The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned a Million Pounds

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The book is a gauche attempt to weave together the story of a band (about which I actually learned very little, but perhaps and in retrospect more than I needed to) with an eclectic mix of incongruous, incoherent and poorly stitched together theories about art, psychology, alchemy, magic and (I’m serious) the world financial crisis of 2008. Sometimes, the music is just a means to an end - in their case, a million-quid bonfire that Higgs suggests may be "a magical act that forged the 21st century". You will find engineers everywhere trying to impress you with the fact that “Sergeant Pepper” was recorded on a four track.

But he rides the line between scepticism and indulgence perfectly, and in fact the conclusions he is led to, about why they burnt all that money, are remarkably convincing. This is a worthless argument pursued by those unlucky ones who have never really been moved by the glories of pop music. If things were to go badly wrong and you weren’t able to keep up the interest payments they can always force you out of house and home and get their money back that way. They continue to view the act’s cheaply recorded, debut blockbuster as striking gold and will spend the next few years pumping fortunes into studio time, video budgets and tour support whilst praying for a repeat of the miracle and the volume album sales that bring in the real money.All through these years, alongside the scratchy and austere indie labels, has grown what might be termed the independent service industries, providing services that previously only the majors could command: numerous pluggers, publicists, sales forces and, most important of all, reliable and comprehensive distribution. We won’t deny that behind the majority of indie labels is a would-be Branson, whose stunted megalomania will undoubtedly be reflected on the way he brings up his children. Between you sipping this cup of tea and getting to Number One you are going to be involved with a lot of people along the way and from all these people you can learn a lot. This book is out of my regular wheelhouse and yet it has plenty of facets such that there are enough to overlap and catch my interest. These owners are usually very enthusiastic and encouraging types who have a long, broad and deep love of all things musical; often they have been musicians themselves but have decided to knock their days on the road on the head and get into what they hoped would be the more lucrative and stable business of owning a studio.

Banks will go to extremes thinking up new and ingenious ways of getting us to borrow money from them. Thankfully, this book is as far from an official band narrative as you can get, and it is entirely fitting that The KLF be served with an account as baffling and mad as that which John Higgs has created here.Since the rise of the indie label in the days of post-punk they have provided a healthy means for no hopers, outsiders and terminally angry types to unload their angst. In our lifetime Great Britain has been pretty good at coming up with or reinterpreting a constant flow of entertaining subcults that young people can either lose or find themselves in. All records in the Top Ten (especially those that get to Number One) have far more in common with each other than with whatever genre they have developed from or sprung out of.

I am going to bang on about The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned a Million Pounds rather a lot. But even then the disgruntled purists amongst the loyal following desert in disgust at having to share their private club with the unwashed masses. Of course there are those artists that have worked long and hard building personal artistic confidence, critical acclaim, a loyal following (all strong foundations) and then have a Number One, that is that crowning glory. It was whilst perusing the Audible sale, I came across Paul Higgs’ book, The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned a Million Pounds, and, based on my curiosity, I purchased it. It would be a travesty if the story of a band as subversive and confounding as The KLF were to be told in a quotidian music biography format.You can begin any Sunday evening by listening to Bruno Brookes introducing the Top 40 Show between 4pm and 7pm. All that in actual fact has happened is, unwittingly or not, the Golden Rules have been adhered to and the nouvelle subcult has attained maximum media exposure.

Be ready to dip your hands in the lucky bag of life, gather the storm clouds of fantasy and anoint your own genius. What can be achieved when no great financial rewards or long term career prospects allowing for creative freedom can be hoped for, let alone guaranteed? Ludicrously ambitious and with an exquisite sense of the absurd, John Higgs is truly a book worthy of those mad bastards Drummond and Cauty. One thing they and we suppose all major international companies are good at is moving the goal posts; probably because they owned them in theis a fiction novel written by Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty and released in August 2017 under their JAMS moniker. But their stuff somehow captured, as Higgs says, that feeling ‘at the end of the rave, when all your energy had been dissipated and all that is left is an unearthly glow…that moment, in the small hours before dawn, that seems to hang outside of time’. The problem, of course, is almost everything that came out of the Summer of Love is as bad as everything else in life, only worse because the sanctimonious old hippies like to pretend they aren't as bad as their fathers, so the whole thing is sort of predicated on a lie. I probably won't read a book this year that'll affect me as profoundly as this has in terms of how I view the world.