1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?) | ||
| Image:The JAMS- 1987 (What The Fuck Is Going On?).jpg | ||
| Studio album by The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu | ||
| Released | June 1987 | |
| Genre | Electronica | |
| Length | 40:56 | |
| Label | The Sound Of Mu(sic) | |
| Professional reviews | ||
|---|---|---|
| The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu chronology | ||
| 1987 (What The Fuck Is Going On?) | Who Killed The JAMs? (1988)
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| "1987 (The JAMs 45 Edits)" | ||
|---|---|---|
| Image:The JAMS- 1987 (The JAMS 45 Edits).jpg | ||
| The back cover of The JAMS 45 Edits, an edited version of 1987 without the illegal samples | ||
| Single by The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu | ||
| Released | 16 October 1987 | |
| Format | 12" EP | |
| Label | KLF Communications | |
| Drummond & Cauty singles chronology | ||
| "Whitney Joins The JAMs" (1987) | "1987 (The JAMs 45 Edits)" (1987) | "Down Town" (1987) |
1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?) is the debut album of The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (The JAMs) (Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty). 1987 was produced using extensive unauthorised samples that plagiarised a wide range of musical works, continuing a theme begun in The JAMs debut single "All You Need Is Love" (included on the album). These samples provided a deliberately provocative backdrop for beatbox rhythms and cryptic, political raps.
Shortly after independent release in June 1987 (see 1987 in music), The JAMs were ordered by the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society to destroy all unsold copies of the album, following a complaint from ABBA. In response, The JAMs disposed of many copies of 1987 in unorthodox, publicised ways. They also released a version of the album entitled "1987 (The JAMs 45 Edits)", stripped of all unauthorised samples to leave periods of protracted silence and so little audible content that it was formally classed as a 12-inch single.
A limited edition release subjected to recall and a destruction order, 1987 became something of a rarity and by the year 2000 mint condition copies were trading for £60.
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[edit] Context
On New Year's Day 1987, Bill Drummond decided to make a hip-hop record under the pseudonym The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu.<ref>BBC Radio 1 "Story Of Pop" documentary interview with Bill Drummond. First BBC broadcast believed to have been in late 1994, and was transmitted by Australian national broadcaster ABC on January 1 2005 (link).</ref> Knowing little about modern music technology, he invited Jimmy Cauty, formerly of the band Brilliant, to join him. Cauty readily agreed, and The JAMs' debut single "All You Need Is Love" was independently released on 9 March 1987 as a limited edition one-sided white label 12".<ref name="discog">Longmire, Ernie et al (2005). KLF discography Compiled by Ernie Longmire, this has been the authoratative KLF discography on the internet for some 10 years or more and has been the subject of long-term scrutiny and peer review by KLF fans and collectors. It is now maintained by the fan site klf.de.</ref> Cauty, meanwhile, had assumed the pseudonym "Rockman Rock", and Drummond had become "King Boy D".<ref>King Boy D had been unmasked as Bill Drummond in weekly music paper NME as early as 28 March ("World Domination Part 458", New Musical Express, 28 March 1987). However, the music press continued to refer to The JAMs almost exclusively by their pseudonyms throughout their career, and certainly throughout the 1987 articles referenced here. The names "King Boy" and "Rockman" survived The Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu transition into The KLF, although they briefly became "Time Boy" and "Lord Rock" during promotion of The Timelords' single "Doctorin' the Tardis".</ref>
The reaction to "All You Need Is Love" was positive, with the record being made single of the week in the British music weekly, Sounds Magazine,<ref name="SoundsAYN">"All You Need Is Love" review, Sounds, 14 March 1987.</ref> and The JAMs lauded as "the hottest, most exhilirating band this year".<ref name="Sounds16May">"The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu", Sounds, 16 May 1987.</ref> However, "All You Need Is Love"'s blatant reliance on uncleared — and hence illegal — samples made commercial release impossible.<ref name="Underground">Underground Magazine, April 1987 (link)</ref> The JAMs re-edited the single, removing or doctoring the most antagonistic samples, and rereleased it as "All You Need Is Love (106 bpm)" in May 1987.<ref>"The KLF", Musicmatch (link)</ref> According to Drummond, profits from this rerelease funded the recording of their first album.<ref name="begin">Drummond, B., "KLF Info Sheet", October 1987 (link). This was the first of many "Information Sheet"s that KLF Communications would send out to fans and the press.</ref> The JAMs had completed and pressed copies of the album by early May 1987, but had no distributor.<ref>News item, Sounds Magazine, 9 May 1987. Sounds reviewed a prerelease copy of the album in the 16 May 1987 edition.</ref>
1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?) was released in June 1987 on The JAMs' own record label, "The Sound of Mu(sic)".<ref>It would appear that the record was distributed by Rough Trade Distribution but the available sources are not explicit. Bill Drummond told Underground magazine in March 1987 that "we approached Rough Trade but they've not said anything yet." (link). In The Manual (ISBN 0-86359-616-9) the duo said: "Our experience was with Rough Trade. When we went to them with our first record on KLF they didn't want to know. They saw it as something that might sell five hundred copies, the bulk of those going to unsuspecting export accounts. This record then received good reviews in the rock press so they agreed to distribute it. It was not until we were about to record our second LP that they considered it worth their while to handle the manufacturing as well." This is almost certainly a reference to 1987. Manufacture of 1987 was arranged by The JAMs themselves, the record being pressed by MPO in France. (Sources: Sounds Magazine, 9 May 1987; 1987 vinyl inner groove).</ref> Like "All You Need Is Love" before it, the album was made using an Apple II computer, a Greengate DS3 digital sampler peripheral card, and a Roland TR-808 drum machine.<ref name="45edits">"How to recreate that authentic 1987 sound", sleevenotes to "1987: The JAMs 45 Edits", JAMS 25T, KLF Communications (link). Being a guide to recreating the record at home, this communique from The JAMs provided detailed information about the construction of the album and the samples used.</ref> Also as before, The JAMs liberally plagiarised from the history of popular music, cutting chunks from existing works and pasting them into new contexts, stealing "everything" and "taking... plagiarism to its absurd conclusion".<ref name="MM1987">1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?) review, Melody Maker, 20 June 1987.</ref> This mish-mash of samples was underpinned by rudimentary beatbox rhythms and overlayed with Drummond's raps of social commentary, esoteric metaphors and mockery. Drummond:
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1987 was reviewed in most of the major British music publications, including Melody Maker, NME, Sounds, and Q, and the album came to the attention of the management of Swedish pop group ABBA<ref>Didcock, Barry, "Bitter Swede symphony", Sunday Herald (Glasgow), 21 October 2001, p4.</ref>: The JAMs had sampled large portions of the ABBA single "Dancing Queen" on the track "The Queen And I"(sample ). A legal showdown with ABBA and the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society (MCPS) followed, 1987 was forceably withdrawn from sale, and The JAMs were ordered to "deliver up the master tape, mothers, stampers and any other parts commensurate with manufacture of the record".<ref>Davage, I., letter from the MCPS to The JAMs, reproduced in "The KLF 1987 Completeist List" [sic], an insert to Who Killed The JAMs?, KLF Communications JAMS LP2, 1988.</ref><ref name="SoundsMCPS">News item, Sounds, 12 September 1987.</ref>
King Boy D and Rockman Rock travelled to ABBA's home country of Sweden in the hope of meeting with ABBA personally,<ref name="SoundsMCPS"/> taking an NME journalist and photographer with them, along with most of the remaining copies of the LP. Of these LPs, some were disposed overboard on the North Sea ferry trip across, some were given to a prostitute with a very vague resemblance to Agnetha from ABBA, and the remainder were burned in a Swedish field (as shown on the cover of their next album, Who Killed The JAMs?). The JAMs also played a recording of "The Queen and I" loudly outside the offices of ABBA's record label, Polar Music. The trip was unexpectedly eventful, The JAMs accidentally hitting and killing a moose, and later being shot at by a farmer, a bullet cracking the engine of their Ford Galaxie police car.<ref name=sweden87>Brown, J., "Thank You For The Music", New Musical Express, 17 October 1987, passim.</ref> They were, by their own account, towed back to England by the AA.<ref name="Smith">Smith, M. E., "The Great TUNE Robbery", Melody Maker, 12 December 1987 (link).</ref>
The JAMs were not entirely sure what they would have said to ABBA, if they had been able to meet them. Rockman told NME: "We were hoping to explain [our artistic justification] to them and that maybe we'd come out of it friends, you know, them producing our album and us producing theirs - the kind of thing that often happens at these meetings." King Boy: "Yeah, we'd have said, 'Look, you haven't had many hits lately, you don't really wanna bother with all this West End musical shit do you? Come and do the new JAMMS album.'"<ref name="Smith"/>
In 1994, The Guardian looked back on the Swedish sojourn as "a grand, futile, attention-grabbing gesture, the kind that would come to characterise [the duo's] collaborative career... "We were being totally stupid about it" Drummond later admitted."<ref name="trash">Sharkey, A., "Trash Art & Kreation", The Guardian Weekend, 21 May 1994 (link).</ref>
The JAMs offered what they claimed were "the last five" copies of 1987 for sale at £1000 each in a full-page advertisement in the April 1988 edition of The Face.<ref>KLF Communications, advertisement, The Face, April 1988.</ref> Drummond argued that the offer exploited a loophole in The JAMs' agreement with the MCPS: "We were browsing around this record shop and came across these five copies of 1987.... We made it perfectly clear to the MCPS that we couldn't actually force the shops to send our LPs back.... [B]ecause we bought them in a shop, these LPs don't come into the agreement and we can do what we like with them and not break any laws."<ref>King, S., "Grand Ideas: Part 91", Sounds, 16 April 1988.</ref>
[edit] Composition
- A remade version of The JAMs' first white label single with a number of illegal samples removed. King Boy D's distinctive "Clydeside" rapping style can be heard in this extract.
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- Chike sings over a beatbox rhythm and a sample from The Dave Brubeck Quartet's "Take Five".
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- The most controversial song on the album, "The Queen and I" sampled from ABBA's "Dancing Queen". A legal showdown with ABBA led to the album's withdrawal.
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[edit] Personnel
Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty were responsible for the concept and production of 1987, its lyrics and the TR-808 beatbox rhythms. Drummond provided rap, and an additional rapper introduced as 'Chike' appears on "Don't Take Five (Take What You Want)" and "Rockman Rock (Parts 2 and 3)". Duy Khiem contributed lead vocals to "Me Ru Con", as well as clarinet and tenor sax to "Rockman Rock (Parts 2 and 3)" and "Next". Uncredited female vocalists on "Hey Hey We Are Not The Monkees", "Rockman Rock (Parts 2 & 3)" and "All You Need Is Love (106 bpm)" are identified by one source as Cressida Cauty (Jimmy's wife) and June Montana, the lead vocalists of the KLF Communications side project Disco 2000.<ref>Brown, J., "I Gotta CD" review, New Musical Express, 28 November 1987 (link).</ref>
[edit] Reviews
Q Magazine had criticisms of 1987: that there are "too few ideas being spread too thin", with some songs "overlong" and some questionable sample choices leaving "the impression of a random hotchpotch"; and that The JAMs' "use of the beatbox is altogether weedy". However, "there are some wickedly amusing ideas and moments of pure poetry in the lyrics while some of the musical juxtapositions are both killingly funny and strong enough to stand repeated listenings".<ref name="Q"/>
A reviewer for Melody Maker found 1987 "inspirational", and "the most exciting, most original record [he'd] heard in years". However, he, too, thought that: "Some snatches [of plagiarised music] rather outstay their welcome, tugging tell-tale glitz away from the clifftop and dangerously close to smug obviousness, but when the blows are kept short, sharp and very bloody, they make anything else you're very likely to hear on the radio dull and desperately humourless."<ref name="MM1987"/> "It's easy to dismiss The JAMs frolics as little more than a brightly coloured sideshow to the shabbiest circus in town", a later article said, but "believe me, it's far more than a gimmick".<ref>"Excerpts from Amply Sam(ply) Fox's 'Touch Me'", Melody Maker, 4 July 1987</ref>
In awarding 1987 the maximum five stars, Sounds—a publication that offered the duo's work consistent approval—mused, "Taking the sound of the moment (hip hop) as a backbone, 1987 steals sound artefacts from anywhere ... and meshes them together with King Boy's hysterical 'Clydeside' rap method with bewildering effect. ... [Y]ou could call this sampling technology's answer to T.S. Eliot's arch cut up work, The Wasteland. "<ref name="Sounds87Review"/> "What's so good about The JAMs", the magazine said, "is the way they are capturing on disc the whole social and musical confusion and instability of 1987 Britain".<ref name="Sounds16May"/>
NME's Danny Kelly was not so impressed. He, too, felt that the record was short on ideas and The JAMs not the most skilled of practicioners. "Audacity, completely unfounded self-confidence, utter ruthlessness and a fast car will, of course, be useful attributes to the go-ahead noise-pirate of the 90s, but skill, feel, instinct, vision - y'know, boring old talent - will still be bottom line compulsories.... it's in these latter commodities that the JAMs seem conspicuously undertooled." Compared to the output of DJ Code Money or Cut Creator ("all humour, vibrancy and colour... - aerosoled version[s] of The Book of Kells") Kelly felt Drummond's efforts to be a "glitter-crusted charity Christmas card".<ref name="Kelly"/> A later NME item, however, called 1987 "the best comment on sampling culture ever made".<ref>"Tate tat and arty", New Musical Express, 20 November 1993 (link)</ref>
A retrospective review by The All Music Guide said that 1987 is "a hilarious record" filled with "comments on music terrorism and [The JAMs'] own unique take on the Run-D.M.C. type of old-school rapping";<ref name="1987AMG"/> and The Penguin Price Guide for Record & CD Collectors called 1987 an "entirely brilliant example of the art of disc-jockey-as-producer".<ref name="Hamlyn">Hamlyn, Nick, The Penguin Price Guide for Record & CD Collectors (Fourth Edition), Penguin Books, 2000, ISBN 0-14-051466-X, p526.</ref>
Giving a retrospective review from across the Atlantic, Trouser Press described 1987 as "energetic" and "a loopy dance album that isn't unlike a lot of sampled records, but proceeds from an entirely different cultural understanding."<ref>Robbins, I., Trouser Press (link). Retrieved 19 April 2006.</ref>
[edit] Track listing
- "Hey Hey We Are Not The Monkees (100 BPM)"<ref>The "BPM" values (beats per minute) are taken from the sleeve of 1987. They are presented here as printed on the sleeve and may or may not be accurate.</ref> – 6:00
- "Mind The Gap" [unlisted sample of ambient noise in a London Underground station] – 1:02
- "Don't Take Five (Take What You Want) (89 BPM)" – 3:59
- "Rockman Rock Parts 2 and 3 (105 BPM)" – 6:29
- "Why Did You Throw Away Your Giro?" [unlisted] – 0:20
- "Me Ru Con (0 BPM)" – 2:23
- "The Queen And I (99 BPM)" – 4:43
- "Top of the Pops" [unlisted samples of television programmes including Top of the Pops] – 2:51
- "All You Need Is Love (106 BPM)" – 4:55
- "Next (100 BPM)" – 7:15
[edit] 1987: The JAMs 45 Edits
Following the enforced deletion of the 1987 album, the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu promptly released an edited version as a 12" single, unauthorised samples substituted by periods of silence. The edited single was sold through normal retail channels and also offered as a "reward" to anyone who returned a copy of the LP to The JAMs' PO Box.<ref>"Warning", Sounds, 19 September 1987 (link).</ref> The single was released on 16 October 1987,<ref name="discog"/> and on 31 October 1987 The JAMs announced that the case with ABBA "is now closed".<ref>Sounds, 31 October 1987</ref> The sleevenotes to "1987: The JAMs 45 Edits" explain to the purchaser in a rather tongue-in-cheek fashion how to recreate the original 1987 album for themselves:
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Anybody who actually returned the album got rather a raw deal: by 2000, a copy of 1987 in mint condition was worth £60, whereas a mint copy of 1987 - The 45 Edits was worth a mere £10.<ref name="Hamlyn"/>
[edit] Notes & references
<references/>
| The KLF |
|---|
| Bill Drummond | Jimmy Cauty |
| Also known as |
| The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu | The Timelords | K Foundation | The One World Orchestra | 2K | K2 Plant Hire |
| Main albums |
| 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?) | Who Killed The JAMs? | Chill Out | The White Room |
| Related articles |
| Discography | Films | The Manual | Space | Disco 2000 | Big In Japan | Brilliant | The Orb | Blacksmoke |
| The KLF / KLF Communications singles chronology |
|---|
| 1987 | All You Need Is Love | Whitney Joins The JAMs | 1987 (The JAMs 45 Edits) | I Gotta CD | Down Town |
| 1988 | Burn the Bastards | One Love Nation | Doctorin' the Tardis | What Time Is Love? (Pure Trance) |
| 1989 | Uptight | 3 a.m. Eternal (Pure Trance) | Kylie Said To Jason | 1990 | Last Train to Trancentral (Pure Trance) |
| What Time Is Love? (Live...) | 1991 | 3 a.m. Eternal (Live...) | Last Train to Trancentral (Live...) |
| America: What Time Is Love? | It's Grim Up North | Justified and Ancient | 1992 | 3 a.m. Eternal (The KLF vs ENT version) |
| 1993 | K Cera Cera | 1997 | Fuck the Millennium |
