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Underground > Radio & Music >

They don't want to upset the apple-cart and they don't want to cause any harm...

Our Lady Has Left the Building

19:55 / 17.05.06

Waiting for the Rights of Mu Part Two.
Dancing Queen
America- What Time is Love?.

This is a thread to discuss the work of the KLF around the late eighties and early nineties, I'd prefer to draw a discreet shroud over the K Foundation/Y2K as it, ahem, wasn't that good. But in their day these guys looked like they could do anything, ambient (Chill Out, Space), cut-up pop (1988, Shag Times) and dance. An alternative view might be that they had a sometimes limited pallette of sounds which they spread a very long way (the 'justified and ancient' rhyme for example). So, do people see them as trailblazers or relics?

21:01 / 17.05.06

Well, I'm a fan. They truely changed my life. The pop-friendly "stadium house trilogy" ("3am Eternal", "Last Train to Trancentral" and "What Time Is Love") utterly rocked my early teens, captured my heart and mind and catapulted me into a full-on-raging-love of music, dancing, raves, ice cream vans and funny suits with horns coming out of the faces. Whether this stuff is any "good" now is largely irrelevant from my perspective owing to the impact they had.

It wasn't just me.. and it wasn't just them. A lot of my friends were into them. We hated the rockers at our school and they hated us ravers so, amongst others (Prodigy, Shamen, Altern-8, Beltram, Moby, Orbital and on and on..) the KLF gave us anthems. Being "thinking types" a few of us got into reading around the subject, so I discovered the Orb, Oakenfold, Shroom... psychadelic tradition... partly through the KLF. Another friend found Robert Anton Wilson who, arguably, changed our lives more, but who's to say we would ever come across him without the KLF hitting the charts? Difficult but for me, they're all a very important part of my personal history and mythology. I dare say a few others were touched as well.

I can't think of many people who have successfully made it to the pop culture mainstream dressed so gaudily in colours of chaos, confusion, rampant radical politicing and pseudo-religon... and made it so dammed fun.

21:07 / 17.05.06

They occasionally play What Time Is Love at Duckie, and it's amazing how jump-around exhilarating it still is.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

23:22 / 17.05.06

Finally replaced my knackered old tape of the JAMMs' "1987- What The Fuck Is Going On". And by jingo, it's as great as it was back in the day.

"What's going on? We're not the Monkees. I don't even like the Monkees. I FUCKING HATE THE MONKEES!!!"

23:40 / 17.05.06

I'm also amazed by the longevity of the KLF's energy. What Time is Love and 3am Eternal are guaranteed to get me dancing, amongst others. Loved them.

01:08 / 18.05.06

I've been reading Bill Drummond's book 45 recently (note to self: must finish that) which is full of great anecdotes about the KLF/K-Foundation and all related endeavours (amongst many other things). There's a great bit where Drummond describes his proposed Scottish football team World Cup single and video, which I really wish had been made (although perhaps wouldn't have been as good/terrible as it sounds...)

Always had a soft spot for the Whooligan anthem Doctorin' The Tardis and generally think the KLF to have been A Good Thing (might expand on that later, but am far too tired to think right now).

My favourite song, though, is quite possibly this little gem:
KLF Vs Extreme Noise Terror - 3am Eternal

Our Lady Has Left the Building

09:04 / 18.05.06

It's relatively rare to come across a band that has a cosmology, even if it's second hand. Groups like the Pet Shop Boys or Franz Ferdinand have come with an aesthetic or an image but I'm struggling to think of other groups that have done the same, The Shamen are the only ones that come to mind.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

09:57 / 18.05.06

Psychic TV?

I also love America: What Time Is Love, for the bit with Mark "Zodiac Mindwarp" Manning doing For Those In Peril On The Sea.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

10:01 / 18.05.06

Well, if you want a band with a cosmology, there's always GWAR.

I loved "that Doctor Who song" in high school, but never actually understood that the KLF and EMF were two different things. Small-town Ontario wasn't the best place to get exposed to new things at that age.

17:10 / 18.05.06

KLF burnt a million quid. What could be more rock 'n roll?

Disco is My Class War

14:43 / 19.05.06

Lol @ KLF/EMF confusion. Me too. I remember "3am Eternal" and "Unbelievable" back to back at my Year 10 formal. Those were the days.

I loved the KLF in high school and didn't discover the Bill Drummond book, RAW antics and so on until I'd already found Barbelith. Yeah, they burnt a million. Yeah, they're cool. But their music is cooler.

14:59 / 20.05.06

WTF wuuuuz that?

Disco is My Class War

14:56 / 21.05.06

You're just too old to understand

21:04 / 21.05.06

EMF quote.

02:23 / 23.05.06

i got you Ganesh.

i'd been DJ'ing with a friend doing an early-90's late-80's madchester/ravey/acid/indie-dance kinda thing recently and my partner played 'doctorin' the tardis' on our first night. it never sounded so good! that tune REALLY stands up and sounds fantastic on a loud sound system...seek out the 12" and get to it!

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

11:47 / 23.05.06

Doctorin' The Tardis really should have been the new Who theme. Apart from the Gary Glitter/family show conjunction, that is.