Frequently Asked Questions

Yes, when he was seventeen in the early seventies. It’s rather well-done in a stylistic, gothic-y-looking way. “It’s quite funny actually – the border is made up of Orcs climbing on top of each other up the sides, and crawling along the top and bottom. For the Tolkienesque out there, it features Gandalf with the Red Ring shining and Glamdring to hip, with Samwise and Frodo hobbits, and also three portraits of Legolas the Elf, Gimli the Dwarf and Gollum the gollum.” When Pete Robinson asked Cauty about it, he mentioned that ‘it was mainly student nurses who bought it’. It is signed J. Cauty at the bottom. This is one of Athena’s best-selling posters, and rumour has it that they came to pick it up in a helicopter. The publishing information from the back of the poster:

2931 Lord of the Rings/ Artist: J.Cauty. illustration based on the Lord of the Rings by J.R.R.Tolkien (c) George Allen & UNWIN (PUBLISHERS) LTD. 1954, 1966 (c) 1988 Wizard & Genius-Idealdecor 8618 OETWIL AM SEE/ZURICH Switzerland.

(this information is taken from the old FAQ – note that the original poster says (c) 1976 – Ed.)

Interestingly, the Walt Disney company used an image for one of their own comic books about Donald Duck experiencing the LOTR story, which is highly inspired by Jimmy’s poster.

For more details and a high quality scan see Athena Posters.

Yet another KLF project that didn’t quite get off the ground. It was envisaged as a 10×2000 series of limited edition 12″ singles, released weekly in September-December 1988.

The original schedule included the following releases:

KLF 004T/R: What Time Is Love? (17th/24th October 1988)
KLF 005T/R: 3 a.m. Eternal (31st October/7th November 1988)
KLF 006T/R: Love Trance (14th/21st November 1988)
KLF 007T/R: Turn Up The Strobe (28th October/5th December 1988)

It is not entirely clear which of the many scheduled but non-released singles was intended to be KLF 008, as there are two singles that were announced and/or for which sleeves and labels were printed:

KLF 008T/R: E-Train To Trancentral/The White Room (12th/possibly 19th December 1988)

or

KLF 008T/R: The Lover’s Side/Go To Sleep (12th/19th December 1988)

All the labels and sleeves were printed up as a batch lot to save money (and still survive – they can be seen in Pete Robinson’s Justified And Ancient History, and some record dealers try to sell them for 25 pounds a time! Mad!) even though some of the tracks were unfinished.

In the end a combination of location filming in Spain for the White Room motion picture taking precedence, and a complete lack of interest from the British public, lead to the series being cancelled, although the first 4 of the 12″ singles were eventually released (unknown whether they contained the same tracks as first realised) and most of the tracks re-appeared as radio edits on the unreleased White Room soundtrack LP. The discography holds full detail about all the (some only scheduled) releases.

However in January 1990, Last Train to Trancentral was released with the cat no. KLF 008R, first as a white label, then 2000 standard releases (of which 1000 were warped and not released). It is possible that this is the re-named remix of the original ‘E-Train To Trancentral’, but no-one knows. Another interesting note regarding KLF008R is that the label’s “Other Data” is “Go to Sleep”, not “Welcome to the Trance” as on all the other pure trance 12″s.

Many copies of KLF 008R have a sleeve similar to KLF005T (pink on black) but the pink is a more fleshy colour than on Pure Trance 2. All sleeve fronts also featured the name of the track, “THE KLF”, a small pyramid blaster in a circle and “PURE TRANCE” in the colour of the number.

It is not sure whether or not Love Trance and Turn Up The Strobe have been recorded (although there is a possible bootleg release that claims to be “Love Trance”; please see the bootleg section for more details), but some of Go To Sleep is on the White Room film soundtrack and it features on the bootleg demos. The chorus of Go To Sleep is also sampled on the 808Bass mix of LTTT, and parts of it also appear on the Moody Boys remix of “What Time Is Love?”.

According to Pete Robinson’’s “Justified And Ancient History”, there were plans to remix the above as an album called “Pure Trance”, and then further as “Live At Trancentral”, as well as having them on the White Room soundtrack. As is usual with most KLF plans, it didn’t happen.

The Partnership of “Rockman and Lx” was producing great results, not only with their own work, but elsewhere – the ´Blue Danube Orbital mix´ of the KLF´s 3 a.m. Eternal and the promo-only remixes of ´Money´ by Fischerman´s Friends, for example. But, according to Alex, some of those mixes came out in Germany credited as KLF remixes.

It led to a lot of confusion, though the only real confusion is knowing who were the members of the Orb at the time the record was released.

In fact it was a row over this very question, of linking the KLF with the Orb, that fractured the original Patterson/Cauty pairing. Alex Patterson remembers that “the Sun Electric project (O’locco) was recorded at Trancentral, and Jimmy didn’t want to be known on the record as Jimmy Cauty so we called him Gavin Cauty. That was how ridiculous the whole scenario was becoming.”

Consequently, details of the Orb’s activities around this time are a little sketchy. But we do know that an Orb album was recorded by Alex and Jimmy early in 1990, and that Alex departed in April 1990, taking the group name with him.

Space was then released on KLF Communications, attributed simply to Space, and with only Jimmy credited by name. The split was decided acrimonious. Jimmy and Bill were keen that the Orb should join them on KLF Communications, but Alex felt that it was unfair, as “I felt the Orb was myself, with Jimmy working with me”. Jimmy already had the KLF and it appeared that that he wanted the Orb as well (Alex is at pains to stress that the argument is long forgotten, as he and Jimmy have since completely made up.)

The official KLF press release accompanying “Space” claimed that it was originally intended as the Orb’s debut album, but was now simply Jimmy’s own creation, as he’d removed all of Alex’s contributions. Alex accepts this: “Space was done solely by Jimmy. At the end of the day, he took out all of my ideas and replaced them, or just left them as empty spaces.” Alex has got the original version of Space, but as far as he is concerned, there’s no need for that to ever see the light of day. Others claimed that there has nothing been removed and that Alex simply isn’t credited at all.

The White Room film a 50 minute ambient road movie with footage of Drummond and Cauty setting off from Trancentral on a quest to find the White Room, driving through London and Spain, to a soundtrack of pop-trance. It has been shown in public only once.

As mentioned before, the KLF received weird mail from Illuminatus! fans after calling themselves the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu. Much of the mail was from obvious cranks and crackpots, but then in mid 1988, they received a very weird letter: a legal contract. The contract was with an organisation or individual calling themselves “Eternity”. The wording of this contract was that of standard music business legal speak, but the terms discussed and the rights required and granted were of a far stranger kind. Whether The Contract was a very clever and intricate prank by a legal minded JAMS fan was of little concern to Drummond and Cauty. For them it was as good a marker as anything as to what direction their free style career should take next.

Their solicitor (David Franks, played by himself in the film) advised that they should not put their names to legally binding agreements without first understanding all of the implications of doing so. He advised them not to sign the Contract. The KLF of course ignored him and signed the contract.

In the first term of The Contract they, Drummond and Cauty, were required to make an artistic representation of themselves on a journey to a place called THE WHITE ROOM. The medium they chose to make this representation was up to them. Where or what THE WHITE ROOM was, was never clearly defined. Interpretation was left to their own creativity. The remuneration they are to receive on completion of this work of art was supposed to be access to THE “real” WHITE ROOM. Your guess is as good as anybody’s.

Initially Drummond and Cauty planned to stage a art exhibition where the journey and arrival at THE WHITE ROOM would be represented on canvas and exhibited; but driving down the Marylebone Road on a wet September afternoon in 1988 in their infamous U.S. Cop car, Cauty suggested, instead of doing the art exhibition they should make a film. The making of a “Road Movie” had always figured in their vague plans for the future. With money coming in from all over the place for their Timelords record maybe now was the time. Or at least they thought so.

They contacted their friend and associate, the film director, Bill Butt and made plans. Six weeks later they were filming in the Sierra Nevada region of Spain, with a top class international crew (who had just finished working on an Indiana Jones film). But things started to go wrong immediately. The weather, guaranteed to be blue skies of epic proportions until well after Christmas, was low and drizzly. Some business deals crashed, losing the money that was earmarked to complete the film. When they viewed all of the uncut rushes that had been shot, they knew that they had just thrown away the best part of £250,000: most of the footage was out-of-focus, or badly filmed. Of course if you talk to anybody who tries to make a film they will tell you of the catalogue of disasters that came between them and their reported triumphant premier. Drummond and Cauty had no experience of this. They just felt that the Gods were against them and got seriously depressed. They had meetings with their accountants to assess what the damage would be if they were to cut their losses and pull out then. Bill Butt persuaded them to see it through.

By February 1989 when they had enough funds together for them to shoot the interior scenes and the London location shots, David Franks had become steadily more intrigued by all the implications of the various clauses of The Contract. Although The Contract was between The JAMS and Eternity, Eternity gave no address, Eternity left no room for negotiation. [Note in ‘Justified and Ancient’: “At 3am Eternity rang, said she knew What Time Is Love?”]. David Franks believed he had found a get out clause. Something that Drummond and Cauty would later call the LIBERATION LOOPHOLE. It was decided by Bill Butt and the other two that the signing of the contract and Franks’ discovery of the LIBERATION LOOPHOLE should be dramatically reconstructed, filmed and respectively used at the beginning and the end of the film.

The rest of the film was then shot, Drummond and Cauty recorded the soundtrack. Bill Butt and editor Rob Wright edited the film. It was only 52 minutes’ long but it was BIG SCREEN and looked good. They planned either a proper cinema release or a club tour, with the KLF playing the soundtrack live for the second half of 1989. The White Room soundtrack LP was to be preceded by the release of Kylie Said To Jason, the video for which included scenes from the film. Additionally many of the scenes were included in a short promo for the film, with a soundtrack of Madrugana Eterna, which was shown on TV. Drummond and Cauty are shown leaving Trancentral, and driving through London, then driving through mainly desert country. Some memorable scenes include the JAMs-mobile covered in white dustwash, with the windscreen wipers clearing a space, Drummond combing his hair before sauntering down the road as if he was a traffic cop, and the dead eagle scene: Drummond had come across a beautiful but decomposing eagle at the side of the road, which nobody else would go near, as it stank. Drummond insisted on being filmed with it as he strode down a one track rail line, the significance of this at the time could not be argued. Finally the wheels of the JAMs-mobile stop in a snow drift, and the KLF climb upwards through the snow towards a huge radar dish, wherein they find the White Room.

Kylie Said To Jason was planned to be a big pop hit to promote the LP. It wasn’t. The release of the LP was pulled. The What Time Is Love Story LP became JAMS LP 4 instead. A video for the pure trance What Time Is Love? is sometimes shown on MTV. It consists of unedited footage from Sierra Nevada. Two shots of sheep in a field bookended a 3 minute shot of the JAMs-mobile gradually driving a couple of miles towards the camera across a barren plain. It’s extremely tedious, and getting MTV to show this can be viewed as a prank, despite the fact they often do! A slightly different version is also available on a compilation tape of Indie promos, but it is VERY rare.

A combination of worries about the dramatic qualities of the film, and lack of commercial success caused huge doubts in Drummond and Cauty’s minds. However the rapidly emerging rave and club success of their pure trance songs took their minds off the doubts. They played their premier live performance at the London Club HEAVEN on Monday the 31st of July. Later that evening they met a young down and out, claiming to be called Mickey McElwee. For the price of a meal he told them the most shit scary story the both of them had ever heard. Later they related the story to Bill Butt. It was agreed that it could make the basis of a plot for the film.

As far as we know the finished film should contain both an Inner and Outer film. The Inner film is the original one shot in late 1988 and early 1989. The Outer film contains the dramatically reconstructed events that according to Mickey McElwee, took place, unbeknown to Drummond and Cauty while The Inner film was being shot. There will also be, what we will call, a Third Strand which will consist of scenes plotting the tensions and predicaments that Drummond, Cauty and Butt experienced while attempting to make The Inner film. All three plots will intertwine with each other telling the one simple story. The story of Men out of their Depth. In The Inner film Drummond and Cauty play their alter egos KINGBOY D and ROCKMAN ROCK. In the outer film they play themselves. Bill Butt reckoned it would cost a further $1,000,000 to finish the film. They showed the Inner film to German investors and some sheep in Munich, (its one and only showing!), to try and persuade them to finance the film’s completion. It appears they never raised the cash as the script was too weird. But when their pop career took off and they did make some money, it seems as though they dropped their plans to finish the film altogether.

A complete script is currently available on the website of Pirate Cinema Berlin (who screened the Inner movie in 2005), containing the Outer, Inner and Third strands, as well as sets/locations/stage directions and lots of other really interesting info, though it’s up to the reader to decide whether this is the real deal. When once asked about said script Bill Drummond denied its authenticity, but it’s unclear whether this was a genuine remark or just Bill not wanting to talk about something he had left behind himself.

An advert appeared in the NME in 1994, claiming to be copies of the whole film, but investigation has revealed this only to be the inner film. Thus several bootlegged copies and a DVD of the inner film are around, and available from generous list members. The quality of all known copies is pretty good, considering they’re 4th or 5th generation. Sound and visuals are quite clear and noise and interference don’t detract from the film’s content too much. There is no dialogue in this Inner Film, only the music. It is possible to hear much of the original White Room soundtrack, for example the original “Build a Fire” and “Go to Sleep”. It is not known what happened to the original film.

As we all know Bill and Jimmy burnt a million pounds. They gave Gimpo a camcorder to film (in Super 8) the burning as it happened. This resulting film was first transferred to two 8 mm projector film spools with a soundtrack, and first shown to bemused villagers on Jura. The film is in colour, good quality and “quite boring”. Quite literally it is 55 minutes of Bill and Jimmy burning the million pounds, feeding the flames with bundles of 50-pound notes. Jim Reid appears, and occasionally Gimpo is seen, mainly whilst he’s fiddling with the camera.

Later it was edited down in order to fit it onto one spool because “when the first spool ran out everyone thought it was the end and seemed disappointed that they had to sit through even more…” (Gimpo). However, Jimmy claimed that it was because everyone talked through it anyway so they thought they’d have the “audience providing the soundtrack”, but this may be a cover, as according to some reports, the soundtrack tape was ‘lent’ to the BBC for the Omnibus programme and never returned despite Gimpo’s best attempts. It is quite likely they just thought “why bother hooking up the sound?”. Jimi said that the video was to be destroyed two days after the event, because they wanted people to have faith and not have to have proof. But he was obviously lying!

The highlight for most list members is when Gimpo walks outside of the boathouse, and we can see the glowing embers rising out of the chimney, and floating off into the darkness. Somewhere in the film (perhaps its the bit where he goes outside) Gimpo decides to pocket a bundle of notes – a few minutes later he starts to feel guilty and puts the money back. Bill (in a letter to Nick) commented on the problem of the film’s name, against it really being Bill and Jimmy’s money: “Calling the film ‘Watch The K Foundation Burn A Million Quid’ is a creative compromise.”

On the 4th September 1995, and on some further occasions, newspaper adverts appeared advertising the film to local audiences. They announced a showing of the film, to be followed by a debate centring around a question e.g. Why did the K Foundation burn a million quid? Was it Art?, Was it Madness?, Was it Rock and Roll? etc. The 5th September saw Bill and Jimmy at the In The City convention in Manchester, showing the film, followed by a discussion in front of a 100-plus music-industry audience, where they asked for people’s opinions, not on whether it was ethical to burn the money, but on whether it was Rock and Roll? Then they were interviewed on Radio 1’s Evening Session. Bill said: “And we’re very proud of this film, this is the biggest kinda visual thing we’ve done.”.

The film was toured around the country, usually gracing cultural centres in major towns and cities, and some more obscure venues like film festivals, builders yards, Glastonbury Tor, an inner-city comprehensive and then Eton on the same day, and MIND drop-in centres. In Glasgow they planned to show it at various venues over a weekend of ‘art- terrorism’ eg, Barlinnie prison, (but they were refused permission and asked to leave!) (see the relevant archived articles from the Sunday Times, Blah Blah Blah and the Scotsman for more on this eventful weekend). Bill and Jimmy also took the film to Belgrade, in Serbia. The Independent on Sunday reported that it was very well received because 1) they showed to this very artistic community and 2) Serbia experienced 36 million % inflation so they could relate to burning money. Each showing was followed by a discussion, where Bill and Jimmy wanted to get the audience to voice what they thought was the reason B&J; burnt the money. Many reviews of the showings from local newspapers and transcripts of various local and national radio interviews are available online.

Following the Cape Wrath contract Bill and Jimmy would no longer comment on the burning at post-film discussions, preferring to leave an associate, Chris Brooke or Gimpo to lead them. Bill and Jimmy’s self-imposed silence was usually broken after around five minutes.

An Info-sheet was distributed in the later stages of the tour. Attached to this were a series of quotes of audience observations from the various screenings. Bill and Jimmy invited audiences to write to the address given (The K FOUNDATION, PO Box 91, HP22 4RS, The UK), with their own reactions. Some people even got replies from Bill. Other list members gained other memorabilia at the screenings, such as soggy newspapers adverts, signed vodka bottles, and in one case a signed ukp 50 note!

As well as discussing the film, Bill occasionally opened up on other matters. At the Manchester showing in November 1995 he is quoted as saying “We would do it [release records] again, if we thought people would like it”. At the same showing he refused to sign a copy of Pete Robinson’s Justified And Ancient History, saying “That’s a load of bollocks… It’s all lies.” Bill is also notorious for refusing to be held to quotes.

The film was due to be shown for the final time in a car-park in Brick Lane in London, 8th December 1995. Several list members turned up to witness the event turn into something of a fiasco. The car-park idea was abandoned on the night, but a basement room was hired in the Seven Stars pub nearby. Around 400 people turned up for the showing, and most somehow managed to crowd into the small room. Bill and Jimmy hung around, but were evidently nervous, and hid for most of the evening in the toilets with their minders. Gimpo showed some of the film but the cramped conditions proved too much and the showing was abandoned. Some reports indicate the police called it off, but although the police did turn up, it is understood that they had no part in the decision.

The film was due to be cut up and sold off for ukp 1 per frame after the Brick Lane showing, but this never happened. At the end of the show, when everyone tried to grab frames, Gimpo protested “no, it’s not this film that’s being cut up, it’s the other [two- spool] copy”, going on to point out that he didn’t even want to do it, it was all Club Disobey’s idea. A subsequent advert in the NME gave the ansaphone number of London’s Club Disobey (0181-960 9529), but to the best knowledge of the list members, no frames were ever gleaned from this. The only frames list-members obtained were blank ones from the film header.

At several screenings people with professional cameras, camcorders and dictaphones recorded the film and subsequent discussions but bootleg copies have yet to surface. Gimpo also made videos/recordings saying “maybe a video sometime next year”. He is also quoted (from the Omnibus documentary) as saying “I’ve never been a film director before.” A proper DVD release was once planned if there was enough demand, but this has yet to happen.

When the WTKFBAMQ film tour reached Glasgow on the Friday 3rd November 1995, Bill and Jimmy enacted a piece of performance art entitled “Pissing in the Wind whilst thinking of Bob Dylan”.

Occurring early afternoon, the ‘performance’ featured Bill, Jimmy and Marc J Hawker, a Glasgow resident and friend of the K-F. It took place in Kelvingrove Park (medium: artists, park, security cameras, urine). Apparently, there was to be a live cc-TV link-up with the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow University which would have shown the boys in action to an audience of 200 luminaries, but this didn’t happen (the CC camera missed them), although a video of the urination was eventually shown there in the early evening. Bill is quoted as saying that it was probably a good thing it wasn’t live.

Wearing cammo jackets, they quite literally pissed into the wind, behind a shed. A photo in Scotland on Sunday only managed to catch a stream of urine coming from Drummond. Cauty and Mark Hawker were either just finished or about to start. You can’t see their willies by the way.

In November 1992, Drummond and friend Mark Manning (also known as failed rock star Zodiac Mindwarp, furthermore known as Zed or Z) decided to save the world by planting a photo of Elvis at the North Pole, with the idea that his soul would seep down across the world on the ley lines and bring about world peace. The two were also hoping to find Baby Jesus within themselves. So they and Gimpo to drive to the North Pole. They got all the way up to Lapland, almost freezing to death, before realising that the road runs out and the unfrozen Arctic Sea starts. However they did meet the keeper of the ‘most northerly lighthouse in the world’ so they presented the photo to him and then came home.

Drummond and Manning decided to write a book about their trip called initially ‘Bill and Zed’s Excellent Adventure’ or ‘The Lighthouse At The Top Of The World’. They decided that it would be a limited edition of one, hand-transcribed and illustrated by them (they were both artists after all) and bound in 18th century reindeer leather which had been recovered from a shipwreck (!!) and which Drummond bought from an auction for some outrageous price. The idea being that before the invention of the printing press books were so rare and special that an interested reader would make a pilgrimage across Europe to see a book. In this age of information technology, they wanted to re-capture some of that magic. So the book was to be displayed in the specially purchased Curfew Tower, which was built as a prison for 19th century dissidents, in Cushendall on the East coast of Northern Ireland. Unfortunately they hadn’t considered just how long it would take to hand-write and illustrate, and the project was put on hold. Then, in October 1996, it was somewhat surprisingly published in paperback by Penguin and is now widely available as ‘Bad Wisdom’.

The style of the book somewhat reflects that of Hunter S. Thompson (author of ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’). The sleeve reviews are by Jarvis Cocker from Pulp: “The truth, no matter how uncomfortable, cannot help but be beautiful – this is a very beautiful book” and subversive writer/artist Stewart Home: “This is a brilliant anti-novel with a pedigree running from Swift and de Sade to Dada and Burroughs. Blunt, shocking, uncomfortable. A future underground classic.”

There is no dedication, and it all begins on Monday 2 November 1992 the day Bill’n’Z’n’Gimpo set off for Helsinki. The text alternates between Drummond and Manning. Drummond just recounts the detail of the events, presumably truthfully, and describes people in his own often wonderful way. He also writes relfectively about life, his past (and the KLF and it’s demise) and various things that irk him about the world, eg. MTV. In the meantime Manning is writing wild Hunter S Thompson fiction, wild horrific trips of fancy based around the real life characters, but presumably with some basis in truth, like he’s tripping all the time and he sees everything exaggerated. The interplay between the two accounts is very interesting and works very well most of the time. You start to recognise the events or objects or people in real life (i.e. Bill’s account) that Z bases his fantasy’s around. Bill even writes about Z writing which sheds further light … one page he’s bored and not writing anything … the next he’s scribbling away furiously in the back of the car chuckling demonically … the next he’s acting out the characters he’s created, entertaining Gimpo and Bill.

To publicise the book Bill and Mark (and ‘tour manager-cum-support act’ Chris Brook; Gimpo also went along, but played no part in the actual performances) undertook a series of public performances (and book signings) initially starting off with a date in New York then at various venues in towns and cities across the UK. From the event flyer:

“This performance is adapted form the novel Bad Wisdom which is based on Drummond and Manning’s journey to the North Pole in the winter of 1992. The performance reflects the double narrative of the book with Manning and Drummond relating their separate but intertwining versions of the story.”

They react a rehearsed performance, with Zed standing behind an ornate brass lectern which Bill picked up from a church salvage yard for 300 quid, and Bill using “Stig of the Dump’s bird table – a crazed scaffold of fence posts and sycamore stumps”.

Mark Radcliffe’s (late) late-night show on Radio One featured Bill and Mark reading from their book, and sound-clips of these quotes can be found as hidden tracks on ‘Lost Sounds Of Mu 2’.

They also made an appearance on MTV’s Hanging Out, which is pretty surprising considering Bill’s anti-MTV stance in the book. This may be related to the following anecdote from one well-connected list member: “Okay. This is gospel – it came from a friend who works there and saw it happen. A guy who works in transmission at MTV in London found a black bag in the street last week. He took it to work, and from the contents (which I only know to include several sheafs of A4 and six copies of Bad Wisdom) deduced that the bag belonged to none other than…Bill Drummond! So a contact number was found, and Bill had to turn up at MTV to reclaim the bag!!!! According to my friend, he was scowling something horrid, and was rather terse with whoever it was he talked to (so same as ever there then!).”

In May 1996 Bill and Mark went to the Congo to write the next chapter in the search for the Lost Chord. Bill said the next chapter will probably be out around 1998, but it took them seven more years to get their second book finished and published. “Wild Highway” got released in August 2005, incorporating the same writing style as “Bad Wisdom” before.

During an online interview session with The Guardian Bill told that a third book was planned to be set in South America, while at other occasions the book was meant to take them to the moon. However, the third journey is yet to happen.

A Bible of Dreams is a book of images by Mark Manning (Zodiac Mindwarp), largely photomontages, with text by Bill Drummond. It is described as “a visual poem composed by MS Manning”, with Drummond giving “a personal interpretation of the poem” in a commentary, along with a biographical background piece. The colour plates are reproductions of a picture collage pieced together by Manning in a scrapbook during a 1992 Scandinavian tour, and sent to Drummond shortly after tour ended. Drummond found himself repeatedly drawn to its contents, each perusal revealing more, “like a collection of good verse”. Manning was horrified when he suggested publishing it.

The book is published by The Curfew Press, the two men’s publishing company based in The Curfew Tower. It’s available only in a limited edition of 200 numbered copies, signed by Drummond and Manning, costing UKP500. It is bound in blue Nigerian goatskin, each page hand-printed and stitched into a calf-leather spine, and comes in a blue moire silk slipcase. It’s not so much an expensive book as an average work of art. They have sold a few to “universities and the like” If you want one and have a “large amount of money” to spare, contact the Curfew Press.

Zed’s art in The Curfew Press’ A Bible Of Dreams looks like it’s deliberately fallen. The collected trash of a rock’n’roll degenerate, the collages entangle images from heavy metal, pornography, Nazi Germany and Disney. Drummond’s text suggests they represent an archetypal rock’n’roll headspace: a place where sleaze, ambition, rebellion and religion meet. Zed reckons that just by sampling these images he’s raising them from the base to the divine. And there are points in his commentary where Bill finds a postitivity in porn. Maybe Zed and Drummond are examining cultural inequality. Wondering why some kinds of art are raised over others. Which is no great surprise from two men who work in rock or pop, an area of culture that is often ignored by art critics.

Drummond and Manning undertook a series of interviews to promote the book, in i-D, Vox and GQ magazines. In one interview Manning said that the text of the book was available on the Internet, then laughed. List members have looked far and wide and have found no trace of it. It is most likely that this statement was a deliberate wide-up for us and people like us, and an Internet-hype backlash joke. We don’t think it is online.

To replace the dilapidated Ford Timelord Jimmy purchased two Saracen armoured vehicles at a scrap yard for ukp 4,000 and found equipment in them which he thought could have been used for sonic warfare. He has tried to assemble the acoustic gun from information he found on the Internet. Installing huge amplifiers and special speakers to cope with the very low frequencies cost him “tens of thousands of pounds”.

The 25,000-watt sonic gun can project sound for around 7 miles, and Jimmy annoyed his Devon neighbours by testing it on Midsummer’s Day, 1996. Jimmy said: “I moved to Devon six months ago for a bit of a rest and this is a project I am taking an interest in. I do not see it as music or art.” He said that he aimed the gun away from homes and it seemed to have no effect on sheep.

He was testing his two Audio Weapon Systems in a field near his new home. ‘He alerted people to the fact that he was doing this by setting off some military flares. Then he tested his Audio Weapons System for an hour for a very select group of scientists and friends. The Audio Weapons System is not designed to kill people.

[Melody Maker]

Cauty first tested it at a Wire gig on Hungerford Bridge in May. In January, Panasonic [the “Finnish conceptual techno nutters”-NME] borrowed one of the Audio Weapons Systems for tests on how sonic waves affect the human body at Brick Lane in London. A fax from ‘Mr. Smith, the Head Of Commercial Exploitation at Advanced Acoustic Armaments’, was sent to The Maker. It read: “The test took place to establish the parameters of the new vehicle solo and in tandem with its sister model, SS 9000K+L. The test featured new software generated for our latest commercial client, EXP LTD, and is described by Mr. Cauty as featuring ‘the ultimate battle between sound and commerce ending in the death of all musicians and their ascension to rock-n-roll heaven or hell as befits them.’ Yesterday we received communication with ex- Government employees who, in the Sixties, worked on audio weapon development with an offer of help and some ex-classified equipment. We regret any such death or damage that has resulted from our tests, but there are casualties in every war. The Triple A Formation Attack Ensemble will perform ‘Foghorns Of The Northern Hemisphere’ as part of an educational programme supporting our research shortly.

Most of this is probably scam, but Cauty has (very allegedly) recorded an album of sonic waves for Paul Smith’s Blast First label under the name AAA. The album is in the hands of lawyers who are trying to clear some of the samples used on it, and remains unreleased until now. It appears to be a Cauty solo project.

More recently, Jimmy teamed up with new Asian-techno group, Black Star Liner for a happening in a field on Dartmoor [this is the EXP reference above]. Jimmy chartered a ‘chopper to take BSL and assorted journos out to Dartmoor, where he intended to remix the Halaal Rock track in his tank. Apparently, BSL bumped into Cauty on London’s South Bank, while he was driving about in his tank, he got hold of their album, and said that he wanted to work with them. Anyway, the chopper was grounded by severe fog, so everyone was put on a convey of buses. All the journos were given orange jackets to wear. They eventually arrived at a field full of military vehicles, and people in yellow jackets, wearing goggles and ears protectors, doing some form of formation dancing. The journos were lead to their seats, and had large floodlights shone into their eyes, while the yellow jackets let of flares all around them. There were a load of goats skulls on sticks around the field, and a whole pile of fireworks let of towards the end of the mix, when Cauty was mixing in some Jimi Hendrix. However, this didn’t really go down well with BSL. For the record, Choque (leader of BSL) said in the NME “Cauty’s truck is a bag of complete shite. And he’s a f—ing misery guts”

Then in November 1996, Jimmy turned up at the A30 road protests in Honiton, Devon, to lend his support. The A30 Action press release read:

“A30 Action and A.A.A.(Formerly the K Foundation, formerly the K.L.F.)

As of 2300 hrs 19.10.96 the armoured division of the A.A.A. Formation Attack Ensemble established a front line defensive position at the Trollheim Hill Fort, Fairmile, Devon, in collaboration with A30 Action in defence of the threatened trees, badgers and some insects. At dawn on 21.10.96, the Triple A will activate their S.Q.U.A.W.K. 9000 sonic device in response to any offensive action taken on behalf of the Connect consortium. The @utonomous communities of Fairmile, Trollheim and Allercombe have resisted the soul destroying consumer nightmare of the private profit A30 through a 2 year campaign of Non-Violent Direct Action. Now armed with the 2 Saracen armoured personnel carriers both loaded with 15 Kilowatt Soundsystems and weighing over 10 tons they intend to dance in the face of the legions of destruction.”

Shortly after Jimmy began blasting local Devon residents with Puff the Magic Dragon at the protest against the A30 road-building, an article appeared in the Big Issue (mag by and for the UK homeless), by self-styled “art terrorist” Stuart Home describing how he was kidnapped and shown an arsenal of weapons at Jimmy’s house.

The article was a spoof, but the UK security services took it seriously and put Jimmmy’s house under surveillance for several days before finally 30 police with sniffer dogs turned up and searched the place from top to bottom. They found nothing, except the two Saracens which were both properly taxed and insured. Jimmy was released without charge. He said “I suppose if you take two tanks to a road protest you’ve got to expect the authorities to get involved.” Finally, the two Saracens were towed from the road protest with Jimmy’s consent, (but not cooperation). A few weeks later he took them back.