The (Inscrutible) KLF

My interest in the KLF had been growing again recently thanks to a number of coincidences. I also had to share some of the sheer audacity of some their exploits: some of their most (in)famous being burning £1 million and making a movie of it, firing blanks from an AK-47 over the crowd at their British Music Awards show and latter reworking one of their singles with Tammy Wynette.

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At school, I never used to be interested in history very much. I’d scrape through the compulsory subjects at high school and avoided them as soon as I was allowed to select my own electives. By the time I finished my maths degree at university I was fascinated by history. What changed? I simply figured out that history becomes a lot more interesting when you are actually interested in the subject matter. History for history’s sake just doesn’t do it for me.

I learned a lot about mathematics and music during my undergraduate years and the more I learned the more I found myself interested in their histories. In 2001 I bought a book called The Ambient Century which traces prominent groups and ideas that fall loosely under the banner of “ambient music”. It’s a fantastic read and I highly recommend it if you’re interested in the genre. Since 2001, I’ve been periodically diving into it to dig out artists or find out more about those I’ve already listened too.

This round of enthusiasm for the history of the KLF was set off when one of my colleagues said that the KLF’s had planned to make The Black Room, revisiting The White Room with the help of a thrash-metal band. When I turned to Wikipedia to check whether this was the case (yep, it’s true) I found a trove of extremely well-written and well-referenced articles that form the KLF WikiProject.

Here’s a rough overview of some of the more bizarre things “King Boy D” and “Rockman Rock” have done in their many and various guises, heavily cribbed from the project’s articles.

Doctorin’ the Timeline

In 1987, as the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (JAMs) - a name derived from the Illuminatus! books - Drummond and Cauty release What the Fuck is Going On?. This album was one of the first to make heavy use of unauthorised samples from contemporary musicians. Unsurprisingly, this got them in legal trouble, especially with ABBA for their use of Dancing Queen, leading them to burn or throw into the North Sea all the remaining copies of the album.

The first I heard of their work was a year later when they released Doctorin’ the Tardis as the Timelords. You remember this one: “Doctor Whooooo, hey! the tardis, Doctor Whoooo”.

I was an impressionable, newly minted teenager at the time, indiscriminantly taping all the junk I could find from the various Top 40 programs on the radio. I remember being delighted by Doctorin’ the Tardis as I hadn’t (knowingly) heard any other music that deliberately referenced other pop artefacts. Stutter Rap was released the same year but I had no idea who the Beastie Boys were at the time. Damn those “Explicit Lyrics” stickers!

I was in year 11 at high-school when The White Room was released. This album effortlessly shifts from “stadium house” tracks such as 3AM Eternal to the low-key ballad Build a Fire. The former is a rave-inspired rap and pop-dance blend that is backed by samples of cheering crowds lifted from U2’s Rattle and Hum. The latter features chilled pedal steel guitar and wistfully spoken lyrics.

I had tried tracking down The White Room a couple of years ago but had no luck. I couldn’t find it in record stores, online stores or bargain bins anywhere. Why? Because once Drummond and Cauty disbanded the KLF they deleted its entire back-catalogue!

After the Fire

Riding the success of “The White Room”, the KLF did the only logical thing for a band that defies logic: they announced their retirement after their show at the British Music Awards. According to Select Magazine this was

the last grand gesture, the most heroic act of public self destruction in the history of pop. And it’s also Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty’s final extravagant howl of self disgust, defiance and contempt for a music world gone foul and corrupt

Of course, they didn’t entirely retire. The KLF - now as the K Foundation - appeared again on my radar just before the turn of the millennium (well, in 1999 anyway) with an album and concept entitled ***k the Millennium.

They had been around under this new guise since 1993, wreaking havoc with the art world by setting up their own art prize - The K Foundation Art Award - for the “worst artist of the year”. Humorously, the K Foundation award had exactly the same shortlist as the Turner Prize for best British artist and, to really put the winner of both prizes, Rachel Whiteread, on the spot the K Foundation made their prize worth twice as much as the £20,000 Turner.

Not content to give ungrateful artists large sums of money attached to dubious honours, they tried several other audacious artistic experiments with money. Their most notorious made clear their transition away from the KLF by burning what was left of their proceedings - a total of £1,000,000 - on a small island off the mainland. This bizarre feat also got them in the record book at the time for largest bank withdrawal.

Before it was burnt the million quid had toured at some private exhibitions as art. The first - Nailed To A Wall - was simply 20,000 £50 notes nailed to a wall. Later, the money appeared in bins or laid on tables. They unsuccessfully tried to auction that work and six others involving cash in their Money: A Major Body of Cash collection. The million pound Nailed To had a reserve price of £500,000 and its catalogue entry noted that

Over the years the face value will be eroded by inflation, while the artistic value will rise and rise. The precise point at which the artistic value will overtake the face value is unknown. Deconstruct the work now and you double your money. Hang it on a wall and watch the face value erode, the market value fluctuate, and the artistic value soar. The choice is yours.

Justified or Insane?

I’ve recounted these anecdotes to several friends and relatives. Reactions have been variations on “really?”, “why didn’t they just give it to charity?” and “that’s stupid”. I’ve had the same thoughts myself but I also can’t help pondering these reactions and why people are so surprised or appalled. Sure, it was a lot of money to destroy but why should there be a moral imperative for them to “do something useful with it”?

The manner in which they earned the money was as equally frivolous as how they destroyed it. Why is a large number of people spending $30 on a KLF album a reasonable use of money but using the same money to generate heat, light and controversy not? It was the labour and ideas of Drummond and Cauty that brought the money in and, if money is just fiat for that labour why can’t they choose to effectively waste their own time and energy?

Art or madness? The choice is yours.