John Higgs' brilliant and wide-ranging book 'The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band Who Burned A Million Pounds' came out ten years ago and just keeps on selling. It sold initially to the fans who bought their records. Then to those absorbed by the fringe figures in their mythology - Ken Campbell, Alan Moore, Robert Anton Wilson, the Discordians. And then to people who just wanted a staggering and barely believable story about the attacks by two free-wheeling cultural terrorists on the worlds of art and music at the end of the 20th century. It sold so well in fact that it's just been republished in a 10th Anniversary edition with additional material.
John Higgs is an exceptional speaker as this pod demonstrates and talks here about the outer reaches of their extravagantly lunatic strategies - the ABBA court case, the dead sheep, the pagan rituals on Jura, the collaboration with Tammy Wynette - and how many backfired on them and why Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty have barely seen each other in almost 30 years. This podcast was recorded in front of an enthralled audience at 21Soho in London on October 30th 2023.
Order the 10th anniversary edition here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/KLF-Chaos-Burned-Million-Pounds/dp/139961035X
Tickets for Word In Your Ear live at 21Soho on November 27th here: https://www.tickettext.co.uk/ZOthfatjxi
Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free! - access to all of our content: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
Get bonus content on PatreonHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Great album trilogies, suing Madonna and "the pantheon of psychedelic heaviosity"
The spectacular Dead & Co, songs performed backwards & happy birthday Diamond Dogs!
Why They Might Be Giants now perform an entire song backwards
Guy Chambers - writing with Robbie, a tangle with Bowie & half a bagel with Paul McCartney
Alan Edwards, pop PR – ‘Bowie was like King Arthur and the Spice Girls like the Pistols’
Rock’s image-makers, men on dancefloors and why bands can’t act like bands anymore
Paul Carrack has seen it all – beat, soul, prog, pub rock, pop & the perfect ‘slow burn’ career.
Nige Tassell was so obsessed with Dexys he’s tracked down all 24 ex-members
Why Nick Mason’s “cottage industry” band plays just early Pink Floyd
Let It Be revisited, the wisdom of Steve Albini and a woeful tale about Steve Marriott
The genius of Little Feat, the Man with the Twang & pop’s greatest scandal in the making
Steve Diggle of the Buzzcocks remembers the day “a terrible beauty was born”
Rock snobbery, the seven wives of Gregg Allman & the greatest solo on a pop record
Harold Bronson of Rhino Records kept a 40-year rock and roll diary…
The “amniotic throb” of modern pop, the eternal life of the Top Gear theme and the Blue Nile’s lucky break
Hollywood Babylon, the inspired gimmickry of Catch A Fire and the luck of Ron Wood
Neil Tennant remembers life “with dyed red Bowie hair and clattering platforms”
Richard Thompson – “you know it’s time to go when the audience starts throwing chairs”
Neil Tennant remembers the pop press and “the last great era of forward-looking songs"
The Stones’ clothes, our love affair with Abba & rock’s most appalling spectacle
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Superfancast
Derringer Discoveries - A Music Adventure Podcast
Bandsplain
One Song
Popcast