K2 and the Millennium Drone
Recently K2 (Bill Drummond and Jimmy Caunty) were featured in the NME, 27th September 1997. They were making a statement with Liverpool dockyard workers, to the affect that Millennium Dome Project which was costing £800 million pounds was taking priority over their jobs. KLF over recent years have been in the press for things like burning a Million pounds. Last Year Zodiac and Bill wrote a book called "Bad Wisdom" describing their trip to the North Pole to place an icon of Elvis to mark the Kings death.
To get back to the Millennium Drone activities, K2 decided to get dressed up as old men and while in electric wheelchairs, horned headgear and axes, zoomed up and downed stage. As seen below, Zodiac was also there, hes the one in the middle dressed up as a "vicar, in a gold sequinned suit".
Heres an extract from the article (Taken from NME, 27th September 1997): -
But according to long-time collaborator Zed, the man playing the gold lame vicar today, this is because they long ago sold them to the Devil. "It's true, "he shrugs, without any obvious trace of irony. "We all sold our souls to the Devil years ago, back in the Liverpool days. We're still trying to get them back."
According to Zed (the artist formerly known as Zodiac Mindwarp, and not a man you'd trust with babysitting duties, or anything else come to that), he Drummond and fellow collaborator 'Gimpo' last year went to the global odyssey in search of the very same.
"We decided we needed to get our souls back from the Devil," he says, combing his lard-plastered hair back over his head. "I sold mine years ago, on bad advice from Dave Balfe. It's ruined my life a couple of times, and I need my soul back. Anyway, we went all over Europe, to Paris the Tyrol where Ezra Pound's granddaughter lives - we thought she might know something - and to a place called Toledo where there's so many churches that the Devil supposedly casts no shadow. We went everywhere the Devil might be.
"Anyway, we ended up sailing down the River Congo in the third class in this huge floating slum, heading for the Heart of Darkness. We were going to Kinshasa to find President Mobutu, because the people all think he's the Devil. Anyway, he'd fled, because it was all about to kick off big style. But from what people said about him, I think he probably was the Devil, so maybe it was better that we didn't find him. We got out of the country just the day before civil war started - but not before Gimpo had been held at gunpoint and, er, had a bit of a bad experience."
Gimpo, for the uninitiated, is another long-time friend of Drummond & Caunty, their driver and faithful servant. A ruddy-faced little man with a look of innocent confusion on his face, he is only too happy to take up the story.
"I got robbed at gunpoint in Congo, yeah. Them lot weren't much help - they just ran off!"
"But that wasn't all that happened, was it, "says a smirking Zed.
"No, they actually held me down over the back of a car and buggered me."
Lordy. At which point, you surely thought, 'Why did we come here in the first place?'…
"Well not really. It wasn't actually that bad. I was being too cheeky to them. People get buggered all the time but it doesn't get reported. It was a life-changing experience being near death. You appreciate life more. Anyway, it beats working nine to five, doesn't it?"
Uh, arguably. It appears that Gimpo is to Bill and Jimmy what Les used to be to Reeves & Mortimer - an innocent, unwitting but faithful servant. But maybe he can still cast some light on today's proceedings…
"I don't know what they're up to really. I never do. They just tell me to come along and do things, drive them everywhere, and I'm quite happy to go along with it without question."
D'you reckon they know why they're doing it?
"On aye, I think Bill and Jimmy have some little idea between themselves as to why they're doing it, but I don't get it. They're they only ones that know. It's their little private joke, between them."
Terrific, but don't you ever get pissed off with being the dogsbody for their daft schemes?
No, never… well, once I got a bit pissed off. We were going up the A9 to the Isle of Jura off Scotland, where they were going to push a truck off a cliff. I got a bit pissed off, 'cos it was a long drive…"
Right.
I hate to tell you this, readers but I don't actually think they're lying. Why Drummond and Zed even wrote a book last year about their expedition to the North Pole. SO it must be true.
"We wanted to lay the spirit of rock'n'roll to rest," reckons Zed.
"We went to the most distant point on the globe, and struck an effigy of Elvis there."
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Author: Steve Gullick (NME) & cut down a bit by Jules