The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu – Who Killed The JAMs?

Just listening to this for the first time in 25+ years and loving it... I bought this and Shag Times on the back of Chill Out, Space and The White Room and was disappointed with both. Now the older, less picky me can appreciate this properly. It won't be as long before I play it again.

This sounds like another KLF party album, but if you listen to the lyrics it's a lot darker: they had just been forced to burn all remaining copies of their last album, "1987: What The Fuck's Going On?", no doubt at huge personal cost, since their label was self-financed. The lyrical content here, the speed at which it was issued, and the fact that no tracklisting or title appears anywhere all indicate that this album was created quickly in order to try to recoup some of the losses.

Tracks like Disaster Fund Collection ("We really tried, we crawled through the mire...") and Burn The Bastards ("Build a fire, stoke it good, throw them on, and let the bastards burn!") express their anger at the situation. This last track has the coming of 1988 as its theme - and contains an express wish for 1987 to end as quickly as possible, as well as the line "1987 - what the fuck have we done?" - a reference to their destroyed album. On the other hand, the rather dark Porpoise Song seems a defiant response to what had happened ("The twists and turns and choice of fate have left us where we are / Well I'm a king, I've made my choice, now let's get to the bar!")

That's not to say it's bad. In fact, it's very good. There's some really nice, subtle electro breaks mixed with Scottish seafaring poetry (The Porpoise Song), bhangra beats and cynical pop commentary (Prestwich Prophet's Grin), and humourous hip-hop pastiche (King Boy's Dream).

In the circumstances, this is an amazing album, and good by any standards, especially for the barren musical wasteland of the late 80s. This album still sounds fresh and was quite different to anything else that was being made at the time.

The sleeve has virtually no information on it, due to it being printed long before the music was recorded, reportedly to save money. The same images were used on The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu aka The Timelords - The History Of The Jams Aka The Timelords.

The front and back cover reveal the band (KLF) burning their own copies of their debut album, "1987, What The Fuck Is Going On?". This took place somewhere in Sweden to assure the songwriters of ABBA's "Dancing Queen" that they agreed to destroy all copies of "1987..." If you take a look at the old police car on the cover--it's actually the soon-to-be the "Ford Timelord" car in their video, "Doctorin' The Tardis"!