Sunday, March 30, 2008

I Remember liking this in '91 & now happy to find their bio includes thievery, irate Swedes, livestock carcasses & burning money (Hayes'll like this)



The KLF
a.k.a. The Timelords, Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, Klf

More than any pop band in history, the KLF ripped off the music industry for a bucketful of loot and got away with it -- as illustrated in their own guidebook to creating number one singles, The Manual. Bill Drummond and Jimi Cauty applied the tactics of punk shock-terrorism to late-'80s acid house and became one of Britain's best-selling artists (recording also as the JAMS and the Timelords) just before their retirement in 1992. The duo then deleted their entire back catalog -- a potential loss in the millions of pounds -- and declared they wouldn't release another record until peace was declared throughout the world.

The son of a Scottish preacher, Bill Drummond (b. April 29, 1953; South Africa) ran away from home to become a fisherman before enrolling in a Liverpool art school in the late '70s. He became involved in Liverpool's punk scene, and in 1977 formed the short-lived punk band Big in Japan with Holly Johnson (later of Frankie Goes to Hollywood) and Ian Broudie (the Lightning Seeds). A year later, Drummond co-founded the Zoo label (with Dave Balfe), serving as manager and producer for the Teardrop Explodes and Echo & the Bunnymen through the early '80s. After both bands left Zoo for the majors, Drummond followed by joining WEA as an A&R man; there, he signed Strawberry Switchblade, Zodiac Mindwarp, the Proclaimers, and Brilliant. He quit the business in 1986, though, and released the solo album The Man one year later for Creation Records. The album was a satiric goodbye to music, voicing Drummond's hope that he would never be involved in the industry again.

With his retirement only six months old, Drummond decided to make a hip-hop record. He called an old friend, Brilliant's Jimi Cauty (b. 1954), to help with production and technology. A week later, the duo -- christened the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, or the JAMS for short -- recorded the sample-heavy pastiche "All You Need Is Love." The single, released that May, was followed a month later by the JAMS' debut album 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?), which continued the sonic piracy with long passages lifted from the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and ABBA. As a matter of course, ABBA objected to the sampling, and in September the Copyright Protection Society demanded that all copies be recalled and destroyed. Instead, Drummond and Cauty traveled to Sweden, hoping that a personal meeting with ABBA would resolve the situation. Locked out of the group's Stockholm studio, the pair decided to return to England, stopping only to burn 500 copies of 1987 in a Swedish field. (The incident was photographed and serves as the cover for the best-of album History of the JAMS.) Cauty and Drummond kept the album in the spotlight though, by advertising in The Face magazine five remaining copies for sale at the price of £1000 each. They eventually sold three, gave one away, and kept the last. In October 1987, the JAMS released an edited version of the album called 1987 (The JAMS 45 Edits), with specific instructions on how to recreate the original 1987 at home.
A second album, Who Killed the JAMS?, appeared early in 1988, but it was superseded by the May release of "Doctorin' the Tardis" (recorded as {the Timelords}). Incorporating samples from Gary Glitter, Sweet, and the theme to Dr. Who, the single hit number one in the British charts and eventually became one of the most popular sports anthems of all time. Within six months, "Doctorin' the Tardis" was collected on two JAMS compilations, the American History of the JAMS a.k.a. {The Timelords}, and the British double-LP Circa 1987: Shag Times. Six months later, Cauty and Drummond compiled their knowledge of popular success and the music industry, publishing The Manual with a statement of purpose included in the subtitle: "How to have a number one the easy way -- The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu reveal their zenarchistic method used in making the unthinkable happen."Cauty and Drummond's second novelty single, "Kylie Said to Jason" (credited to the KLF, or Kopyright Liberation Front), proved a flop in July 1989, so the pair changed directions later that year. Jettisoning the beats of their previous work but retaining the samples and effects, the duo played a major part in the development of the '90s boom in ambient music. Cauty and Drummond recorded the classic Chill Out album in late 1989, mixing source material from two DAT machines onto a cassette recorder during a live session. Concurrent to the Chill Out project, Cauty had actually formed another ambient house forerunner, the Orb, with Dr. Alex Paterson. The duo recorded "A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From the Centre of the Ultraworld" in addition to material for an album, but split early in 1990 -- with Paterson taking the name for his future recordings. Cauty then deleted Paterson's contributions, re-recorded large portions, and released the results credited only as Space.

Obviously, the KLF's ambient recordings weren't going to top the charts, so later in 1990 Cauty and Drummond moved back to acid house and earned the greatest success of their career. The single "What Time Is Love?" -- the first volume in what became known as the Stadium House Trilogy -- hit number five on the U.K. singles charts in August 1990. "3 A.M. Eternal" took over the number one spot in January 1991, and The White Room LP topped the album charts upon its release in March. The final single in the trilogy, "Last Train to Trancentral," also made Top Ten. The KLF's success carried into Europe during 1991, and even the Americans caught on by September, pushing "3 A.M. Eternal" to number five and The White Room into the Top 40 album charts. The U.S.-only "America: What Time Is Love?" reached number 57 in November 1991, and early in 1992 "Justified and Ancient" -- the surprising pairing of the KLF with country queen Tammy Wynette -- almost reached the American Top Ten. Cauty and Drummond, the best-selling singles act in the world during 1991, were on the verge of becoming superstars.

The duo had other plans in mind, though. Voted Best British Group by BPI and the Brit Awards, the KLF were scheduled to perform at a London awards ceremony on February 13, 1992. Cauty and Drummond did show up, but horrified the formal audience with a hardcore thrash version of "3 A.M. Eternal" (performed with the justifiably named Extreme Noise Terror) that also included Drummond spraying the crowd with blanks from an automatic rifle and the post-performance announcement, "The KLF have left the music industry." Topping their already extreme actions, Cauty and Drummond delivered the carcass of a dead sheep -- plus eight gallons of blood -- to the lobby of the hotel after-party. The industry and press reaction was overwhelmingly negative, but Cauty and Drummond had already made their mint. Promising that no more releases were forthcoming until peace reigned around the world, they officially retired from music on May 5, 1992 -- the date commemorated the 15th anniversary of Drummond's emergence in the music industry, with Big in Japan. To convince the public that it wasn't simply a scam to sell more records, Drummond and Cauty deleted the entire back catalog of KLF Communications.

Though the KLF did return one year later, it was not to release music but to provide a commentary on the art world. First, a series of newspaper adverts commanded the world to "Abandon All Art Now." Cauty and Drummond -- thinly veiled as the K Foundation -- then announced that they would be awarding a prize of £40,000 to the worst work of art that year. Winner Rachel Whiteread (who had also won England's Turner Prize) refused the award, prompting a ceremony in which the K Foundation vowed to burn the prize money. Whiteread accepted the award just seconds before the bills were torched, and donated the money to charity.

In August 1994, the artists formerly known as KLF managed to outdo themselves yet again. After physically nailing £1,000,000 to a board -- an act which necessitated the largest cash withdrawal in U.K. history -- Cauty and Drummond showed the money around England as a work of art entitled "Nailed to the Wall." Then, on the island of Jura, in the presence of one journalist and one cameraman, they burned the entire sum as yet another bizarre commentary on the art world.

Cauty and Drummond's first recording in almost three years appeared later that year. Though peace didn't rule the world in late 1994, the K Foundation honored the historic peace accord between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat by releasing -- only in Israel -- an ultra-limited-edition single, a novelty cover song entitled "K Sera Sera," recorded with the Red Army Choir. Drummond and Cauty also recorded a track as the One World Orchestra for the HELP charity album in 1995. In late 1997, the KLF finally re-emerged (as 2K) and released the single ***k the Millennium on Mute.

(John Bush wrote this.)

Monday, March 24, 2008

Brown Bag 2 Review

Amy Lynn Hess' "Brown Bagazine" recently published an excerpt from my "Moving Day" in Issue 2, devoted to Manifes-toes. A "review" is at:

http://feministreview.blogspot.com/2008/03/brown-bagazine-issue-2.html

Sunday, March 16, 2008

from Touch Me

DIRECTIONS


Dear Player,

1. The last time we played you were heaving up sonnets. Thick sentimental meter covered in textual goo. You woke up at four a.m. on the verge of panic.

2. Elle’s harebrained staging of a miscarriage demands mutilated identity. Short circuited she pretends to walk down the aisle, tonguing a chocolate frosted spoon. Her gaze cut by a razor of sunlight. My stomach pangs have returned. Sympathy pains. Inscape is imagined to hold its own against threat. Rarely does Elle accept symbolism over authority. This is what she always wanted. She wanted to begin.

3. Teabags dried onto our windowsill. Begin breathing. Erotica chewed into mouth. Create diabolical results. I am guilty of rummaging through her foul delicates. I breathe rank discoloration, stale fumes playing games. Elle is crumbling untranslatable. Sleeping Beauty’s burnt lips awakened in terror. Subject castration wears a rubber mask. Eye sockets mold delight; lingerie soaked under thrust of menstrual fiction. Pants cuff thighs in muff lunge. Between two powers the recourse of anal eroticism fears castration, the reticence of anthropologists. Neither tears nor sperm are prohibitions. Murderous confirmations reveal obsessed neuroses of the father.

4. Once upon a deconstructive surgery the proper body terrorized virtue. Insist on this missionary form. Stick your finger in my ass. Fetal delegates crave harmonic rhythm. She used to suck my cock and push my hands away when instead I tried to fuck her. Immediate relation to the unclean thing.

5. Each speaking being has corporeal altercations with climax. Falstaff smeared clitoral spasms. Queen Elizabeth, Bernadette Mayer, (that is the sexual life). Rhymes sound church bell resuscitation. Cheek-flats honeymoon her lower body. Strung between paranoia and poison, sustenance feeds on organized repetition. Body of nails begins a mother-speaking being. Maternal body is nourishing, murderous, and fascinating. Serrated errantly her blouse stitched hormonal derangement. Chiropractic embraces.
“Explain once again your genitals hemorrhaging with paternal function.”

Intimately nocturnal struggling between the bodies of two women is the incentive toward defilement. JalapeƱo thumbprint smothered cock lips. Light my cock ablaze and inject it into eyeball. Umbilical cord constricted wrists. Cannibalistic libido pulverizes fantasy. Labia glisten. Her dress around her waist preyed obliqueness of pre-memory. Learn her birthmark. Elle swallows until there is nothing left: an epileptic’s reentry. Lead into cage. Argue and persuade. Differentiate between sophisticated restraints and decaying symbols. Unavoidably diluted, I will have my complimentary altruist.

6. Elle’s hands curled around a chalk-drawn wastebasket wait for pyrotechnic epistolary. Nips and hisses speckle back an epileptic audition. Suture this languagescape. Clean amplified mystery and self-destruct. Within this architecture we are eroding into spatial intimacy of other, an eager mouth, a body-bound thing. The designated punch line complains of violent spasms. Think of my lover’s face covered in marginal comments. Operate on a subordinate function pulling it fragmentarily into a nearby sentence. Despite apparent chaos you are alien to original purpose.
Sincerely,
Simon

Friday, March 07, 2008

LET THE BIDDING BEGIN

So i know this isn't the most intimate setting for what i'm about to say, but it's the only place that many of you check regularly. i am currently facing a situation, well a number of situations that are going to affect where i decide to live come june. my wife has recently left me and decided she wants a divorce. this situation is absolutely fucked and there is no justifiable reason for its happening. i didn't do anything nor did she. strangely this is just what is going on. i am reaching out to you goons because you are my friends and i have very few here now (those of you who are here are wonderful and thank you for all your support and that to come). so let the bidding begin...where the hell should i live. i cannot afford boulder on my own after june so a move or move-in is in order. life is fucked people. but here's a new ride for a new joe...love you all.