Hacker Cinema
Who Killed the KLF?
2023 · Film · documentary · 88 min
Directed by Chris Atkins
Between 1988 and 1992, British Electronic duo The KLF had scored #1 records throughout the world and had become household names. Determined to ridicule the establishment, they battled The Beatles and ABBA after sampling their music in hit records, and published the best-selling book The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way). In 1993, to mock performance art in the ultimate fashion, The KLF set fire to £1,000,000 in cash and destroyed their entire catalogue, vanishing from the public view... until now.
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It was different as we might listen together to the same station across town. There were TV shows too. Many stations had sort of countdowns of the week's top songs. It was just a different vibe.
The Ed Sullivan Show American Bandstand Soul Train
Top of the Pops BBC
One of the guys from Nirvana wrote a good essay on how Billboard destroyed music in the 1980s by consolidating the number of radio markets feeding the chart and allowing ways to trick the top seller lists. Before the MTV modern billboard era there used to be local artists on local radio and eventually one might break out onto other markets and eventually break nationally. Then artists became famous simply due to being good looking, having a catchy producer driven sound and a corporate machine getting them into everyone's ears. Things were a little different from the late 60s to the early 90 and some artists broke out organically.
Here is an example of a station that was independent an influenced early MTV programming during their first couple of years. WLIR documentary, 'New Wave: Dare to Be Different,' chronicles the rise and fall of one of the coolest '80s radio stations.
A funny example of a non-corporate act was the group KLF who hacked the Top of The Pops formula and got onto TV with absurdity. A documentary about them is called "Who Killed the KLF".