UKC

Following a contribution to another thread I'm having a bit of a KLF reappraisal.

Has anybody else done it quite like them?

Duetted with Tammy Wynette and got her to sing nonsense about ice cream vans
Released some era defining tunes
Machine gunned the Brit Awards and bought a dead sheep as their +1
Burnt a million pounds in cash
Deleted their entire back catalogue.

Genius? And if so at what exactly? Music? Marketing and self promotion? Art? Taking the piss? Cynicism?

In reply to DerwentDiluted:

Didn't know they had deleted all there stuff!
I only have an old 7" of Last Train and Justified.
Build a Fire was my favourite track.
Scotland's finest.
Except for Jesus and Mary, Primal Scream, Altered images and the Skids, of course.

In reply to DerwentDiluted:

I was actually at the Brits the year they opened fire - I'd somehow won tickets, but we were too far back to see much and I didn't find out about the dead sheep until afterwards.

I did really like them - I've got the White Room and a couple of CD singles. Hey, they might be worth a bit now

I watched the film of them burning the £1m - still can't help thinking they could have used it in a much more constructive way.

In reply to DerwentDiluted:
Apologies for the spam, but in homage to the KLF, I recently made this music video:

vimeo.com/166950046

(3am Eternal)

In reply to DerwentDiluted:

You're forgetting that they built a sonic weapon on the back of a saracen armoured personnel carrier. Although this appears to have been exaggerated

"When my turn came, I began by asking about the burning of the million quid. Jimmy flatly refused to talk about the K Foundation. Next, I asked Cauty if he was up on the latest research into frequency weapons, which got a much better response. ‘I know very little about military research into the uses of low frequency sounds as weapons. All this stuff about Advanced Acoustic Armaments is a joke, all I’ve done is mounted some disco gear onto my two Saracen tanks. Everything the press has written about the sonic guns I’m supposed to have built is just rubbish, the papers want to believe this stuff which is why they are so easy to hoax.’

In reply to DerwentDiluted:

I was attracted by some of the music and the anarchy.
But on reflection it would have been equally anarchic to depart the 'scene', unobtrusively and without any publicity whatsoever going the million quid to a worthwhile cause. But maybe that's not arty enough?

In reply to LastBoyScout:


From: http://www.clashmusic.com/feature/12-things-you-never-knew-aboutthe-klf

"Before Drummond and Cauty allegedly burned a million pounds on the Scottish Isle of Jura, they first tried to sell £1,000,000 nailed to a board to London’s Tate Gallery for £750,000. The Tate said it was a security risk, despite the K Foundation pointing out that they would immediately make a profit of a quarter of a million, which they could use to buy some ‘real’ art."

Also, I wonder whether, economically, burning £1m has some value. If Quantitative Easing (printing money) is a useful tool in some economic scenarios then why not the reverse? I'm not clever enough to think this through properly, but just putting it out there!

In reply to DerwentDiluted:

I remember writing an excitable fan letter to Bill Drummond when he started Zoo Records, looking after early Bunnymen, Teardrop Explodes, etc, and got a very nice reply. Damn those were some good musical times. For that alone they're on the good guys list.

In reply to Pete Houghton:

Spam away, have a like.

In reply to DerwentDiluted:

The White Room was the first album I ever bought, aged 10. Admittedly I was attracted by the machine gun samples, weird outfits and chaotic videos, but I never fell out of love with it and got more out of it as I grew up...

... well, some bits are still just cool on the same level: "This, is Radio Freedom... DAKKADAKKADAKKADAKKADAKKA!!!"

In reply to mountainbagger:


Reminds me of that bit in Hitchhikers' Guide where they burn all the trees to increase the value of the leaves they've already collected.

Oh yeah, there was also the KLF motorcycle thing...front cover of Road Rocket magazine, old British cafe racers, and sidecars. Good stuff. Can't see Bieber doing owt like that...

In reply to DerwentDiluted:

I don't listen to them much any more, apart from Chill out occasionally, but I still dip into Bill Drummond's books regularly - 45 is the best. Love the way he's run his whole life as an art project which really only has meaning to himself. Their 25 year embargo on discussing the million quid is almost up, which could be interesting.

In reply to DerwentDiluted:

KLF?

I literally had to google them. I think I must have been doing something else.

In which case I apparently missed an entire era, which is impressive.

In reply to DerwentDiluted:

Cheers, I'll put it over here in the corner with the others.

In reply to DerwentDiluted:

They were genius at having a laugh at the music industry. They seemed to genuinely not give a monkeys.

The phrase 'they don't make them like that any more' springs to mind but I get called granddad when I say things like that.