ALAN DUNN

Shared below, with Alan’s kind permission, is an email he sent regarding his work with Bill on several projects.

First of all, a huge thanks for the requests for the CD – it was great to see all the comments as I travelled back home from last day of term. I try to instill in my students the confidence to do projects while keeping in mind that it may be 5, 10 or more years before they reach particular audiences or get feedback.

Before getting on to practicalities, I thought it may be of interest to fill in a little of the backstory. I was first introduced to Bill Drummond by Bryan Biggs at the Bluecoat here in Liverpool in 1996, at a meeting during which Jeremy Deller presented his ‘History of the world’ sketch that became Acid Brass.

I was working with Bluecoat on a 7” picture disc project and was asking Bill for permission to use an image of the first JAMMs LP that I had included in an art school drawing – http://alandunn67.co.uk/junkyard2001.html. I next worked with Bill when I was managing the ‘tenantspin’ community internet TV project at FACT in Liverpool and one of the tenants interviewed him about ‘How to be an artist’ in 2001

We then worked on the NO MUSIC DAY billboard (http://alandunn67.co.uk/piesnomusic.html) which incidentally didn’t please everyone … http://alandunn67.co.uk/nomusicday2008update2.jpg.

I then invited Bill to contribute something to the Grey project which is from a series of curated CDs called ’The sounds of ideas forming’ (http://alandunn67.co.uk/ADCD.html) in which I worked through seven themes and contacted artists, art students and archives to consider why people keep returning to certain themes generation after generation. Again, out of interest, the Grey CD has been broadcast and presented at numerous festivals etc including Liverpool Art Prize (with a tin of International Grey he provided), SOUNDWORKS at ICA, Boredom at Leeds Library, AIR/EAR (Argentina), Soundwalk (California) and there’s another curious little side project by KLF fan Joaquin Ronco who contacted me and remixed some of the Grey CD (http://alandunn67.co.uk/greylibrary.html). All the CDs formed a PhD submission which is here for anyone with the time to read further – http://alandunn67.co.uk/thesoundsofideasformingfinal.pdf

To business. I’ve had over 30 requests so far from around Europe and I’ll send everyone a copy. The CDs are stored at Uni in Leeds so I’d like to propose that I send them from there when I am next back on 9 January, saving my personal postage costs. All my CDs and vinyls are free, so do please let me know if anything else is of interest. Some of the smaller editions are running low in copies but I’ll do my best. Of course, if anyone would like to ‘donate to the cause’ and contribute funds to the next audio project, anything at all would be hugely welcome as I have to raise funds independently for each new venture. Paypal would be via alandunn44@gmail.com