Comments on: On the Road to Damascus

On the Road to Damascus

rollick — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 12:16:09 -0800

Bill Drummond, best known as co-founder of the KLF, writes about his slow infatuation with damsons.

By: furtive

furtive — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 12:28:21 -0800

Thanks for introducing me to The Quietus and Caugh by the River. Bill Drummond cares a lot more for a particular plum than he did for a million quid.

By: Rat Spatula

Rat Spatula — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 12:32:31 -0800

In Missouri I knew these as "damson plums" and a friend had a cousin out in the sticks who would send jars of preserves. Fried chicken, Milwaukee's best and damson plum preserves on bagels for dessert.

By: roll truck roll

roll truck roll — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 12:33:38 -0800

I've always thought there's a fascinating/funny/sad documentary waiting to be made about Bill Drummond.

By: neuron

neuron — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 12:44:57 -0800

I've never heard of damsons. Are they cromulent?

By: Oriole Adams

Oriole Adams — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 12:58:20 -0800

Do they eat damsons in Mu-mu land?

By: steef

steef — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 12:59:43 -0800

Lovely, in every way.

By: happyroach

happyroach — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 13:00:53 -0800

Kidney Liberation Front? Killer Librarian Association? Kansas Local Anglers?

By: philip-random

philip-random — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 13:08:42 -0800

Also worth a read, off the damsons link: Bill Drummond Interviewed: Recorded Music Has Run Its Course -- August-2008

By: charlie don't surf

charlie don't surf — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 13:27:42 -0800

That is utterly ridiculous. The Luftwaffe did not need damson skins to dye their uniforms. The Germans had plenty of aniline dyes, they produced chemical dyes at a massive industrial scale and they were a major export.

By: Pruitt-Igoe

Pruitt-Igoe — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 13:28:23 -0800

I have some in the icebox right now that I'm saving for breakfast

By: Benny Andajetz

Benny Andajetz — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 13:30:20 -0800

A musician eating plums and kickin' out the jams. A perfect match, I think.

By: philip-random

philip-random — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 14:06:44 -0800

What's the similarity between a plumb and an elephant? They're both the same color except the plumb's purple. my favorite broken joke

By: mykescipark

mykescipark — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 14:39:58 -0800

That is utterly ridiculous. It's Bill Drummond.

By: BlueJae

BlueJae — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 15:10:32 -0800

I am like this about (fresh, NOT CANNED) peaches. Which is far less romantic than being obsessed with damsons, because, I mean, peaches are easy to find, at least at this time of year. However, once, only once, when I was ten or eleven, I ate a bowl of homemade peach ice cream on a Mennonite farm. The taste was beyond mortal description. No food since has compared. Peach ice cream handcrafted by Mennonites with just-off-the-tree peaches and fresh cream from the cow right next door in the barn is, sadly, not as easy to find as plain peaches. But sometimes when I get a peach at just the right ripeness, or a peach cobbler or pie baked just right, I can catch just an echo of that platonic peach flavor and the world stops and I'm a kid again and wondering whether the Mennonite girls think I look like an alien in my jeans.

By: Specklet

Specklet — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 17:15:28 -0800

I am seriously regretting not making a vat of damson jam while I still lived in England.

By: arcticseal

arcticseal — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 17:42:49 -0800

We used to gather damsons in my uncle's garden when I was a kid. My uncle has since passed on, and the house long left the family, yet the taste of a damson or the simple mention of it on this page takes me right back there. Thanks rollick.

By: candyland

candyland — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 18:48:48 -0800

Movin' to the country, gonna eat a lot of ~~peaches~~ damsons.

By: annsunny

annsunny — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 19:32:11 -0800

Nice article. I just read The Fruit Hunters, and it exploresfruit obsession, so this was a nice tie-in.

By: Mike Mongo

Mike Mongo — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 22:08:25 -0800

These sound really good. If there any where near Key West mangoes (which I consume with a genuine zeal on a morningly basis) they I understand. I understand.

By: echolalia67

echolalia67 — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 00:01:01 -0800

So is it this Bill Drummond we are speaking of? I only ask because I am a little drunk and too lazy to look to Wikipedia for an answer.

By: MuffinMan

MuffinMan — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 02:06:55 -0800

Damsons are big news this year in the UK. They've come early, and it's a bumper crop. This is what I'm making today: damson and earl grey ice cream (substitute damsons for plums).

By: philip-random

philip-random — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 08:56:15 -0800

So is it this Bill Drummond we are speaking of? Probably. I'm also too lazy for Wikipedia but the KLF/damson Bill Drummond had a background with Echo + the Bunnymen (management?), who were a Liverpool band, and Julian Cope's a Liverpudlian, so it makes sense they'd all have found themselves at some point at the same pub, being situational.

By: bongo_x

bongo_x — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 11:13:15 -0800

@ charlie don't surf >That is utterly ridiculous.< Obviously you're not familiar with Bill Drummond. It's kind of embarrassing how excited I get when I see a link to something about Bill Drummond. And I think there's a good chance I would hate him if I met him.

By: bongo_x

bongo_x — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 11:14:21 -0800

>Thanks for introducing me to The Quietus and Caught by the River.< Indeed.

By: charlie don't surf

charlie don't surf — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 14:37:19 -0800

Obviously you're not familiar with Bill Drummond. No, I am not. But I am intimately familiar with the history and chemistry of dyes and pigments. It is a major part of my professional work. I assure you damsons were not needed for dyes by the Luftwaffe, as Drummond claims. They're uniforms were blue and dyes like Prussian Blue were invented over 200 years earlier. Why do you think they call it Prussian blue? That's the color of the Prussian's uniform, dyed with Prussian Blue. Same color scheme used by the Luftwaffe, and other branches. In any case, even some cursory web research (PDF) shows that Damsons were superseded by chemical dyes in the 19th century, as aniline dyes began mass industrial production in the 1840s and 50s. Now if you're suggesting that this is some high concept satire by Bill Drummond, who had some reason to associate the decline of the damson with Hitler, well that is just fucking stupid.

By: jack_mo

jack_mo — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 15:18:57 -0800

charlie, this is a man who burned a million quid, attempted to ritually sacrifice an effigy of Elvis at the North Pole in the company of man called Zodiac Mindwarp and revitalised the career of Tammy Wynette in the process of inventing a new genre of dance music. Flying into a humourless rage about the truth or falsity of his damson dye-related factoid seems like a waste of energy at best.

By: charlie don't surf

charlie don't surf — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 15:50:47 -0800

There is a not-at-all fine line between satire and stupidity. What seems particularly stupid is Drummond expending so much energy writing a stupid hoax about Hitler's damsons. It seems even more pathetic, after seeing your list of his other "accomplishments."

By: jack_mo

jack_mo — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 16:46:12 -0800

Like I said, he's spent decades expending enormous amounts of energy on projects that often don't make a blind bit of sense and that his audience assume are either horribly cynical hoaxes or completely genuine, heartfelt acts according to preference - I know folk who love Drummond because he's an arch prankster, and folk who love him for making wonderful, joyous pop music (and folk who hate him for the former and think the latter was the biggest prank of all). Anyway, my point was: if you're going to get angry about Bill Drummond, you can find much bigger things to get het up about than a mildly amusing aside about dye. It's like saying you despise Hitler because he was a mediocre watercolourist.

By: mykescipark

mykescipark — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 19:11:34 -0800

This discussion is going in exactly the direction that would delight Bill Drummond most. The UK tabloids used to do this with him all the time.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 00:22:00 -0800

There is nothing like a mediocre watercolour for throwing me into a murderous rage.

By: jack_mo

jack_mo — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 05:01:51 -0800

This discussion is going in exactly the direction that would delight Bill Drummond most. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that Drummond fashioned the damson anecdote to specifically enrage those intimately familiar with the history and chemistry of dyes and pigments. Tomorrow morning, charlie's comments will be graffitied on a bridge over the M53, and by the end of the week The KLF will have topped the international pop charts with their hit 2011: What the Fuck is Damson JAMM?. The lyrics will be roundly condemned by the Womens Institute, the panel of Gardners Question Time will sue over an uncleared sample, but - in an unexpected move - the song will be adopted as the official anthem of the 2011 International Symposium and Exhibition on Natural Dyes (an event later revealed as a long-running Drummond & Cauty side project based on a misprint in recent editions of The Illuminatus! Trilogy).

By: Sutekh

Sutekh — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 06:33:05 -0800

Kidney Liberation Front? Killer Librarian Association? Kansas Local Anglers? Kopyright Liberation Front. I was going to wait until 3 AM to post this but I'm getting too tired.