Comments on: The Manual (How To Have a Number One - The Easy Way)

The Manual (How To Have a Number One - The Easy Way)

yeti — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 14:19:43 -0800

The Manual (How To Have a Number One - The Easy Way). Both light-hearted and thorough, the Timelords, aka the KLF, wrote this tongue-in-cheek manual in 1988 following their own novelty pop No. 1 "Doctorin' the Tardis". "If you are already a musician stop playing your instrument. Even better, sell the junk. It will become clearer later on but just take our word for it for the time being." Oh and apparently have lots of tea on hand.

By: yeti

yeti — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 14:23:33 -0800

Another quote: Every Number One song ever written is only made up from bits from other songs. There is no lost chord. No changes untried. No extra notes to the scale or hidden beats to the bar. There is no point in searching for originality. In the past, most writers of songs spent months in their lonely rooms strumming their guitars or bands in rehearsals have ground their way through endless riffs before arriving at the song that takes them to the very top. Of course, most of them would be mortally upset to be told that all they were doing was leaving it to chance before they stumbled across the tried and tested.

By: chrominance

chrominance — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 14:28:04 -0800

Apparently The Manual was the inspiration behind the Pipettes.

By: dersins

dersins — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 14:29:00 -0800

A cursory search reveals that this actually may not have been posted here before, which, frankly, surprises the hell out of me.

By: beaucoupkevin

beaucoupkevin — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 14:29:53 -0800

What dersins said. Man.

By: smackfu

smackfu — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 14:32:36 -0800

Wow. The KLF page on Wikipedia is epic.

By: the dief

the dief — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 14:40:21 -0800

Supposedly also the inspiration for Edelweiss, although I don't know if that's really true or not. Regardless, The Manual is a hell of a great read -- found it some years ago and I reread it every few months, even though I'm not in a band and probably won't ever be. Bill Drummond of the KLF has at least two other books which are worth looking into -- 45 and Bad Wisdom.

By: daq

daq — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 14:40:38 -0800

The KLF are epic. Oh, and it's GRIM up north.

By: daq

daq — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 14:41:21 -0800

GRIM I tell you.

By: user92371

user92371 — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 14:42:00 -0800

Seconded on both of Drummond's books. 45 is one of the few non-fiction books I'll keep around and re-read from time to time.

By: greycap

greycap — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 14:42:02 -0800

ALSO KNOWN AS JUSTIFIED ANCIENTS OF MU MU

By: neckro23

neckro23 — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 14:44:43 -0800

FURTHERMORE KNOWN AS THE JAMS

By: mrballistic

mrballistic — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 14:50:31 -0800

i've loved this book for years. it's brilliantly written, and, unsurprisingly, you'll find some absolute truths hidden between the jokes.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 14:50:58 -0800

I finally figured out what's wrong with the world. Nearly 30 years later and this stuff still seems kind of freaky. MORE NOVELTY, PLEASE. FASTER, HARDER AND MORE SQUISHY.

By: boo_radley

boo_radley — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 14:53:34 -0800

I love that Edelweiss song. :|

By: ericb

ericb — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 15:09:56 -0800

Chill Out is a favorite of mine.

By: beelzbubba

beelzbubba — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 15:21:55 -0800

God bless The KLF. Long Live Ford Timelord!

By: beelzbubba

beelzbubba — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 15:24:47 -0800

The music and lyrics have all been written--it's all down to arrangement, now.

By: bruzie

bruzie — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 15:38:51 -0800

Something I didn't know for a long time was that Jimmy Cauty painted THAT Lord of the Rings poster....

By: Elmore

Elmore — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 15:53:02 -0800

This is brilliant, I've always wanted to read this. Thanks Yeti, you are justified and ancient.

By: The_Partridge_Family

The_Partridge_Family — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 15:58:50 -0800

IIRC, one of the "rules" is that you should be on the dole

By: stinkycheese

stinkycheese — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 16:01:36 -0800

And how about that time the KLF burnt a million pounds?

By: zsazsa

zsazsa — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 16:03:19 -0800

KLF's The Manual is practically a walkthrough for the 1984 ZX Spectrum game The Biz (mentioned on this page), a lemonade stand-like game where you and you struggling band try to make it in the music world.

By: Big_B

Big_B — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 16:27:46 -0800

Wow. Tonight I think I will dust off The White Room and annoy the neighbors.

By: Pronoiac

Pronoiac — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 16:52:08 -0800

The Edelweiss connection has been noted elsewhere. greycap: It starts with THIS IS WHAT THE KLF IS ABOUT. One reason I love the band: Alan Moore considers Bill Drummond mad as a snake. That's Alan Moore, the man who decided to avoid a boring midlife crisis by becoming a magician & worshipping a fraudulent, fictional snake god.

By: humannaire

humannaire — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 17:13:28 -0800

Money, as often quoted, is not the root of all evil. We do know WHAT the root of all evil is. That is to be explained in one of our future manuals and if we were to tell you the answer now you would not bother trying to have a Number One. The most telling part of the entire "Manual" is found in that last sentence. BTW, important post, yeti. I leave this material alone myself, but it must now be the time for whatever this actually is to see the light of day. I'll explain what I mean later because if I told you now you would no longer bother posting FPPs any longer on Metafilter.

By: Muddler

Muddler — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 18:12:26 -0800

3 a.m. eternal, baby.

By: the painkiller

the painkiller — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 19:09:53 -0800

3 a.m. eternal - THIS IS TELEVISION FREEDOM

By: Nahum Tate

Nahum Tate — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 22:49:19 -0800

"Doctorin' the Tardis" is singlehandedly responsible for making me believe that Rock and Roll Part 2 was the theme song for Doctor Who.

By: vbfg

vbfg — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 02:16:20 -0800

3 a.m. eternal - THIS IS TELEVISION FREEDOM Without doubt the best KLF moment.

By: cavalier

cavalier — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 07:56:17 -0800

Holy shit how did I forget about The KLF. [awesome]

By: Grangousier

Grangousier — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 08:03:31 -0800

2007: What the Fuck is Going On?

By: Pronoiac

Pronoiac — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 15:38:13 -0800

Tons more video is indexed at VideoCaffe.

By: bigtex

bigtex — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 15:39:13 -0800

I've loved these guys for a long time. When I first learned about The Manual I was under the impression that they wrote it before getting a number one hit. I like that version of the story better, but they're still crazy awesome guys that it's an amazing book.

By: deusdiabolus

deusdiabolus — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 03:07:38 -0800

Some trivia: Allegedly, the reason why there are two different versions of The White Room is because after the original version was completed, someone pointed out to them that they hadn't followed the steps laid out in their own Manual to produce number one hits. A bit of re-tweaking, and voila!. Dance music history.

By: PeterMcDermott

PeterMcDermott — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 09:23:05 -0800

KLF vs Tammy