6:54 pm - Fri, Mar 8, 2013

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Acid House Time: Kick Out The Jams

The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (AKA The JAMs) hit the British music scene in 1987 with a collage of unauthorized samples, beatboxing, and cryptic, political Scottish-accented raps titled “All You Need Is Love”.



Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, under the assumed names “Kingboy D” and “Rockman Rock”, sequenced the single on an Apple II, quickly following it up with the sample-heavy debut hip-hop album “1987 (What The Fuck Is Going On?)”. It was brash, avant-garde, and made for great listening in a “I can’t tell if this terrible or the best thing I’ve ever heard” sort of way. Drummond later referred to it as a “punk version of a hip hop record”.



In 1988, they dubbed themselves “Time Boy” and “Lord Rock” and released “Doctorin’ The Tardis” as The Timelords. Credit for the song was given to Ford Timelord, Cauty’s 1968 Ford Galaxie police car.



Mashing up the Doctor Who theme, Gary Glitter’s “Rock And Roll (Part Two)”, “Blockbuster!” by Sweet and “Let’s Get Together Tonite” by Steve Walsh, The Timelords reached #1 on the UK Singles Chart. Drummond and Cauty followed Doctorin’ with the 1989 book The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way), which was used by Edelweiss and Chumbawamba to great effect.


They first released as the KLF in 1988 with “Burn The Bastards”, marking a sharp left veer toward house music:











On 12 February 1992 at the British Phonographic Industry’s annual BRIT Awards, the KLF performed “3AM Eternal” live together with the crust punk group Extreme Noise Terror in what was later described as a “violently antagonistic performance”, machine-gunning blanks in front of bewildered music industry executives. As the performance concluded, the KLF’s promoter announced “The KLF have now left the music business”:




Following their bombastic exit, Drummond and Cauty formed the the K Foundation, culminating a series of Situationalist stunts by going to the Scottish island of Jura and burning £1,000,000 in cash:



After exiting the music business and promising not to return, the KLF came out of retirement with the electronic protest song “Fuck The Millenium”, critiquing comeback albums with a video featuring wheelchairs, old mans’ pipes and a brass band.