It’s not Christmas Day yet. It’s still Advent. So it’s appropriate that we’ve had to wait for this blog. Graham has filed his copy after being out and about for hours in Edinburgh. He’s not very popular at home.

Over to you Graham…

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Christmas Eve afternoon I head into Edinburgh city centre, ostensibly to pick up some stocking fillers, vegetarian stuffing, plumper sprouts. Everybody is back home, and we have been cooking and wrapping all day.

I pass a guitarist called Inkfields: “To play with fire doesn’t make you an arsonist”, he sings, looking right at me. An image of The Shard flashes in front of me.

There’s a huge crush at the East End.  Along Princes Street, outside Waterstone’s there’s a trio playing jazz Christmas carols. A few people throw coins in the double bass case.  I think back to a Duke Ellington quote I heard recently: “There is nothing to keeping a band together. You simply have to have a gimmick”. This ensemble’s gimmick appears to be wearing colourful paper hats.

I’m wondering about a meeting point arranged in The JAMs’ 2023: A trilogy: Shepherdess Café, London, 17:47, Christmas Eve 2023.

17:20 I pop into Black Sheep Coffee, opposite Edinburgh Castle. Having read the GANTOB blog, I think this is the best GANTOBverse surrogate for Shepherdess Café. I look around the ground floor, then the top. No likely candidates. But how can we know what GANTOB, The Benefaktor and The Foundation Doktor look like? There are certainly no grapefruit rolling around.

17:40. Still no sign. I order, avoiding matcha green, as per GANTOB’s advice. I’m going to sit beside the front door and watch people coming and going. The buskers walk past, laughing. After remembering a later meeting in the book I’m there until closing time. Waiting. Nothing.

I don’t know what I expected. I think of all the time I’ve spent digging, following up false leads, refreshing eBay and Facebook, watching for the KLF, and now GANTOB.

My feet get tangled up in a piece of garbage. I shake it off, thinking it’s a food wrapper. However, inspecting it more closely with the torch on my phone, I realise it’s a green Christmas hat, but made out of standard paper rather than the crepe version from a cracker. And it has words and a familiar grapefruit design. It’s been cut in half – in a zigzig, and then stapled together. It’s GANTOB’s “Paint Them Black” pamphlet, from November 2023. I wonder briefly if it’s the same hat the double bass player was wearing. And then I nip into a Tesco Express and pick up sprouts and a discounted Christmas pudding.

Graham

24 December 2023

Note that image is by Matt Porter.

In another universe Wham! is Number One with “Last Christmas”. But events are rather different in this reality, kommunikated by Mase in this ongoing series of #Demokratisation.

We are fully booked for blogs for the rest of 2023, but if you would like a copy of the forthcoming book and your entry fits into the narrative laid down so far, then we will just need to double up. Numbering conventions will be out of the window, but isn’t that just typikal of all things K. Get submitting. Details on how to apply at the end of the blog.

But for today, it’s over to you Mase…

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Christmas Eve, 2023 – lightly snowing. The Justified Ancients of Mumu – Rockman Rock, Kingboy D, and The Benefactor – in their secret underground lair, deep beneath London.  Their latest project – the Christmas #1 song Everybody’s Talkin’ At Me by Harry Nilsson (featuring Ricardo Da Force) premix by Tony ‘FU**’ Thorpe.

Huddled around the control board, sipping cocoa, checking the charts. More than just a song – their chance to make history one more time.

A knock at the door… “Who could that be?” asked Rockman from his mixerboard. “I hope it’s not the tax man.” replied Kingboy.

“I’ll get it,” said the Benefaktor.

It was none other than Santa Claus himself! “Ho ho ho!” boomed Santa. “The JAMs’ Christmas #1 hit? I’m impressed! I’ve heard rumors of a special remix by Tony Thorpe?”

Soon Santa was dancing to the catchy beat. “Fantastic! My new favorite Christmas song. How did you do it?”

Kingboy D grinned mischievously. “To win the Kareovision Kristmas Song Kontest, we needed something special to stand out from all the other generic holiday songs. We took a classic like Everybody’s Talkin’ At Me, slapped on a funky beat, and extra flavor with Ricardo’s vocals. Then we had Tony remix it for us.”

Santa chuckled. “How to have a #1 the easy way?”

Rockman chimed in, “It’ll show everyone we’re not just a bunch of crazy old men in silly costumes.”

Santa nodded. “I’m rooting for you! And remember – the true spirit of Christmas is about spreading joy.”

As they worked tirelessly through the night, they felt a renewed sense of purpose – they weren’t just trying to win a contest, they were spreading cheer to the entire world.

The results finally came in Christmas morning – they had indeed won the Kristmas Kontest – thanks to Santa’s personal endorsement!

Celebrating aboard their giant solid-gold submarine, a surprise visit from Tony Thorpe himself. “I heard y’all were using my premix”, he said winking, “So I thought I’d return the favor and create a special dubstep postmix!”

The Benefaktor listened in amazement as the heavy bass and pulsing synths transformed their song into a whole new beast that’ll rock the world for centuries to come. “Wow!” exclaimed Kingboy, “We couldn’t have done it without you, Tony!”

The JAMs raised their glasses in a toast to the power of music to bring people together. Merry Christmas from Trancentral!

Mase

23 December 2023

Image is by Matt Porter, shared on Instagram yesterday.

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If you have 400 words to submit, please get in touch. Ignore the deadlines, but please remember to provide an excuse for being late. If your blog is used in December 2023 you will receive a copy of the forthcoming book: GANTOB’s 2023: A trilogy, including your contribution. Good luck!

Part 4 of a weekly series. We’re back in the East Anglian village where Bronwyn Gosling, and Curt and Norah Finks lived in the 1980s and 1990s. Series concludes on 28 December.

Part 1| Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 5.

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3PM. The bus deposited The Photographer and a few other SLRed twitchers in the East Anglian village. He made his way to the Finks’ cottage, thinking back to their first encounter, when he had found Curt kneeling against a drystone dyke in the Yorkshire Dales.

Approaching the cottage, The Photographer struggled with the Finks’ broken front gate, and edged his way along the slippery mossy path, aware of his precious cargo of camera and lenses.

Moments later he was being shown into the spare room by Norah Finks, and plied with a cup of Darjeeling and a thickly buttered scone. Curt was out, birdwatching.

Easing his way past the gate again, he walked the route that Norah had mapped out, camera safely stowed in the cottage, no use at this time of day. He carried a couple of packs of newly developed photos in his bag in case he had an idle moment. Rounding the corner he saw Finks and another man walking towards him. The taller of the two flashed a smile, waved enthusiastically, and The Photographer found himself arm in arm, marching towards the Red Lion pub.

The three men put in their orders at the bar. The conversation flowed easily, and the orders were repeated twice more.

Evening fell. Finks was snoring in the leather seat by the pub’s fire. Prof Grayling Muir was asking The Photographer about his friend’s Edinburgh Fringe activities. The Canadian academic updated him on the interview that had upset Finks so much, with the mystery of the printed programmes. The Photographer’s ears pricked up.

Reaching for his bag he pulled out the packs of photos. Dimly lit, they were almost all of Curt Finks’ Edinburgh shows that summer, taken over a three-day trip.

Neither man was interested in the tourist photos. Muir had the first look, flicking past those of the performer, lingering instead on the photos of the crowd.

After finishing his drink, The Photographer had a look himself. He turned back to a photo of a tall, thin man who was placing a piece of paper on one of the chairs. Though slightly blurred, it was clear that neighbouring chairs had already been leafleted.

Leafing through the rest, he was in no doubt. He knew that face, right back to school days. But what was he up to? He popped the envelopes back into his pocket and said no more. 

GANTOB, reconstructed from discussions with The Photographer, prompted by seeing mention of him in Curt Finks’ diaries 1988, 1989 and 1990.

21 December 2023

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If you have 400 words to submit, please get in touch. Ignore the deadlines, but please remember to provide an excuse for being late. If your blog is used in December 2023 you will receive a copy of the forthcoming book: GANTOB’s 2023: A trilogy, including your contribution. Good luck!

This pivotal post comes from Andrew. He has been a regular source of inspiration and support for the GANTOB movement since August 2023. This piece takes a nice spin on a couple of konversations that Andrew and I have had over the months. And it involves another Scottish band which, going by the name of the record label they established at the start of their kareer, have a kurious affinity with a certain letter. And it’s an unwelcome return for TB, an irregular visitor to the GANTOBverse recently.

Over to you Andrew before I give too many hints…

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GANTOB loved The Delgados.  Today was Saturday 12 August 2023, a day she thought would never come. It was a long time since the activities of the “thin men” – and woman – had ceased in 2005. 

She was sitting, shivering, poncho-less in the pouring rain, but that wouldn’t dampen her spirits.  As the first strains of No Danger rang out, she forgot about other distractions and found herself transported out of the bandstand in Kelvingrove Park, Glasgow and into another world altogether.

As the thunderous applause died down, she tuned into a conversation to her right.  A young couple were debating the meaning of a pamphlet they had found folded into a paper plane earlier. GANTOB chuckled and shuffled a bit closer as it dawned on her whose writings they were discussing. Perhaps her efforts were slowly paying off.

At the end of the concert the band returned for an encore. They thanked the fans for their enthusiasm in the face of some atrocious weather, going on to say that there was someone they needed to thank for the push that got them back together. “Could everyone put their hands together for The Benefaktor”, they announced in unison…

GANTOB’s heart missed a beat. Had she heard that correctly? Surely not. The Benefaktor had said he was putting all his efforts into supporting her writing. She had shared her wider influences to keep him engaged, but how he had stumbled upon The Delgados? What did this mean for her and Little Grapefruit?  Had he moved on to bigger things? And hadn’t The Foundation Doktor called him “the thin man”?

She was itching to tell the couple beside her it was her pamphlet. If The Benefaktor was shifting his attention and funding, she would need all the support available. However, she knew that would risk blowing her kover, ripping the fabric of everything she was trying to achieve. 

She was bursting for a pee but dreaded the chemikal toilets. She also worried that she had missed the subway home.

Suddenly, light flooded in, and she sat bolt upright, warm in bed. No poncho required. She knew The Benefaktor was somehow influencing her daily decisions, but this was something new. She had not even known The Benefaktor (or TFD) back in August 2023! His subterfuge was infiltrating her memories now, playing on her sleeping mind. Time to get on the front foot…

ANDREW

20 December 2023

Demokratisation is the process of handing the blog over to you, the reader. There needs to be a link back to characters from the GANTOBverse, or at least mentioned in previous GANTOB writing.

If you have 400 words to submit, please get in touch. Ignore the deadlines, but please remember to provide an excuse for being late.

If your blog is used in December 2023 you will receive a copy of the forthcoming book: GANTOB’s 2023: A trilogy, including your contribution. Good luck!

In another entirely unanticipated development, I received an email late last night from The Tillerman.

The Tillerman has helmed The KLFRS for longer than I have been in existence. I have always been in awe of The Tillerman. But, equally, I have always been incredibly grateful for the input they provided at the start of the GANTOB project, and at points throughout. I am, indeed, relentless and exhausting!

This is a deeply personal blog from The Tillerman. Get your kerchief out – or should that be a bandana?

Over to you Tillerman…

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Have you ever had an offer that you couldn’t refuse, even though every cell in your body screams out that you should?

Have you ever said ‘yes’, terrified of having to live with the consequences of saying ‘no’?

Have you ever had the best job in the world and gone to work every day with a resignation letter and a grenade strapped to your chest?

Out of the blue, living with imposter syndrome became bearable on July 28th of this year. An inspiring author made an eloquent proposition and needed permission and validation. I replied that they needed neither from me, knowing that THE IMPOSTER had nothing to give. 

This author then miraculously proved my point. From inception to creation to publication, GANTOB the author, GANTOB the project and GANTOB the book went from milestone to thrilling milestone, and then, a wonderful thing happened. People came along for the ride. 

GANTOB became an inspiration. A shining supernova of an inspiration, a demonstration that there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. 

GANTOB was relentless. 

GANTOB was exhausting. 

GANTOB was the mirror reflecting what THE IMPOSTER wished they could bring themselves to do. 

Now, THE IMPOSTER could see the power of a kind word. 

The power of a nurturing suggestion. 

The power of a ‘yes…and…’

Dozens more benefited from the strength that GANTOB’s inspiration allowed THE IMPOSTER to summon. A legacy that goes far beyond the book, the blog and these 400 words. 

THE IMPOSTER recruited people that could do everything that they couldn’t. And then they waited. Waited for plans and schemes to bubble to the surface, with nothing to add but a green light. The same green light that had got THE IMPOSTER into this ridiculous position in the first place. 

But then the shift came, and the switch turned the lights red. Everywhere. It was all THE IMPOSTER could see now. The daily torture of the commute to work illuminated, there and back, by more and more red lights. Stop. Stop. STOP. 

So they stopped. 

THE IMPOSTER was now running on fumes. Not enough to climb the hill, but maybe enough to fashion a petrol bomb. 

It’s right that everything ends on December 31st. 

The day before everything begins and everything began. 

2024 is a new year. 

THE IMPOSTER will paint it red. 

If they’re lucky, they’ll take some others along for the ride. 

The Tillerman

17 December 2023

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If you have 400 words to submit, please get in touch. Ignore the deadlines, but please remember to provide an excuse for being late. If your blog is used in December 2023 you will receive a copy of the forthcoming book: GANTOB’s 2023: A trilogy, including your contribution. Good luck!

Today’s blog is by William E Drummond. It meets none of the rules for the GANTOB blog, but rules are there to be broken, especially when you are one of the authors of 2023: A trilogy. So we have allowed it.

It takes us back to a discussion with Paul Simpson earlier this month, and then further back to Telstar, a song that hit the Billboard Christmas Number 1 almost 61 years ago (the UK number one that year was Brenda Lee’s Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree). I didn’t think that you would want to wait for the anniversary (22 December) to read it.

Over to you William…

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Have you ever shot your landlady dead?

On the evening of the 6^th of December 2023, I asked Paul Simpson of The Wild Swans…

‘What are lyrics for?’

Paul Simpson’s inferred answer was ‘Some pop songs are so great, they do not need to have lyrics made from words sung by a singer, one’s imagination just creates the abstract lyrics while hearing the song, like Telstar by The Tornados.’

I agreed with Paul Simpson.

But his answer triggered some thoughts…

What follows are those thoughts…

While I guess most of us would be in agreement, that our lives would have been well spent, if we had died at the age of 27, and we had achieved in those years what Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix or Amy Winehouse had done.

I mean they must be looking down, pretty pleased with what they made in their allotted time.

Maybe it gets a bit more difficult when, the would-be protagonist, has suffered from depression and then maybe taken their own life, like Nick Drake at the age of 26. But now almost 50 years after his death, Nick Drake must be feeling some sort of reward, knowing that in his short life, he produced three of the most revered albums ever – even if hardly anyone gave a fuck about them, in his own lifetime.

But harder still for Billy McKenzie, taking your own life at the age of 39, and now, 27 years later, still knowing you had only ever made one record that is truly celebrated, as in Party Fears Two.

But…

I want to take things up a few notches.

For the year leading up to February 2020, when I had the first of my major brain seizures, I would regularly stand at the same bus stop on Holloway Road, London, while waiting for the 393, to turn up and take me back to my flat.

But…

This bus stop on the Holloway Road was next to 304 Holloway Road, as in where Joe Meek had his recording studio…

As in the Joe Meek that had recorded the record Telstar by The Tornados, as in the record that I had heard in the Ayr Skating Rink back in 1962…

As in the moment that I had my mind totally and utterly blown to pieces by a piece of music like it has never been before or since.

Now any Joe Meek fanatic, like myself, will tell you, this 304 Holloway Road, is where this Joe Meek shot and killed his landlady before shooting and killing himself.

And this is the question I struggled with every morning as I stood and waited for the 393, and my brain waited to have its first major brain seizure…

Would I be willing to shoot and kill my landlady before doing the same to myself, if I could have only made a record one fraction as mind shattering as Telstar by The Tornados when heard in the Ayr Ice Rink circa 1962?

Most mornings the 393, would turn up before I had to come up with an answer to the question. And other mornings, I would just dismiss the question out of hand. But there was the odd morning, where I would arrive at the conclusion, it would be worth the shooting and killing of your landlady and then turn the gun on yourself, in the knowledge it meant you could have created one of the greatest pieces of music to have ever been heard by any nine-year-old girl or boy in the Ayr Ice Rink in 1962.

William E Drummond

Written Friday the 15^th of December 2023

Published, for the first time, on gantob.blog 16 December 2023

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Mr Drummond’s post was contributed as part of #Demokratisation – handing the blog over to contributors other than boring old GANTOB, The Benefaktor, The Foundation Doktor and the rather more popular Little Grapefruit and Angharad.

There are still a few slots on the blog available for the remaining days of December. 

People with a blog accepted during December will receive a copy of the book of the blog, including their contribution and that of Mr Drummond, as part of a very small print run.

The only conditions are that the blog should relate to the GANTOBverse and be exactly 400 words. Further details at gantob.blog/book (ignoring the deadlines). 

Today’s blog goes back to the earliest days of GANTOB. I was finding my feet, planning what turned out to be a busy summer. I had been intrigued by the Penkiln Burn pamphlets that had arrived that spring with my orders of Bill Drummond books from Alimentation, and wondered about producing my own to promote my own projekt.

Seeing Graham’s posts about The Harmonics, with his pamphlet that ended up in the copies of “What Is Harmonic?” box available for sale, I decided to give it a try. Over to you Graham

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I had only intended to write one blog for the GANTOB December “Demokratisation”. If accepted, that was all that was required to receive a copy of the next book. However, when I went to submit my post – which links some GANTOB characters back into the plot of The JAMs’ 2023: A Trilogy – I realised that I had unknowingly communicated with GANTOB by email months before.

Back In August I had submitted my question for the first book by Twitter message. I hadn’t spotted the connection at that point. But now, at the tail end of November, I opened up my email to submit my 400 words in a Word document to the email address 100percentvinyl2@gmail.com. I typed the address into search bar, and there it was: An email from June, from Gillian (no surname). It was titled “What is Harmonic?”:

“Graham”, it read, “As a fan of The KLF I was interested to read about your recent discovery of the ‘What is Harmonic?’ box, with contribution by Bill Drummond. Now, I am not in the market for the box, but wondered if you could send me the pamphlet that you produced – Word format would be best. Terrific that you and The KLF archivists have made this discovery. On another note, have you read The JAMS’ 2023: A trilogy – quite an interesting read now that we’re actually in 2023. Bye for now, but keep up the good work”.

I sent Gillian a copy of my “Who Were The Harmonics?” trifold pamphlet as requested. It was from a period when I was scratching around in the minutiae of Bill Drummond’s Penkiln Burn books and pamphlets. It was an exciting and productive time, unearthing a stash of the Harmonics box, which you can still buy from the Eastside Projects shop, and making a series of other discoveries from the earliest days of Penkiln Burn.

But back to GANTOB. I didn’t hear anything more from Gillian after that, except perhaps a reply saying “Ta”, which I would have deleted. Five months on, and realising this connection, I feel the excitement of discovery again, a bit like getting my hands on The Harmonics’ box and hearing the recording of their song. GANTOB is there, right in the heart of that email, and I hadn’t spotted it. I don’t think that this reveals her identity, and I hope that she includes at least one of my blogs.

Graham

15 December 2023

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If you have 400 words to submit, please get in touch. Ignore the deadlines, but please remember to provide an excuse for being late. If your blog is used in December 2023 you will receive a copy of the forthcoming book: GANTOB’s 2023: A trilogy, including your contribution. Good luck!

Cover photo, of What is Harmonic? box is also from Eastside Projects website