Bill Drummond – ‘100’

I’m quite enjoying reading books without writing about them at the moment, but it seemed silly not to mention Bill Drummond’s new one, 100. Not least because it is harder to get hold of than I realised, and maybe this will tip off somebody before it is too late. I got mine from here, but it turns out that was quite lucky, because they were only selling 100 of the 1000-strong book cube sculpture (there’s a photo two thirds of the way down the page), and next month the cube moves to Liverpool where a further 100 copies can be bought from News From Nowhere. It’s as wonderful and miscellaneous as you’d expect, like all of Bill’s books an incredulous and joyful struggle with the ongoing process of being Bill. He is sticking to his story that recorded music is a dead art form, and his main thrust here seems to be against the more general passivity that consumer culture encourages. Don’t watch football, play football, he recommends; if you’re too old, go and watch your kids play in the park. Don’t listen to music, make music, make it for the moment, and don’t you dare press record. If I were to have four questions to ask Bill, one would be, ‘what are books, but “record” buttons’?