omg, yeah, i really like “Barking,” too – it’s honestly hard for me to choose between their albums, but of course their earlier stuff is just THAT good.
“Everything Everything” is one of those live albums that i hold up as an example of a really good live album that gives you a real feeling of what it must be like to be at one of their live shows… you can’t help but be sucked in and energized. it makes me smile every time to hear the crowd suddenly roar during key moments… just so damn good.
Yes, the climax with Rez/Cowgirl is soooooo good.
I understand, lots of newer (shit, Barking is 12 years old now…) albums hit the same way for me.
Though give Diamond Jigsaw a 2nd go.
Haha. I am constantly realizing most of my favorite “recent” albums are a decade or more old recently. The joys of being damn-near 50.
Love the way they take high concept artsy stuff and make it accessible, engaging, and fun. Like a really good art school party in my imagination.
Friends with boats, man. Friends with boats.
I’m happy enough to have The White Room on vinyl. Chill Out or The Timelords I only hope to find in some cuts bin owned by someone who doesn’t know what they have (like my Taste of Honey LP, no idea why it was a dollar)
It does have a sort of Discordian feel to it, the inconsistency and abundance of fnords in all of it. Pretty much the only consistency with the KLF was how they riffed off of POEE and the Principia Discordia.
I follow Jimmy Cauty on Instagram. Considering the animosity to this film last year I was surprised to see him/his people promoting it on there…
I was a little kid in the 80s. I’m mainly familiar with them from being a teen in the 90s and seeing Blue Man Group on a school trip. At the climax (for lack of a better word) of their show, KLF’s Last Train to Trancentral blasted, and it was a bop, but I never enountered their other stuff in the wild (in the US).
Saw it last year. It was really fucking good. Wish it had interviews with Alan ‘Gimpo’ Goodrick or Cressida Bowyer.
BTW in end of their book 2023: A Trilogy, Putin seems to attack Europe with tanks.
In 1976, the Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool mounted a 12-hour stage production of Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus! Trilogy. It was a fateful event in the life of the show’s set designer, Bill Drummond.
Bill founded The KLF.
I think that was a stunt.
From The KLF Re-enactment Society - History :
Although the 1st of January 2021 is given as the official founding date of The KLF Re-Enactment Society, many claim it’s spirit began over three years earlier, when a replica of Ford Timelord (aka The JAMs Mobile) careered up and down Bold Street in Liverpool. This careering was done late in the evening of the 22nd of August 2017. At the wheel of this replica of Ford Timelord was the determined and heroically reckless re-enactor Philip K Blake.
But there are those in The Society that argue, this replica only truly entered the canon once it was vandalised by the then Justified Ancients of Mu Mu two days later. This vandalisation was done by them throwing a bucket of white paint at the replica Ford Timlord. This being seen as a re-enactment of them painting the original Ford Timelord white during the filming of The White Room sometime in the very late 1980s.
They made another version of that The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu - Come Down Dawn:
at the end of a Blue Man Group performance they get to tossing tons of rolls of toilet paper over the audience while “Last Train to Trancentral” is playing. It was incredible and everyone in the venue was going nuts. Toilet Paper, KLF and the Blue Man Group.
Not sure if they still use that piece of music, but I’m hoping they do. It fit the mood perfectly.
Can’t wait to see this. IMO their story was so much more interesting than Negativland. (Different sounds yes, but sameish use of copyrighted material and reluctance to go along with the Big Music industrial complex…)
(i know, i know! Forgiveth me! )
In case anyone’s still reading these comments, the article in The Guardian today is very good:
A few weeks ago Bill asked me for a coffee with him and Jimmy, in the cafe we had met in a dozen years before. I went with both hope and trepidation: their blessing would make any issue with Warner Chappell much easier, but would they try to block the film?
In the end, they were extremely kind and welcoming. “We’ve seen it,” Bill grinned. This knocked me for six, given we had avoided sending out links before the release. “And we love it.” Jimmy had a quibble about the sequencer we had used in the reconstruction, and Bill noted that he wasn’t the stage manager of Ken Campbell’s epic 1976 production of Illuminatus!, but the production designer. I recounted how I had spent more than a decade following in their footsteps, feeling like an honorary member of the KLF.
“What are you doing now?” I asked. “Working,” replied Bill, with no further explanation. Enigmatic and brilliant to the last. “See you back here in 10 years,” I told them, and I was on my way.
On the other hand, kicking up a fuss about blocking this while simultaneously secretly cooperating with it sounds exactly on-brand for them.
Oh no he didn’t!
Going to have to try to track this one down…KLF, like Boing Boing itself, are strongly influenced by RAW…
