18 February 2021

Then someone started screaming, "Turn up the strobe"

Thursday music corner
The KLF (featuring Tammy Wynette) - Justified & Ancient (Stand By The JAMs)

A UK hit single from 1991 featuring a country stalwart and a deeply inscrutable lyric (the JAM in the parenthetical subtitle stands for the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, obviously). The vibe is both highly infectious contemporary pop and deeply satirical nonsense, with lyrics implicitly ridiculing the meaninglessness of the medium. The song reached no.2 in both the UK charts and the US dance charts, no.11 on the Billboard Top 100, and no.1 in 18 countries (including NZ for a week in March 1992).

The KLF's Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond famously burned a million pounds of their pop earnings in a small hut on the Scottish isle of Jura, which was later the subject for the 1995 performance art film, The K Foundation Burn a Million Quid, the title of which was fairly self-descriptive. Julian Cope later pointed out that it's all well and good making an artistic statement, but at the time they still owed him money.

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