-rock crossover type track that they used to headline Glastonbury the following year. Pre-teens loved it - energetic and edgy... but really it wasn't subversive, just broadly available pop music that hit the top of the charts. If I went to a mid-90s techno or hard house event and they played this, I would have been as disappointed as if they played 2 Unlimited. Despite this, I still liked and went to Prodigy concerts and saw them at festivals.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bitwize 4y agoI bought The White Room on cassette on a school trip to Québec. Lying in that hotel room that night, headphones on, 14 years old, having my first real mind blow of a musical experience. I will always remember them as groundbreaking artists, playful satirists, and master trolls of the music industry.
- motohagiography 4y agoI remember this and it made me think years later that if I were investing in a startup, I would prefer that after a certain threshold the founders would just take the money and set it on fire on a beach (I already have my equity) and focus just on market fit with less room for mistakes instead of building an overly corporate organization that mainly fights over how to loot it. When you have real desire on your side, cash is a distraction. I don't know if this is what they meant by it, but that is what it meant to me years later.
- ggm 4y agoIt's been pointed out that for the state banking authority the fire did absolutely nothing. Firstly, it's rounding error noise to the economy. Secondly, even ephemeral evidence of which notes got destroyed in some circumstances would legitimate taking a bundle off the shelf and giving it to them. Money is strange. For the central bank, it exists when they say it does and not when ink hits paper at the printery. Economics and the $1trillion note come to mind. I think I've read comments that the K foundation people can understand that some poor scots don't appreciate what they did as a statement facing systemic poverty in Scotland. Performance art almost always has to lie in the margins. The film isn't art, it documents a performance. The music is art, even if they deleted the catalogue. Deleting the catalogue was performative, but personally I don't think it's art. I get the sentiment of the poster elsewhere here who points out it's boring to only talk about the money fire and Ozzie's bat, or the Gallagher brothers spitting contests or Dylan's Albert hall gig or a million other lacunae, rather than the art. So I'll stop.
- amalgamated_inc 4y agoWouldn't it have slightly raised the value of everybody else's money?
- ggm 4y agoIf you subscribe to the right economic theory, then yes?
- azakai 4y agoI read this book two years ago. It's incredibly interesting, and made me look at the world differently. Highly recommended.
- nylonstrung 4y agoBill Drummond is the most wonderful of tricksters, my favorite performance artist of all-time Like the Panther Moderns in Neuromancer, he has elevated culture jamming and subversion to a literal art. Who else could make some of the best electronic music of the post-Acid house era, as well as a full guide of the formula they used for the lowest effort radio hit imaginable ((Doctorin the TARDIS") Embrace the contradictions.
- tragomaskhalos 4y agoThey did a series of public debates after the money burning, and one gets the impression that of all the genuinely ground-breaking stuff they did that this stunt is the one that actually backfired and that they came to, if not completely regret, then certainly question (source: Sky documentary aired last night)
- denton-scratch 4y agoI was hoping for some content. Turns out to be a collection of jacket blurbs.
- mattkevan 4y agoVery glad to see this book ranking on HN, it’s absolutely worth reading even if you don’t know or care about the KLF in the slightest. But you should though ’cos they’re amazing. I first read it when I was (quite by chance) 33 and 1/3rd, the same age Drummond was when he decided to form the KLF. This was a direct inspiration to me to take creative risks, say yes to things, cause mischief and generally have fun. I’d also recommend Higgs’ latest book, looking at the last century through the prism of The Beatles and James Bond. https://bookshop.org/p/books/love-and-let-die-the-beatles-james-bond-and-the-british-psyche-john-higgs/18639147 https://bookshop.org/p/books/love-and-let-die-the-beatles-ja...
- gnfargbl 4y agoA few years back, the KLF (as CALLENDER, PHILLIPS, CAUTY & DRUMMOND UNDERTAKERS) were attempting to build a giant pyramid in central Liverpool. The pyramid was/is to be constructed of bricks each containing 23g of cremated human remains. https://www.mumufication.com/get-mumufication/ https://www.mumufication.com/get-mumufication/ Much more interesting than burning a million quid. Wonder if they're still following through with it.
- refuse 4y agoYes, you too can be MuMufied! https://www.mumufication.com/ https://www.mumufication.com/
- n3uromancer 4y agoIf you liked this book, you might also like Bad Wisdom (Bill Drummond, Mark Manning, Penguin books, 1996, ISBN: 978-0140261189), wherein Zen masters Z, Bill and Gimpo set out to the North Pole to sacrifice an icon of Elvis :)
- driggs 4y agoThe best way to (mis)understand The KLF is to invest 45 minutes immersing yourself in their incredible unreleased film "The White Room": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wngp8zou_M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wngp8zou_M The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu have left the building.
- ectopod 4y agoAccording to an article in The Times years ago (early 2000s?) the money was used notes from the Bank of England that was going to be burned anyway. With insurance, security, and a BoE employee to supervise it was expensive, but not a million pounds expensive. That said, I could imagine the KLF inventing this story too, so I don't know what the truth is.
- dri_ft 4y agoI heard at least part of this version of the story a few years ago from someone who was in the British music industry at the time. I seem to recall getting the impression that he was relaying what he'd heard at the time, but of course I can't rule out that he got it from the Times article you mentioned.
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoGreat book. There's a BBC radio/podcast comedy drama that tells this story too. If you listen to it without prior knowledge it probably sounds like something Douglas Adams made up, but it's all basically true: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06y18n2 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06y18n2 > How To Burn a Million Quid lays the story bare. A comic, surreal and fast moving adventure that sees Bill and Jimmy rise to the very top of the music industry, becoming the biggest selling music act in the UK before crashing out of the industry in spectacular fashion and heading toward the art world with the intention of creating similar mayhem. Inspired by a madcap theatrical genius and a cult novel, they blaze a trail that takes them to Sweden, the North Pole and the Sierra Nevada, via Northampton, before arriving finally on the Isle of Jura, with two suitcases containing a million quid.