#the jamms

First, there I was going into grade 8 and had a medical issue that was very much bothering me and as such, I was going to a doctor regularly and they had happy face buttons at their reception. I usually grabbed one or two (or five) and kept one for myself but gave the others I acquired over time to friends who had asked for them... we had a happy face gang, so to speak. I was already wearing quilted flannel at that point and a happy face button decorated that until I got my duster.

Then during the same time frame (1991... but honestly could have 1992, I don't quite remember), I had heard "The White Room" album (on cassette, bought because the cover grabbed me so hard... could not resist) and listened to it a lot walking back and forth to and from school in grade 8. Then I read "The Illuminatus! Trilogy" in grade 10 (after previously "The Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy" a year earlier) and started getting into Discordianism around then (and also picked up The KLFs "Chill Out", it took me a while to figure out it came out before "The White Room")… AND then I got online regularly… this would explain why you saw my duster with a happy face button it throughout the rest of the 90s. In 1998 the anthology book "Disco 2000" came out with stories by both Bill Drummond and Robert Anton Wilson (for further details on why that's an interesting intersection involves how Drummond and Cauty met).

Then in 2012 I had tried to buy one of the not glitter versions of the shield but the price on the shipping put it just out of reach (currency conversion killed it)… then Cauty and Drummond put out the novel 2023 in 2017…. in 2022 I picked up the 12" of "It's Grim Up North" (killer!) and finally at the start of 2023 things worked out where we could try getting a shield again…. and after ups and downs we're finally here. Got the Glitter Smiley [Appropriated!] Riot Shield by the end of the year.

I do not currently have one of the old happy face buttons... but I just ordered a bag of 25...

Watch the K Foundation burn a million quid

Here is the documentary of the KLF burning a million quid on night of the 23rd of August 1994.

the KLF’s most infamous - or celebrated, depending on your viewpoint - act took place in a remote boathouse on the Isle of Jura in the Inner Hebrides, a location far removed from the London-centric music scene, on August 23, 1994.