Gay tackles a burning issue
QUESTION
Whatever happened to the people who burned £1million, as featured on The Late Late Show? Was real money burned in the stunt? IN 1995, when Gay Byrne was still presenting The Late Late Show, one of the programme’s most controversial interviews took place, featuring two artists and musicians from Britain who had burned £1million in real money the year before.
The artists concerned were Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, who performed as an electronic group called The KLF, and formed an art foundation called the K Foundation in 1993.
The following year, on August 23, 1994, they burned £1million in real money, in the form of bundles of £50 notes, in a disused boathouse on the Scottish island of Jura.
They also filmed the proceedings and the film was laboriously titled, Watch the K Foundation Burn a Million Quid.
Drummond and Cauty weren’t exactly sure why they organised the burning of all this money, although it was allegedly in the name of art. About £900,000 worth of notes were burned in the fire, while the remaining £100,000 went up the chimney in the hot air from the fire and weren’t burned.
A decade later, when Drummond was interviewed on the BBC, he was asked if he regretted burning all that money, which had come from record sales. He replied: ‘Of course I regret it, who wouldn’t? My children especially regret it but I don’t regret it all the time.’
The interview with Drummond and Cauty on The Late Late Show had been bizarre and surreal, to say the least, and for some reason, another musician involved in the programme was Joe Elliott from Def Leppard. While the interview didn’t go down very well with the studio audience, some viewers who saw and remember it say that it was their all-time favourite segment on the show.
As for the two artists who had organised the money burning, they are both still alive and working.
Bill Drummond, a Scottish artist, musician and record producer, was born in Scotland in 1953. In the 1980s, he was the co-founder of avant garde pop group The KLF, and in the 1990s formed the K Foundation. After his musical relationship with Jimmy Cauty ended in 1997, he engaged in all kinds of other activities, artistic and otherwise. In one scheme, he offered to make soup for people, while in another, he made and delivered cakes.
In 2014, he started a world painting tour, which he says will continue until 2025.
He also has a connection with Ireland: he owns the Curfew Tower in Cushendall, Co. Antrim, which is used as an artists’ residency.
As for Jimmy Cauty, born on the Wirral peninsula in Cheshire in 1956, after his involvement in music with Bill Drummond, and that infamous money burning, he went on to produce more music. He had his own recording studios in Brighton.
He also produced many art installations and one of his most recent works came when he created Smiley Riot Shields.
He painted police riot shields yellow with a smiley face, designed originally as a symbol of nonviolent direct action.
The two men have both had bizarre careers but nothing they did was stranger than their burning of £1million in real banknotes and their subsequent half-baked explanations on The Late Late Show. Declan McCord, Co. Mayo.
QUESTION
Do any migrating birds circumnavigate the Earth? THE wandering albatross (Diomedea exulans) circumnavigates the globe in the southern sub-Antarctic latitudes.
This was described in a 2005 article Global Circumnavigations: Tracking Year-Round Ranges Of Non-breeding Albatrosses, in the journal Science, following a study led by Professor John Croxall, head of conservation biology for the British Antarctic Survey.
The team tracked the precise movements of 22 birds and showed 12 had made global circumnavigations – three birds circled the Earth twice.
The fastest managed a distance of 22,530km in 46 days – the equivalent of a steady 21kph.
Scientists long wondered how the wandering albatross soars for as long and as far as it does over open water, without help from thermal updraughts.
It’s no accident that the bird dwells in exceptionally windy places, the far southern latitudes known as the Roaring Forties and the Furious Fifties.
The wind helps this large bird, which can weigh up to 12kg and have a wingspan of 3.5m, to get airborne.
It flies long distances using a technique called dynamic soaring that expends minimal energy.
Once in the air, there’s a windward climb, then a curve from windward to leeward at peak altitude, followed by a leeward descent and finally a reverse turn close to the surface of the sea that leads seamlessly into the next cycle of flight.
Dr Ken Warren, Glasgow.
QUESTION
Was there a fad in the Sixties for baroque harpsichord pop music? THERE are a number of reasons why the harpsichord was popular in Sixties pop music, but perhaps the most important was the remarkable rise of the factoryproduced harpsichord during the Fifties and Sixties.
Creations from German firms such as Neupert, Sperrhake and Wittmayer ensured a supply of affordable instruments. In 1969, British-based William de Blaise was producing an impressive 60 instruments a year.
The all-purpose instrument for recording studios could be used by a wide range of musicians. While these instruments have been shunned as inauthentic by baroque musicians, they found a niche role in film and TV soundtracks. A Pleyel harpsichord can be heard in John Addison’s score to the 1963 film Tom Jones.
The oboist and record producer Mitch Miller brought the harpsichord into popular music in the Fifties with his records for singer Rosemary Clooney. He admitted it was a gimmick to ensure the productions had a novelty appeal.
I have spent a decade compiling a database of Sixties artists who used acoustic and electronic harpsichords and am amazed at its versatility.
The instrument features in songs by bands including The Mamas & The Papas, The Monkees, Grateful Dead, The Doors, The Rolling Stones, Donovan, Marianne Faithfull and The Beatles.
Ironically, the ‘old’ sound of the harpsichord was seen as hip.
Equally remarkable is the sharp decline of the harpsichord in pop music after 1970; I suspect the reason being that musicians felt the sound had become associated with the past – not the baroque, but the Sixties. Dr Christopher D. Lewis, lecturer in music, Chester.
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