Talk:Bill Drummond

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To-do list for Bill Drummond: edit · history · watch · refresh
  • Photo(s) needed (one for infobox/top of article; a pre-The Man image would be nice for the 70s section; a recent photo or an artwork image to illustrate post K Foundation). Also need to format images, standardise sizing, and fair use rationales.
  • Probably needs to mention The Tower
  • "Special K" http://www.libraryofmu.org/display-resource.php?id=397 has a good quote from Bill (1995) about realising that without money he's essential thrown away any chance of a "comeback", and commentary on self-destruction throughout his career
  • Work with Gimpo and Manning
  • Find and add additional material about Drummond's career as an artist
  • Get to at least GA and ideally FA standard
  • Expand info (with appropriate inline cites) regarding Drummond from 18 months to 23 years old. (At present, it jumps from him as a baby to him as a young adult, without documenting in between. Editors may see this as being incomprehensive.)
  • The article needs a good copyedit and rearranging; at the moment it has that terrible "In 1998,...", "In 1999,..." feel to it

Contents

[edit] Bill's Art

I think this article could be spruced up by the addition of some of his art works, and a summary of the "Jobs" at the Penkiln Burn website. Beyond that, we need (and have the makings of) a commentary on his pre-KLF music career, and some summary paragraphs on The KLF and the K Foundation with links to the main articles. The Man now has an article and hopefully Bad Wisdom and 45 will follow. --kingboyk 07:52, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Anyone here other than me? If so, what should we do with the art section? Is a list a good idea? Or should we have a short summary piece and direct readers to the Penkiln Burn website? Or, a short piece with a supporting list as a seperate article? --kingboyk 17:09, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
I don't think a list of jobs in necessary since there is a good list of jobs on the Penkiln Burn website, but an analytical summary describing the jobs highlighting any notable ones would be ideal, and if it grows too long then a new page could be spawned off. Drstuey 11:09, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Scottish football song

I found a nice article by Bill about his being approached to write a World Cup song for Scotland, and about how the other great football songs of our time were written by people who'd crossed his path (in the case of Ian Broudie and Keith Allen, he met them both for the first time on the same day in 1976 when working on the Illminatus play). The article is called "A Cure For Nationalism" and it's RAR file I sent to Vinoir and Dr Stuey. Anyone else who has access to ProQuest can read it here: http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=72527710&sid=2&Fmt=3&clientId=60297&RQT=309&VName=PQD

The reason for writing is that I don't think the article is any fit state to take this info just yet. Hence, let's save this one for later (if we want to use it at all). --kingboyk 14:34, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Coming on, and coming on strong!

I've just completed a synopsis of The KLF's career, and I think the article is coming along nicely. Writing it with the focus squarely on Bill allows the viewing of the material in a different way (therefore, Jimmy's article will require more work I think as we'll have to dig around for Cauty-focussed material, but it should be even more fascinating than this one as a result). KF/2K synopis is next, and then a clean-up of the existing post-KLF text. After that, I'll drop in info about Bill's art, books and media appearances as I stumble across it. --kingboyk 11:55, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Birthplace

The first line reads Butterworth, Cape Town, South Africa. He is born in Butterworth, right? Well, according to this, List of cities and towns in the Eastern Cape, Butterworth is in Eastern Cape Province, while Cape Town is in Western Cape Province. I think Cape Town should be removed from his birthplace. --Rajah 01:35, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

I've shortened it to Butterworth, South Africa, and we can let the authors of that article decide exactly where Butterworth is :) It is, alas, currently a red link. Thanks for pointing this out. --kingboyk 21:21, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
The kind folks over at the Africa noticeboard responded to my request for an article, so as you can see Butterworth, South Africa is now blue. --kingboyk 11:35, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
And it's now a redirect to Gcuwa, South Africa. Should we update his Birthplace? And will people mistakenly call him William Gcuwa? :) Totnesmartin 15:09, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
No, we should call the place by the name it was known as the time (although I have no objection to adding a note that it's changed). As for your second point, I don't know but we could start a campaign couldn't we? :) --kingboyk 15:12, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
"Butterworth (now Gcuwa, South Africa)" looks OK. Shall we go with that? Totnesmartin 15:24, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
I don't think we should bypass the redirect for a start... I'm not sure. Let's wait until User:Vinoir shows up and get another opinion. --kingboyk 15:33, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Incidentally, one of the article's categories is "people from Cape Town"... That'll have to go. Totnesmartin 23:48, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, I changed it for now to Category:Natives of Eastern Cape Province. However I wonder if really he ought to be in only people from Scotland categories. He was born in South Africa because his father was posted there, but he's always identified as being Scottish. --kingboyk 12:10, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
That category got renamed to Category:People from the Eastern Cape Province, in case anyone wonders why the above link is now red. Incidentally, I think Bill is in plenty enough Scottish categories now so we really needn't worry too much about my earlier concern - although if there's ever a "People from Newton Stewart" category he ought to be in it! (imho) I'll bet there's something akin to that already (e.g. county level), I'll have a look... --kingboyk 13:52, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Missing links

Please editors, other wikipedians would enjoy if links were reliable. i.e. for reference no. 18 link does not work, page has moved most likely but maintenance is needed and the claim is rendered unverifiable 203.164.56.55 18:09, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Gordon Bennett mate, you think I have control over nme.com?! We can only hope the page gets archived to www.archive.org at some point... other than wait for that, what can I do? --kingboyk 18:11, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

sorry mate, also you seem to be the authority on Bill. Do you think you should include a mention of his soup making antics in the main article? [1].It sounds like tripe, absolute rubbish but from what I have read would not suprise me. 203.164.56.55 18:44, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

lol, tripe soup perhaps? :) It'll probably get a mention, or if you want to work a mention in yourself (referencing that news article) please go ahead. As mentioned above, I haven't got round to detailing Bill's art projects yet. (I'm currently working mainly on The K Foundation burn a million quid and K Foundation art award). --kingboyk 18:52, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New information

Found a brilliant 2000 interview by Andrew Smith in The Observer, which I do not see cited in any of your articles. Very introspective. It has the elusive early life details, as well as a couple of things that are even more insane than what I've read here thus far. (Has anything been said of what he originally planned to throw into the audience instead of the sheep at the Brit Awards?) –Unint 04:17, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

I restored this - not sure why you thought it invalid - because I wanted to answer the question regarding the sheep alternative. Of course, the story is that he wanted to saw the legs off an elephant (!). We mention this in The KLF but only indirectly, and reading it yesterday I wasn't very happy with the wording. A casual reader (who of course is our target audience) could very easily come away with the impression that it was the bloke from Chumbawamba's idea... Needs to be fixed I think.
Was it this that you allude to or did he have some other freakish idea? (Other than sawing off his own arm, which we also know about... but since it didn't happen I'm not sure it's worth much). --kingboyk 12:06, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
I thought the notion that he would consider sawing off his own hand was very revelatory. Even compared to burning a million pounds, I think that's on a whole different level.
Also, I wiped that bit because, well, you already link to the article that I believed to be new information. However, the author credit seems to be new; I don't know how I would add that to the citation when the information's not actually present, though.
Which brings me to another consideration: would it help to add page numbers to all the articles cited from the Library of Mu? Or would it be a logistics nightmare since then the page numbers wouldn't actually be present in the actual sources cited? –Unint 20:44, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
If you have page numbers, by all means add them. It's the newspapers we're citing, the Library of Mu links are just a courtesy really. --kingboyk 21:28, 10 March 2007 (UTC) PS If you're doing all this work you ought to sign onto the project :)

[edit] The Foundry

Can I just add that The Foundry is not so much an arts centre as a bar, although it serves as both. Gimpo runs the bar under his real name, Alan Goodrick, and he, Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty are directors of The Foundry Ltd (have to look this up again). The building itself was previously a branch of Barclay's Bank but when Drummond and Cauty bought the place it had been squatted by a group of Russian sculptors who specialised in ironwork, hence the name. Sfgreenwood 14:40, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Excellent, thanks. Do you have any sources for this info? Feel free to change "arts centre" to "bar and arts centre" or to whatever description is most apt. --kingboyk (talk) 13:07, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Interview

Feel free to delete this once somebody suitable has read it, but I interviewed Mr. Drummond last year and can email the full text if it'll be useful. It was for a college handbook, but it was published (I will post it on my website very soon) and is genuine. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sometimesyouhavetowonder (talk • contribs) 14:07, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Please let us know when it's published on your website (regarless of any connotations of next sentence; I'm sure we'd like to read it). Please also provide the publication details of the college handbook - this is because we can only properly reference material which complies with these policies: WP:RS and WP:V :) --kingboyk (talk) 13:07, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Julian Cope

Somebody added this article to Cope's category. Thoughts? --kingboyk 13:46, 2 December 2007 (UTC)