Friday 8th December, 1995
A news article in last week’s NME (‘The K Foundation ‘flog’ film’) has announced that “The K Foundation and London’s avant-garde nighterie Club Disobey will host an event at 8pm on December 8 where they will show the K Foundation film – previewed at In The City in Manchester earlier this year – and give people a chance to buy frames from it.”
I’ve already rung my KLF-mad friend Ade Scripps to see if he wants to catch up at the Brick Lane event. We’d had our own KLF-inspired art duo at university but I’ve not seen him since we took our final exams back in the summer.
When the day comes, I leave my shared house in St Leonards and stop off in the Co-op on London Road to flick through the broadsheet newspapers, looking for any adverts promoting tonight’s event. Sure enough, page 9 of The Guardian carries an ad headlined CAPE WRATH 5-11-95, revealing that ‘ON 5 NOVEMBER 1995, JIMMY CAUTY & BILL DRUMMOND SIGNED A CONTRACT WITH THE REST OF THE WORLD AGREEING TO END THE K FOUNDATION FOR A PERIOD OF 23 YEARS’ and ending with the line ‘8PM TONIGHT, THE PREMIER CARPARK, BRICK LANE’.
Confusingly, page 15 of The Independent carries what appears to be another K Foundation advert, simply reading SIX THOUSAND TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY SEVEN CANS OF TENNENT’S SUPER. I buy both newspapers and a 2-litre bottle of Olde English cider and head to St Leonards Warrior Square station to catch the train to London.
Later that evening:
It’s dark and it’s cold and it’s on the verge of snowing. I’ve drunk nearly half my cider on the train and have been trudging around Whitechapel in a merry state, wondering if Ade’s going to show and where the hell The K Foundation are. I’ve located the Brick Lane car park but there’s nothing happening.
Fortunately some bloke turns up and tells me and a few other lost souls that the event has moved indoors to The Seven Stars pub back down the street. I stash my unfinished bottle of Olde English in a bin outside the pub, creep inside, get another pint and sit at the nearest empty table.
Jimmy Cauty, Bill Drummond and their companions arrive and sit next to me. Shit. I try to stare at my pint and not at them.
One partial, abandoned screening of ‘Watch The K-Foundation Burn A Million Quid’ in the Seven Stars’ basement later, I stumble out into the cold night air. I’ve not spoken to the K Foundation and not been able to buy a frame from the film (Gimpo objected very firmly to fans trying to snatch his reel from the projector) but my cider bottle is still in the rubbish bin, undisturbed.
I fish it out and finish it off on the train home. Ade never made it.
Thursday 25th April, 2024
It’s early evening and I’m on the 19.09 train from Brighton to London Victoria, heading to Coventry for a couple of nights in order to explore the middle section of The K-Line, a 180 mile long leyline connecting Trancentral in Stockwell to the Mathew Street manhole cover in Liverpool.
My wife Carolyn has picked up some snacks to help me on my way: cereal bars, cashew nuts, that sort of thing. Also a four-pack of Budweiser beer, in a limited edition can designed by the British Pop Artist Sir Peter Blake. I’ve been at work all day and, to celebrate catching the train in time and having the chance to sit down for a while, I open one.
In a previous pamphlet for GANTOB, I wrote about the connections between The KLF and William Blake. Aside from their surnames, the artistic practices of William and Peter Blake have nothing formally in common, although both occupy iconic positions in the story of English art.
There is a direct connection between Sir Peter Blake and The KLF, however. The ferry hired to cross the Mersey at K2 Plant Hire’s event The Krossing on Thursday 23rd November 2023 was the Dazzle Ferry(*), painted by Blake in a Pop Art homage to the ‘Dazzle Ships’ camouflage first used on boats during the First World War.
Is the Blake Budweiser can a work of art? It’s certainly pretty and widely available as an artistic ‘multiple’ but does it have any artistic worth? While it’s available in the shops, it has more retail value full than empty. Could a full, or empty, can have any measurable worth in the future though?
Sunday 24th December 1995
It’s late in the evening on Christmas Eve and Drummond and Cauty are driving around London on a flat-bed truck, attempting to hand out the previously advertised Six Thousand, Two Hundred And Thirty Seven cans of Tennent’s Super to the capital’s street drinkers.
It was some time before news of this happening reached the wider world. I can’t remember now where I first read about it but Drummond tells the whole sorry tale in his 2000 memoir ‘45’. The cans of Tennent’s Super were twice assembled into a shining blue cube of super strength lager, which twice collapsed.
As he writes, “The remains of it are still stacked up in a container that Jimmy and I have, where we keep all our old costumes. The plan is that if there is ever a retrospective show of what The K Foundation did, we can empty these leftover cans down the drain and then use them to build a hollow, life-size replica of our original cube and this piece can act as the all-important documentation of the event.”
In which case, The K Foundation’s numerous empty but otherwise bog-standard cans of Tennent’s could have more worth than an equivalent number of unopened ones, and arguably more than Sir Peter Blake’s mass produced Pop Art Budweiser cans, empty or full.
One way in which Tennent’s Super has more value than Budweiser is its alcohol percentage: 7.5% to Bud’s 4.5. I tried getting hold of some Tennent’s Super in Brighton while I was writing this pamphlet but many of the city’s off licences are a bit too gentrified for a street drinker’s tastes these days, with most equivalently strong beers being half the size, twice the price and called things like Texan Sex Robot or Grandad’s Dead Horse.
Tennent’s was impossible to track down so I had a choice between McEwen’s Champion and Carlsberg Special Brew. I bought a can of the latter because of the Bad Manners single but I don’t know if I really want to drink it.
Saturday 9th March, 2024
It’s late afternoon and I’m staggering into Bletchley. I’ve spent the whole day walking north-west across the Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire countryside along the course of The K-Line and I’m exhausted. I’ve taken numerous wrong footpath turnings in the last couple of hours, trying to get across from the village of Mursley to Bletchley railway station in order to catch the train home to Brighton before the sun sets. I’m also desperate for a beer.
I enter the first off licence I find, a branch of the Co-op on Newton Road. The one with all the helpful little robotic delivery vehicles lined up outside. I need a beer with some kind of extra fruit kick, a citric or berry tang, to rejuvenate me, and opt for a can from the BrewDog range. It’s called Elvis Juice. When I eventually reach the station, take my seat on the Euston bound train and open the beer, my mental and physical equilibrium feels restored.
Thanks to ‘Bad Wisdom’, his 1996 novel with Mark Manning, we have an idea about what Bill Drummond thinks of his own drinking. “I don’t want to get pissed; I never do. I have an in-built something that prevents me from getting drunk. Three pints of bitter and I switch to halves; after the second half I start drinking water. Z hates me for it.”
What does Drummond think about BrewDog branding one of their beers in homage to his beloved Elvis Presley, I wonder. Does it help contribute to the cause of world peace?
Thursday 27th November 1997
Another evening and I’m back on Brick Lane. This time, I’m carrying a letterbox-shaped, full colour flyer.
ARTHROB FOUNDATION & ELLIPSIS PRESENT THE OFFICAL BOOK LAUNCH: K FOUNDATION BURN A MILLION QUID. ARTHROB DJ’S + CREW + READINGS. 27 NOVEMBER 1997. ATLANTIS ART SPACE.
I remember I bought a copy of the book, by Chris Brook and Alan Goodrick (Gimpo).
I remember there was K Foundation ‘Brick Ale’ for sale. 6% abv, 500ml. ‘The beer of the launch. Of the book. Of the film. Of the act. The lingering death of the idea; seeping…’
I remember buying a bottle of Brick Ale and being told not to drink it because it would be worth more if it was still sealed. Then drinking it anyway. And buying another. And drinking that as well. With apologies to hardcore KLF kollectors, I may also have drunk a third.
I remember there were readings. I can’t remember who by. Chris Brook, I think. Iain Sinclair, possibly? Perhaps not. I do remember someone burning a ten pound note.
If I hadn’t have been drinking, I might have remembered more, although there’s no guarantee of that.
How much money have I spend on alcohol over the years? A million quid? Unlikely.
How many drinks, though? Six thousand, two hundred and thirty seven? It’s possible.
When is addiction? A drink every day? Still going at it into middle age? Answers on a beermat, please.
STUART HUGGETT, 11 May 2024
Number 40 of the 52 Pamphlets
Answer to Question 18 of the 23 Questions
(*) See also part one of Christine’s SaveAways trilogy