#Bill Drummond

[laboitediabolique]

One of the lesser discussed events, or publicity stunts, the KLF created was the Rites of Mu, a three day event taking place on the Isle of Jura off the Scottish coast during summer solstice in 1991.

By mid 1991, the KLF had gone from obscure dance music group to a chart toping pop group with three worldwide top 10 hit singles and an album that reached the top five in the UK and Australia. As a result KLF members Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty were inundated with requests for interviews, however both of them did not want to answer the questions being asked.

The duo referred those questions as the four handmaidens of evil; who, what, where and why. So much so that at one point they flat out refused to do any more press interviews. In order to take control of the situation (and more likely to hold a good party, get a lot of press coverage, and increase the enigma of the group), the KLF invited around a dozen music journalists to a weekend away on the Isle of Jura.

On Friday 21 June 1991, the journalists arrived on the island. There they met Drummond dressed as a border guard who stamped their passports with a KLF pyramid blaster logo stamp and then proceeded to confiscate any alcohol they had on them. In the evening after dinner, the journalists were asked to wear yellow robed hoods and then were marched down a muddy path to a beach, following Drummond in his white hooded robe and a fake rhino’s horn protruding from his forehead. Drummond lead the group in chants of "mu mu" and "om" until they reached a 12 metre wicker man that had been erected at the water’s edge.

Meanwhile all of this was being filmed for a promotional film being directed by Bill Butt who had collaborated with the duo on various music videos and short films since 1987. While Drummond shouted in tongues in front of the stunned journalists, the four Angels of Mu (four Asian women in long blonde wigs, white dresses, with flower head bands), took money from the journalists which was placed in a bag, then inserted inside the wicker man. Right at the summer solstice at 10:21pm, the wicker man was torched, with cameras recording its burning.

On the second day, Drummond forced the journalists to partake in more filming, having them march behind him in the same yellow robes as the previous day. In the evening, a rave was held on the beach, complete with an arena sized sound system, strobe lights and a bonfire blazing until dawn.

On the Sunday, the journalists were ferried and flown back to Liverpool. Drummond cheerfully announced to the unexpecting journalists that they would be performing "Justified and Ancient" before a sold-out crowd of 2,000 at the Liverpool Festival Of Comedy. They were taught the first two verses of the song, told to wear their robes again and filed onstage during the interval at Emo Phillips’s Liverpool Royal Court show, being introduced as "The Lost Children of Mu" before warbling the song in an off key acappella. During the intermission, Drummond and Cauty handed out ice creams to the audience from an ice cream van which had been parked on stage.

On the event Drummond said this; "Instead of granting interviews we turned the tables and had journalists onstage giving a concert, to give them an opportunity to see what it feels like from the other side". However neither Drummond or Cauty would not elaborate any further as to why they decided to spend over £70,000 on this strange event.

The footage of the event was complied into a film called "The Rites of Mu". Several shorter versions and edits of it appeared from the end of 1991 onwards, most notably on the promotional video "The Work". A full 15 minute version the film was prepared for a 1992 UK arthouse cinema release, but was thwarted by Drummond and Cauty themselves when they put a moratorium on their work after they left the music business in May 1992, infuriating Bill Butt who had just completed the final cut of the film, including newly recorded narration from actor Martin Sheen.

Various versions of the film appeared on Youtube over the years, with the final cut being uploaded in 2021. This was pulled from Youtube in late 2023 with the DVD and blu-ray compilation release of "23 Seconds To Eternity", which complies most of Bill Butt's music videos and short films with Drummond and Cauty.

[b0ggyb1tch]

I think about this a lot

[norepetitivebeats]

The KLF: Beyond The Band That Burnt £1,000,000 I New British Canon

If you’ve heard of the KLF, you probably know them as a band that burnt a million pounds. But that is only the conclusion to their story. The journey that led them to the Isle of Jura on that fateful August morning in 1994 is even more fascinating.

A journey that includes getting sued by ABBA, gaining a number one single in the guise of a talking car, pioneering at least one genre of dance music and becoming one of the most successful singles bands of the early 90s. They were two men compelled by the forces of chaos to spread as much confusion as possible and they transformed that into a pop career. This is New British Canon and this is the Story of The KLF.

[aranazo]

Bad Wisdom by Bill Drummond and Mark Manning with a cover taken from Skin Deep, a tattoo album by Christopher Gotch and Ronald Scutt.

[watchingalotofmovies]

Who Killed the KLF?

Who Killed the KLF?    [trailer]

Documentary that explores the rise and fall of the KLF in the 1980s and 1990s, touching upon themes that perfectly capture the 21st century zeitgeist. A tale as intriguing as it is bonkers.

I knew the songs, but only when I read an extensive article a few years ago I learned about the history of Jimi Cauty and Bill Drummond, the two people behind KLF.

It's really a hard to believe, unique, brilliant and bonkers story. And hugely entertaining.

[hylasandthe]

The KLF - 'White Room' LP insert.

[martynrandles]

THE KLF - The Rites of Mu

KLF are back, yet they never went away. Fall down the rabbit hole & find the KLFRS... ssshhhhhh... or ssshhhhhhout it out... or ssshhhhhhare it, there are no rules, it's art if you say it's art. These guys opened my mind as a teenager, they planted the seed which lead me to walk the path searching for Mu Mu land. They're back just when we needed them the most.

Thank you KLF. You are justified. You are ancient. You drive an ice cream van.

Love Martyn xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xx

[joemuggs]

Postmodern Moralists

Apropos of writing my first book review in ages (for next month's WIRE), I got nostalgic for the time when I did quite a few for the sadly missed The Word, the magazine. Here's one from 2012.

100

Bill Drummond

Penkiln Burn

I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts: Drive-by Essays on American Dread, American Dreams

Mark Dery

University of Minnesota Press

Subversive thinkers rampage through 21st century life, perturb deeply.

In 1975 the 22-year-old Bill Drummond, then a set-builder in a Liverpool theatre, spent an evening working with Ralph Steadman on set designs and listening eagerly to his Hunter S Thompson anecdotes. One in particular stuck with him – a story of Thompson and Steadman undercover of night painting “FUCK THE POPE” in gigantic letters on a ship, which then sailed down the Hudson river behind the Pope and mayor of New York live on primetime TV. Spectacularly crass, and – it transpires – almost certainly untrue, but the scale of the supposed prank clearly had a powerful and lasting influence on the man who would machine gun the Brit awards and take Tammy Wynette to the top of the charts in an ice cream van.

In 100, Drummond answers 100 questions about his life and work from 25 interlocutors in language so sternly understated it would – if he weren't so reluctant to self-identify as a “Scottish artist” – be tempting to describe it as Presbyterian. He looks back over Quixotic missions and arrogant mischief – from looking deep into the heart of Haiti to trying to hunting Abba – always with a cool eye, puncturing his own pretensions and admitting his inconsistencies. Clearly, though, the love of provocation and blunt urge to tip up tables is still there as powerfully as it was in that impressionable youth or in the KLF years. 

His subject matter is often prosaic, with an underlying rejection of the modern: recurring motifs include woodworking tools, white emulsion, Creedence Clearwater Revival, untrained people singing together. But he uses and clearly understands technology, and his meditations on downloading and copyright, and on how Goebbels would have used the internet, provide as much to get your teeth into as those by any zippy young tech guru. Drummond mistrusts almost everything – language, culture, the art establishment, recorded music, his own ideas – but his desire to tug at each thought or assumption, to test its strength, leads him into the most glorious trouble, and to ask questions that very sorely need asking.

Mark Dery is another outsider thinker, but one with a furiously different approach to Drummond's deadpan, sidelong observations. A punk by inclination, an academic by trade, he runs headlong into every topic, picking fights, firing off linguistic zingers in all directions, creating a vivid vision of 21st century life. In his world, the blogosphere is “this dictatorship of the commentariat... this grotesque hypertrophy of the chattering class”, his own stepfather is “Conan the Vulgarian” and his favourite Queen song (“The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke” since you ask) features “laser-sharp harmonies by robo-seraphim, heavy-breathing, glam-metal harpsichord that sounds like Scarlatti shtupping Liberace... and to top things off, a gong.” 

Looking at the image of the undead in pop culture, he races from contextualising Marx's vampiric capitalists within the Victorian Gothic to holding a magnifying glass to US survivalists' addiction to the zombie apocalypse trope. He outs HAL9000 in 2001 as gay in a discussion of Alan Turing and artificial intelligence, and punctures Lady Gaga's pretensions to transgression (albeit, in a rare misfire, missing the point of repetition in dance music along the way). 

Behind the firework display of wit and way-outness, though, there is an analytical mind as calmly, insistently enquiring as Drummond's: Dery's topic is always the American psyche, with all its militarism, machismo and pornographic greed, and he illuminates it with equal measures of love and despair. Running through his hallucinatory menagerie of jock politicians, self-help gurus, Star Trek slash fiction, rappers' dentistry, Santa Claus conspiracies, stoner noir, zombies, guns and “buck-hungry retailers of the unspeakable” is a thread of cool-headed analysis and disciplined questioning.

Like Drummond, Dery invokes Hunter S Thompson, but in his case it's not as a prankster, it's as a stylist of language and gimlet-eyed political satirist in a tradition that runs from Swift through Twain and implicitly on to Dery himself. He's not arrogant to place himself in this line, mind - but however outlandish, his observations are unerringly aimed, almost always ring true, and even when they don't they're not easily dismissed. Both he and Drummond, despite their refusal to preach, are moralists in the best sense. They don't look at the modern world in search of the flip headache-cure answers of the Malcom Gladwell school of guru-ism lite, but accept its madness and even revel in it. As the good doctor himself once said, “when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro” - and in this deeply weird, wired world we need more professionals like these two.

[spilladabalia]

Lori & The Chameleons - Love On The Ganges

[mitjalovse]

The career of the KLF did not follow any sort of a rule as we have seen throughout our discussion on their wild pieces, but their end was not a shocking surprise. I get why they broke down completely after achieving the amount of success I assume they didn't dream of – the things escaped beyond their control. Still, they did finish with an incredibly harsh tune. No, I'm not talking about their Extreme Noise conspiracy, I'm discussing their critical view of the Gulf War. The tune on the link is rumoured to be one of the last things The KLF made, though you cannot be shocked many call that their finale. There's a certain sense of that-is-all-folks with the sheer apocalyptic vibe. Sure, they could still return, but the song represent a marking line for them, they reached their limit.

[d834256]

Iain Sinclair, "London Orbital".

[laboitediabolique]

K Foundation advertisement, published in the NME, 14 August 1993

[jazzdailyblog]

The Genius of Andrew Hill: A Jazz Innovator

Introduction: Andrew Hill, a name that resonates with profound depth and innovation in the world of jazz, remains one of the most enigmatic and influential pianists and composers of the 20th century. Born ninety-three years ago today on June 30, 1931, in Chicago, Illinois, Hill’s unique approach to jazz has left an indelible mark on the genre. His contributions, characterized by complex…

[duranduratulsa]

Up next on my 80's Fest Movie 🎥 marathon...Ghostbusters (1984) on glorious vintage VHS 📼! #movie #movies #horror #comedy #ghostbusters #ivanreitman #billmurray #danaykroyd #HaroldRamis #RIPHaroldRamis #WilliamAtherton #CaseyKasem #RIPCaseyKasem #LarryKing #riplarryking #alicedrummond #ralphmarrero #SigourneyWeaver #rickmoranis #AnniePotts #erniehudson #steventash #jeankasem #reginaldveljohnson #MaxVonSydow #RIPMaxVonSydow #TomMorga #vintage #vhs #80s #80sfest #durandurantulsas6thannual80sfest

[priest-iuput]