Customer Reviews:
 Coffee table anarchism - chapter 23 April 18, 2007
shoddy
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
By 1994, having conquered the charts several times over as the JAMMS, the Timelords and last but not least the KLF (Kopyright liberation Front), Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty had accumulated money to burn, and that's exactly what they did. Reincarnated as the K Foundation, they tried to put a million pounds nailed to a board up for auction at a list price of 500,000, but no art dealer would touch it, so they took the money all the way up to the Isle of Jura instead - and burned the lot.
Intended to rock the art establishment and expose its hypocrisy, the ultimate prank backfired when an outraged media and furious public turned on the duo while the art establishment simply pointed and laughed. It appears that while unmade beds and bisected livestock are art, burning money is not. Undaunted, Drummond and Cauty returned with the ashes in a tin and tried to flog those as a work of art, and when that too failed they went on a national tour to show a video of the event and try to make sense of it all. This is the book of the tour of the video of the event and within it is all you need to know about one of the greatest unacknowledged artworks of the late twentieth century.
One day, when the pursuit of money and status are no longer the central aim in life, statues will be erected to these men. In the meantime, if you feel at all sorry for Drummond and Cauty, maybe you should buy this book. And then burn it ;).
 Self-Publicist and Hoaxer December 18, 2008
Johnny C (Dorset, UK)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Bill Drummond was a man whose career in the late '80s / early '90s centred around making money from novelty records at a time when the pop charts were in the doldrums and ripe for exploitation.
He was, and presumably still is, the last person in the world to destroy his fortune in a cheap stunt. But, he was a very likely person to hoax the popular media into thinking that he had burnt a million quid for the publicity it would, and has continued to, generate.
It is the equivalent today of Simon Cowell declaring he is giving his entire fortune to Oxfam - it simply is not going to happen.
Don't get me wrong, in his time Drummond was brilliant at what he did, but all this talk about the later regret, the psychological effect it had on him, and so on, is all part of his self-publicity and mythologyzing of the event.
I am amazed that the public were suckered so easily. I guess the idea of burning money is an excellent concept to exploit; and we continue to be 'bothered' by it, just as Drummond undoubtedly knew we would be.
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