This one goes out to my homey Bendis. Whose endless enthusiasm for obscure and bizarre online music scares even me.
Bill Drummond and Jimi Cauty are two of the smartest men in the history of music. Under the guise of The Timelords, they created ‘Doctorin’ The Tardis’ , one of the biggest hits in the history of the U.K., by simply sampling and remixing two of the most recognizable recordings in the history of the country, Gary Glitter’s ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll Part 2′ and the theme song to Doctor Who. Is it an rip-off or is it art? Who knows and who cares, its fucking awesome. It’s probably also the first ‘Mash-Up’ (a mixing together of two or more popular songs to make a new song) in history. Despite its amazing popularity in Europe, I couldn’t find this song anywhere, the only place I could find it at all was on YouTube, so here’s the video.
After raking in the dough from that little creation, the duo renamed themselves The JAMS and they continued their sample-heavy formula on their next album What The Fuck Is Going On, until ABBA (fuckin’ Swedish pricks) threatened to sue for copyright infingement. After burning most of the copies of the album and selling the remaining few for 1,000 bucks each, they reanamed themselves once more, this time calling themselves The KLF (which stood for Kopyright Liberation Front). As The KLF, the duo recorded some of the best ambient house music ever made, and even broke through into the American pop scene with ‘3 A.M. Eternal.’ They then quickly broke up, announced they weren’t going to release any more recordings until world peace was declared and deleted their entire back catalouge.
That’s just the short version of The KLF story, I didn’t even mention the trash metal incident at the Brit Awards, their book on how to create a hit single, their cash award given to ‘The Worst Artist in England’ and the time they burned 1 million British pounds. Google them if you want the rest. This is an MP3 Blog, not a freakin’ encyclopedia.
Unfortunately, a lot of their best music is hard to find. ‘What The Fuck Is Going On?’ is obviously out of print, and everything else they recorded remains pretty scarce. I can’t even find most of their stuff online. If anyone knows where to get a copy of their ‘illegal’ stuff, let me know. You’ll totally be my BFF (best friend forever.)
The KLF – America: What Time Is Love?
This version of ‘What Time Is Love?’ is not on any album, and was only released on the single for ‘What Time Is Love?’ which strangely didn’t feature the original version of the song. The vinyl I have of this was a little banged up, so the first few seconds are a little scratchy.
Have a look at http://detritus.net
for a copy of What the fuck…
Why not post a link to wikipedia for those who want to read the full KLF history?
I stumbled on your sight while looking for the Japanese version of Puc-Man. Thank you soooo much for that, as I don’t see much online about it. So far I love your site. Started to take a look around and again I have to say thanks for reminding me of the the Timelords – “Doctorin’ The Tardis”. I haven’t heard that since early 90s. gotta dig that out.
Are you still looking for “What The Fuck’s Going On?” by The Jams? Big fan of KLF, etc from back in the day. Also thanks for reminding me of what a brilliant but also chaotic cluster-fuck they were at their height of fame. It’s also kind of funny how you reminded me about them bragging about how to make the perfect pop song and then doing it and how that story was very similar to the Pet Shop Boys and The Smiths had similar stories of being cads who wrote music rags about writing the perfect pop songs, and then they also created bands to prove it and then became huge sensations with their music at the time.
What albums were you looking for? I might have something you are looking for.