Rags to Riches to Rags

September 22, 2007 3:17 PM

Watch the K Foundation burn a million quid. Google Video link to the full documentary, skip to 13:30 for the "money shot".

The K Foundation was an art foundation set up by Billy Drummond and Jimmy Cauty of The KLF. Burning things was a theme with these guys, from copies of their copyright-breaching debut album 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?) in a field in Sweden [the photo of which appeared as album art on 1988's Who Killed the JAMs?] to a 60 foot tall wicker man, documented in the bizarre The Rites of Mu.

The incineration was recorded on a Hi-8 video camera by K Foundation collaborator Gimpo. In August 1995, the film was toured around the UK, with Drummond and Cauty engaging each audience in debate about the burning and its meaning. In November 1995, the duo pledged to dissolve the K Foundation and to refrain from public discussion of the burning for 23 years.

posted by lazaruslong (40 comments total)

I have the book but I've been meaning to track this down for ages - great find: thanks!
posted by forallmankind at 3:27 PM on September 22, 2007

And it was Billy Drummond who also contemplated cutting off his hand at the 1992 Brit Awards and throwing it into the audience -- inspired by the red hand of Ulster.
posted by ericb at 3:27 PM on September 22, 2007

Drummond's mother wasn't named Minya, was she?
posted by mr_crash_davis at 3:29 PM on September 22, 2007 [3 favorites has favorites]

Previous KLF thread -- The Manual (How To Have a Number One - The Easy Way).
posted by ericb at 3:30 PM on September 22, 2007

I love those guys. Bill's book, 45, is one of my favorite autobiographies.
posted by analogue at 3:34 PM on September 22, 2007

My favourite KLF rumour: They invented Pete Doherty.
posted by brautigan at 3:41 PM on September 22, 2007

I second The Manual as mentioned by ericb. Even though it's dated as a method for getting a number one, it does give a really deep insight into modern music business. The more things change, the more they stay the same etc. Those guys were _geniuses_.
posted by phax at 3:45 PM on September 22, 2007

All that labour, taken from the market and burned.
posted by honest knave at 3:51 PM on September 22, 2007

honest knave writes "All that labour, taken from the market and burned."

Presumably, since money is given in exchange for labour, they received that money by donating their own labour. So all they really did was burn their own labour. Fair 'nuff.
posted by Bugbread at 4:07 PM on September 22, 2007

All that labour, taken from the market and burned.

They made every other pound more valuable by increasing scarcity.
posted by Rictic at 4:09 PM on September 22, 2007

brautigan: come on, at least link to the original.
posted by mkb at 4:18 PM on September 22, 2007

A bit anticlimactic.

All that labour, taken from the market and burned.

Preposterous. Burning the money would simply redistribute the wealth by causing deflation
posted by delmoi at 4:23 PM on September 22, 2007

delmoi writes "Burning the money would simply redistribute the wealth by causing deflation"

If the KLF had burned a million Deutschemarks in 1923, we might have averted WWII. The blood of millions is on their hands.
posted by Bugbread at 4:31 PM on September 22, 2007

i mentioned this to some of my friends, and the general sense seems to be that it's a huge waste. i don't think my friends understand the magic[k]al properties of money.
posted by maus at 4:33 PM on September 22, 2007

I've heard that it started out with them previously burning all of their master tapes, but no one believed they were the real tapes, so they escalated to real money.
posted by StickyCarpet at 4:33 PM on September 22, 2007

Tammy Wynette, anyone?
posted by Reggie Digest at 4:41 PM on September 22, 2007

All that labour, taken from the market and burned.

Modern currency is not wealth. Nothing but paper was destroyed.

It's like the Frito-Lay chip ads..... burn all you like, they'll make more.
posted by Malor at 4:52 PM on September 22, 2007

Gimpo, the filmer of the burn, also spends March 23rd every year driving around the M25 (London's orbital motorway) for twenty-five hours.
posted by ntk at 4:56 PM on September 22, 2007

If only The Black Room actually got released. They pledged to stay our for 23 years, right? So we've still got seven to go!
posted by 1adam12 at 5:00 PM on September 22, 2007

I actually said that because I'm curious to find out from those familiar with economics if it's true. Sure, it does cause deflation, but I was under the impression that spending and investment are good for the market, and that spending money wisely is better for the market than burning it.
posted by honest knave at 5:05 PM on September 22, 2007

I used to work at an arts complex in Liverpool called Open Eye. I worked in the photography gallery when Drummond was recording his first ever tracks with Big in Japan in the studio upstairs.

A year or two earlier, he'd been part of the production crew on Ken Campbell's and Chris Langham's production of the Illuminatus Trilogy. Mounted at the Liverpool School of Language, Dream and Pun (a very posh name for a coffee bar otherwise known at Aunt Twackie's Tearooms), the production was a huge undertaking of five different plays, each consisting of five acts (the rule of fives, remember?), each of which were performed on subsequent nights. After it's inauspicious opening in Liverpool, Campbell took it to the National Theatre in London.

Besides Drummond, a bunch of the others on that album also did pretty well. It included the first Echo and the Bunnymen track, and a band called The ID, who quickly became Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark. I see also that Budgie of Souxsie and the Banshees also played drums on at least one of the tracks. Drummond's partners in crime at that time included Ian Broudie, later to become famous as the front man with the Lightening Seeds, and Dave Balfe who joined Teardrop Explodes for a while.

The whole schtick of The Manual makes it look as though Drummond was a complete music industry naive, but by the time that Street to Street album actually came out, he had his own independent record label, Zoo Records, also based in Liverpool, and had done a fair old bunch of production for the majors, producing all of the early Bunnymen stuff.

But what really surprises me is the profound and enduring influence the Illuminatus had on his subsequent work -- particularly the KLF stuff. Also, it was good that he finally picked up a pop sensibility -- Big in Japan might well have been the worst band I ever heard in my life, and I've heard some real stinkers.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 5:14 PM on September 22, 2007 [2 favorites has favorites]

Many thanks for the reminder of Justified and Ancient, IMHO the best rock video ever.

Bring the beat back!
posted by Joeforking at 5:26 PM on September 22, 2007

Awesome -- I'm a HUGE KLF fan, and I second the recommendation of 45 (His earlier Bad Wisdom, less so -- though less because of him, but because of the shock-rock triteness of the Zodiac Mindwarp chapters.) I've gotten into huge arguments over the value of the burning-a-million-quid thing; a lot of people ask "Why not donate it to charity if they were going to just get rid of it!?" and, well, it never struck me that that was an option. It wasn't as if they had sat down and said "OK, we'll either give money to cure cancer, or we'll burn it. Heads or tails?" And, well, if you want to think of it as buying something, the traditional way to think of money, they DID buy something -- an experience.

There've been rumors/whatnot that they DIDN'T actually burn the million quid -- the biggest proof I've seen is that in the Omnibus documentary about them (which is very VERY interesting in its own right), they show the bank statement to prove that they withdrew a million pounds, though, apparently, a bit beneath, there's a deposit for roughly a million. (The copy of the show I saw was a bit blurry from a bootleg, so I couldn't tell myself, though it DID look like it. Of course, it could be argued that that was something else and/or a misinterpretation of the statement.)

The thing is, I don't know if it MATTERS that they DID burn the million quid or not. Or, perhaps they DID literally burn a million quid, but were reimbursed for it upon proof the money WAS destroyed (as that's what happens with destroyed bills -- they're reprinted to be put back in circulation). But, either way, though, it's the STORY and the SYMBOL of burning a million quid that's the important thing. Remember, a lot of what you know/see is a lie -- I've always thought the fun in life was choosing which lies -- particularly those that don't really matter one way or the other -- to believe.
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 5:41 PM on September 22, 2007

They're so ... quiet ... while they're burning the money. A couple of banal jokes, but otherwise silent attention to the task at hand.
posted by mosessis at 6:04 PM on September 22, 2007

Rev. Syung Myung Me: From the documentary it sounds like they first tried this nailing money to a board stunt, and then deposited the money when no one took it. Then later they took it out again and burned it.
posted by delmoi at 6:13 PM on September 22, 2007

The US burns that much money in Iraq in what, 10 minutes?

And that's MY money, so I'm an artist.

Watch me burn some more...
posted by dbiedny at 7:28 PM on September 22, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

If the K Foundation went on a 23-year haitus in 1995 and resolved not to discuss the burning during that time, then how come the wiki page for the film states:

On September 17 1997, a new film, 'This Brick', was premiered. The film consisted of one 3-minute shot of a brick made from the ashes of the money burnt at Jura. It was shown at the Barbican Centre prior to Drummond and Cauty's performance as 2K.

posted by rajbot at 8:11 PM on September 22, 2007

The US burns that much money in Iraq in what, 10 minutes?

This just in --

"$500,000: Amount the war in Iraq costs per minute, according to a new analysis by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard’s Linda Bilmes, put out by the American Friends Service Committee. The study finds that this $720 million a day could buy homes for 6,500 families or health care for 423,529 children."^*

That's $720 Million Each Day.

posted by ericb at 8:12 PM on September 22, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

If the K Foundation went on a 23-year haitus in 1995 and resolved not to discuss the burning during that time, then how come the wiki page for the film states:

in the hopes that you'd ask yourself that very question
posted by maus at 9:02 PM on September 22, 2007

I've been noticing more references to KLF/KF this past several months. I wonder if they're staging a comeback, and are laying the groundwork.
posted by five fresh fish at 9:06 PM on September 22, 2007

If the KLF had burned a million Deutschemarks in 1923

that's one less piece of penny candy they could have bought a kid
posted by pyramid termite at 10:57 PM on September 22, 2007

If the K Foundation went on a 23-year haitus in 1995 and resolved not to discuss the burning during that time [...] The film consisted of one 3-minute shot of a brick made from the ashes of the money burnt at Jura.

To be pedantic, that isn't really a discussion.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 1:17 AM on September 23, 2007

Bill's current project is No Music Day.
posted by little apollo at 3:32 AM on September 23, 2007

All hail the KLF!

Many thanks for that. I was so obsessed with the KLF that I wrote an article on them a while back that sort of got it out of my system.

I seemed to remember in the Omnibus doc they got someone to analyse the ashes left after the burning at that proved they had burnt at least ten grand (or something).

There's some good stuff on Wikipedia on the lead up to Burning a Million Quid from the K Foundation Art award.

Their appearances on Top Of The Pops were truly legendary...
Well until the dodgy pedo comes on...
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:35 AM on September 23, 2007

I seemed to remember in the Omnibus doc they got someone to analyse the ashes left after the burning at that proved they had burnt at least ten grand (or something).

Errr 80 Grand... which I is actually in the Burn a Million Quid film, which I probably should have watched before commenting on...
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 5:34 AM on September 23, 2007

This was amazing, I'd never seen or heard of it before. Thanks for posting it.
posted by voltairemodern at 8:40 AM on September 23, 2007

Brit Awards 92

"Bill hobbled off the stage to return with a large automatic rifle instead of a crutch, and a cigar in his mouth, and the whole thing ended with sparks and explosions from the rear of the stage, and Bill shooting blanks into the audience."
posted by rog at 8:01 PM on September 23, 2007

I was in the KLF fan club before the stadium house trilogy. I recently discovered the old dot-matrix printed newsletters and some cuttings from newpapers and magazines on their exploits.

The most striking thing for me was looking at the adverts for other bands concerts and albums. They are almost indistingishable from the indie bands around today. At least the KLF have changed a bit, althugh they really stopped being listenable after Chill-Out IMHO.

Also, releasing WTIL over and over again got old in 1991.

Saw the live show of them burning the cash in Liverpool and shared a beer with them at the aftershow bar. They seemed a bit at a loose end.
posted by asok at 5:37 AM on September 24, 2007

I think they realized Elvis Costello's wish:

I want to bite the hand that feeds me
I want to bite that hand so badly
I want to make them wish they'd never seen me
posted by krinklyfig at 5:04 PM on September 24, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Having KLF Chill Out on vinyl is one of the most soothing things I can imagine. I need a new set of Technics. Viva nostalgia!
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 3:42 AM on September 27, 2007