John Higgs's Octannual Manual #45

Books and prints roundup

It’s here, the 10th anniversary hardback edition of The KLF - complete with a new ‘author’s commentary’ in footnotes - is in bookshops now. Huge thanks to everyone who has already bought a copy.

Huge thanks also to mighty Andrew O’Neill for helping me launch it - look out for them in the new series of Good Omens, or performing their new show Geburah at the Monkey Barrel in Edinburgh throughout August (I predict that show will get you a damn sight closer to Mars than Elon will.) Big thanks to Mark and Simon at the Walthamstow Rock & Roll Book Club for having us.

And special thanks to Steven Greenaway who got pretty much all of the audience to sign a copy, which he presented to me at the end. I’m coming to the end of nearly a year of events, since the launch of Love And Let Die, and I’m not expecting to do any more for some time - so this was a lovely memento.

Meanwhile - Gary at The Private Press has been hard at work on a run of screenprints inspired by the book. Look at these beauties:

Gary normally does prints for folk like Jeremy Deller, Yoko Ono and David Shrigley, so I’m quite honoured that he’s done these. They are a limited edition run of 23, naturally, and they will also be signed by me. They go on sale today and if there’s space on your wall, you can find them here.

On the subject of prints, I think you’ll enjoy The Banksy Story by James Peak over on Radio 4, which is currently available on BBC Sounds. It’s basically a love letter to a trickster spirit and I pop up in a number of episodes.

If you still need something to listen to after that, I had a good rambling crazy talk with Dan Schreiber on his We Can Be Weirdos podcast, which I think is worth your time. It quickly veers into the realms of alien pancakes and the like, as all good podcasts should.

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Enough of me - here’s a couple of really special books that you should know about.

The first is The Sing-Along-A-Wicker-Man Scrapbook, by David Bramwell. Subtitled ‘In Search of the Pagan Heart of Britain’, it’s an insightful story about what our love for that film tells us about ourselves. It’s only available from his Bandcamp page, and who knows for how long, so why not treat yourself?

I’m sure many readers will be familiar with bibliomancy - the practice of seeking answers to problems by flicking through a book, alighting on a random sentence, and finding an answer there. Well, I find that Steve Aylett’s new book Tao Te Jinx works as a sort-of anti-bibliomancy book. If you choose something at random, it is guaranteed to be of no help whatsoever. It’s a collection of quotes from all his other work, and as such is as perplexing, unhelpful and inspired as you would hope. To test this out, I’ve just flicked through, jabbed my finger in there and this is what I got:

“If you don’t have fridge, store your food in the mirror. Granted, it’ll invert and stink of mirror, but those times when everyone is wrong are powerful times.”

This is, I’m sure you’ll agree, of zero practical help. Recommended!

That’s probably enough from me for now - until next time!

jhx