KLF - did they rock you?

I think you are taking the KLF a little too seriously. They were a couple geezers up for a laugh, and they certainly had one. I thought their music was alright, but 1987(WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON) is an absolutely brilliant album. It is rare as hens teeth as it was only on the shelves for about a day before it was pulled due to copyright violations. A buddy of mine has a vinyl copy and it is absolute madness. Think of rabidly plunderphonic hip-hop as done by the beastie boys if a. they had not tried to sound even remotely influenced by NYC black culture, b. they were hell bent on career suicide, and c. if they had absolutely no flow.

It sounds like it would be god awful, but it is so intentionally bad and purposely clever that is breaks through into genius.

I always thought their writing was more interesting than their music. Check The KLF's Guide To Having a #1 Hit Single The Easy Way, also The White Room Script, and the story about spending 24 hours continously driving on the M03. Simultainously hysterical and insightful. They knew exactly what they were doing.

Anyone remember Bill Drummond's great pre-JAMMs reply number, Julian Cope Is Dead?

Compared to what house/techno?

can you burn cds of mp3's?

he also has evry kraftwerk release via the same method

alternatively. fly to russia/bulgaria/somewhere like that and buy a copy. they cost 50 roubles. (1 pound 25). maybe 60.

The KLF were utterly (utterly utterly) BRILLIANT.

"Three-ay-ee-am; Three-ayeee-ay-em; Three-ay-ee-ay-em-ETERN-UA-AL!!!"

You know the score.

William Blake said he wasn't interested in what could be made "explicit to the idiot" - what on earth was he on about?!

Good for you Tom btw, I didn't think it was possible to adore the Smiths and the KLF...

Where is Drummond when his country needs him?!!!

picked up a copy of the america...what time is love? 12" today - for the hell of it and cuz it was cheap. not something you often see in the us, though i imagine it's a dollar-bin staple in the uk. never was a fan (they never made a dent in the us charts) but this is insane and hilarious and truly truly great. a parody of american excess? i dunno, but it has rocked me.

That's my favourite KLF track. It's so over the top it's incredible. Brilliant cover too, both of them - the one with the sitars and also the longboat one (different in the US).

mine's got the longboat cover, which IS great and suits the music perfectly. listened to it 3 times in a row.

they never made a dent in the us charts

"3 a.m. Eternal" was big in the US and wikipedia says top 5 Billboard.

And oh yeah, they rocked me. One of the greatest ever groups/artists/acts etc etc of all time.

i think you missed the subtext in my earlier remark which might be dumbed-down as, "they never made a dent in the us charts during a period when i was paying more attention to the billboard charts than to my toenails and hey check out this insane sloth."

subtext

/unfunny

it kinda blows my mind that they made #5 in '91, cuz at that point i WAS at least half aware of radio pop and i missed it entirely.

I guess it was a hit because it mentioned "Rock"

plus i lied earlier abt not being a fan. i now remember owning and loving the shit out of their cover of the dr. who theme once upon a really long time ago (late 80s sometime, basically in my childhood). so i guess the truth is that i not only now but always have loved the klf. so what must i hear next?

"If you ask me, there isn't nearly enough Africa in their sequenced drum patterns"
what on earth does this mean?

just finished reading the 17 and was left feeling disappointed, drummond has turned into little more than a grumpy old fart. standing in front of a class of schoolchildren and telling them music is irrelevant seems unhelpful and dickish. plus i don't feel the whole 'recording 17 people going hmmmm then deleting it' is quite the genius idea he thinks it is.

i fought my way through the 17 book recently as well.
enjoyable in parts, but yes, he needs to lighten up.
i ended up agreeing with his mate at the end who bluntly tells him on one of their traditional journeys that the whole 17 thing is crap basically.
the breakdown of his life on a year by year basis is rather fascinating though.

Yeah, just got to finish it about 2 days ago.

Seems like the dude's rich enough to just fanny around thesedays.

weren't the klf & co the biggest selling act in the world in 1991 or thereabouts? playing huge stadiums in russia etc. burning £1m probably wasn't probably as big a kick to his bank balance as you'd expect

part of the current wealth reason : the ongoing success of the Proclaimers

he admits as much re their chart topping charity single for which he refused to let go of the royalties

http://www.youtube.com/user/klfcommunicationsnet

^AMAZING RESOURCE

it is - just wasted an hour there. "doctoring the tardis" turns out to be more goofy than revelatory, tho fun. and i realize now that i also used to own the "justified & ancient" 12-inch (or an album it appeared on, something like that). more or less the version featured in the vid. shit is bonkers yo - SO FUCKING GREAT tho i remember it being too fruity for me at the time.

i think i am a fan

Their last public appearance before retiring always raises a smile from UK types of a certain age.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vgaik2as06c

I feel compelled to recommend Drummond's AMAZING early solo album The Man on every KLF thread.

Yeah, it's great. Notwithstanding his current, well-earned curmudgeon status, I think he's a genius.

Revive!

Where the hell are these chants of "MU-MU! MU-MU!" in "Last Train to Trancentral"?

Wigglypedia sez:
Splendid Magazine said of the LP version: "The cries of "Mu Mu! Mu Mu! Mu Mu! Mu Mu!" take on a strangely liberating, mantra-like feel. It's the essence of great pop music, of great dance music, wholly compressed."

Tom Ewing, in his Top 100 Singles of the 90s list, sez:
And then it fades away and the chanting begins – “MU MU! MU MU! MU MU! KLF!”

Yes they did rock me.

At the end of the Live from the Lost Continent version, it changes from "Woo-Woo" to "MU-MU"(?)

I've been on a early 90s jamz kick and never realized before how much of an exact rip the 3AM Eternal single is of Snap - 'The Power', down to the Eastern European voice sample at the start. feckin brilliant - How to Have a No 1 the Easy Way indeed...

I think 3AM Eternal came first though - the first version came out in 89, The Power was a hit in 1990.

I just remembered that in one of his books Julian Cope inspiringly uses "Bill Drummond" as an adjective, as in "David Balfe was Bill Drummonded to the tits". Made me laugh.

Here is the "Last Train to Trancentral" video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqxtBggVsi0

Now would that be the "MU MU!"s there at 3:24?

That's what I was thinking, yeah. It's "woo-woo" up till then, then for the last chorus it's "MU MU!".

Has anyone got/heard "Edits", the 'legal' version of the LP? So short, it retailed at the price of a 12" single + came with instructions on how to recreate the original record. I could never decide if this was classic or dud.
― Jeff W, Sunday, February 24, 2002

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-lDwwW7Ql0

+ the instructions themselves:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/woolner/3339270412/sizes/o/

consider me 100% rocked.

I wish they'd start to release these on Bandcamp.

― jvc,

exactly.
they would be able to burn another million if they did this.

The KLF, famously known for having diligently cleared all their samples for physical releases, of course.

It's not like they ever had to burn the entire run of an album, or surrender international performing name rights to the entire band, over uncleared samples.

Spotify, Bandcamp, or Apple being onboard with casual copyright infringement as artistic expression seems unlikely, however

think the bigger question is if this is gonna culminate in anything new

would be cool if they finished the Black Room and released it

there is no way that would be good

oh, now you want new AND good!

:D

They did something new like two years ago, it seemed great from reports and phone clips! They haven't made a good record together in about 24 years, and let's face it, a majority of Jimmy's music since then is pretty bad. (respect knux to the Token EP, but he dropped out of the band before they even recorded it)

And going back to try and put yourself in the mindset of a mental breakdown that almost saw you chainsaw off your own hand thirty years ago, in order to finish writing songs that scared you so much you stopped writing them thirty years ago and have not written new music under your own name since, to record them with a band who are now two-thirds dead, seems unlikely even it it would be cool.

oh yeah that Transit Kings album was pretty good but I kinda doubt Cauty had much to do with it

He's only credited with writing on some of the songs that carried over from the EP and singles. AFAIK his only recorded work with them was the Boom Bang Bombay single-sided 12", released as Custerd three years before the TKs album, in a run of 75 copies.

(discogs says that version was also used as a TK b-side later)

I've long been curious about the composition of that album, since Cauty was out early, and neither Pratt nor Beken really have any original compositions to their name, which leaves....Alex Patterson??

Guy Pratt had written multiple #1 singles, and the two of them had done the score for Spaced together

Solid State Logik 2 is now on Spotify

It says "12" master mixes 1989-2017", it's mostly the "Live from Trancentral" long versions, a few skipped last time, the 7" "Kylie said to Jason", and "Jarvis joins the Jams" from 2017 it seems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rn_ysTc1fxk

^^ the Rites Of Mu film in approx 9000x better quality than it looked on VHS

I followed the instructions in "THE MANUAL (HOW TO HAVE A NUMBER ONE THE EASY WAY)" and had a number one hit single.

wow, that Rites of Mu film is great

The White Room (Director’s Cut) is out

oh, the album! I thought you meant the movie.

Still, though....

Reaction: none...

I'd have to say it's their worst album.

This is the soundtrack though, rather than the hit version so it doesn’t have the stadium trance tracks and includes Go to Sleep. Well worth a listen. There’s a previously unheard Ricardo Del a force verse on Last Train

I'm definitely digging this more than the original album. Hello "Madrugada Eterna - Club Mix"

It’s also not the “original” version, which had “Born Free” as the final track.

So, version three.

.. four if you count etc

Despite being labelled "1989 Director's Cut," it's not from 1989 and it's not the movie soundtrack. Nearly everything is shorter than on the soundtrack (bar a couple that seem to be the 1991 album versions, eg No More Tears (is J&A the LP version too?)), the club mix of Madrugada Eterna is plonked in (and edited down)...

Apparently they've since put out a statement saying it's a finalised version from 1990, which sounds more like a cover-up for a new edit - dropping Born Free also feels v. much like a 2021 decision re publishing - but this does flow as a good listen, mostly.

xp lol

It’s also not the “original” version, which had “Born Free” as the final track.

So, version three.

No - promoed on cassette, bootlegged from that.

My personal KLF holy grail would be a long (6minutes+ please) version of Madrugada Eterna (303 mix), but no evidence anything like that ever existed beyond this clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWoueoTDb14

Looks like someone “covered” it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5G6YBzRZRq8

My personal KLF holy grail too. i almost had a copy of the 12" once upon a time and it still pains me to think how close i came.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/oct/19/klf-assert-justified-and-ancient-copyright-claim-to-block-documentary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii4k1SeOmlM

Great, read about that in the guardian, didn't know it was going to be free on youtube.

It's been mentioned above but everyone should read The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds.

I'm not sure the intention of the producers was / is for it to be free on youtube.

I was wondering, doesn't look much like an official account/upload does it.

I watched Who Killed the KLF? last night and it's really good - the unauthorized-ness of it works in its favor, feeling more like a made-for-TV true crime story: lots of footage of cloaked figures stacking KLF vinyl, drone shots of a black and white '68 Ford Galaxie traversing the UK, burning money, voiceovers from folks who were at one of their events. I can see why Messrs. Cauty & Drummond would hate it - it's a straight-forward, linear timeline, fan movie that makes a case for them being Cool As Fuck still 30 years later.

it's good, though i kind of hated the end, with the belle and sebastian song over the clips of related/un-related things that have happened in the intervening 23 years. i found it really mnoving when jimmy was talking about how they'd ask each other "what would the klf do?"—describing their process with and relationship to each other.

has anyone read their book, 2023? it's simultaneously just what i expected (an increasingly complex, endlessly self-referential mindfuck) and not what i expected (dark af in some ways i couldn't have predicted — like the chapter "what is rape?").

klf kare?

the txt on the website seems to imply it's just tony thorpe messing around with old samples.
not overly impressed, but i guess that's all part of the plan.
if it is actually them.

it seems like a sad and tired, unfunny steaming pile of horse manure to me. hard to believe cauty & drummond had much to do with it.

i have from heard from someone who has knowledge of such things that this is a genuine attempt at an xmas #1 and does involve c&d.
which, despite the pretty awful track, is all fine and dandy,
but how is this possible via a free download that's available on their website !?

“their website”: https://klfkare.com/vibe.php

yeah, exactly.
despite assurances from folks closer to the situation than me, i am somewhat dubious.

It’s no worse than Jimmy’s last attempt at a Christmas #1 tbh