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"We had to pass the pyramid blaster / the JAMs are here, it's what you've been after." This is what KLF is about, also known as the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, further more known as the JAMs... ...as well as The Timelords, 2K, K2 Plant Hire, The K Foundation and of course The One World Orchestra Featuring the Massed Pipes And Drums of the Children’s Free Revolutionary Volunteer Guards. Comprising Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, the group achieved their greatest success in the period 1989-92, when they were known as The KLF and were associated with a style they called Stadium House (basically, Acid House with pop/rock production and sampled noises from cheering crowds). However, they also dabbled in other genres, usually Electronic Music (ambient, various house subgenres, techno, alternative dance), and became infamous for their satirical media stunts. For instance, when they were sued for unlicensed Sampling by ABBA, they responded by torching copies of 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?) in a field (a photo of this became the cover of their next album). Studio albums - 1987 (What the Fuck is Going On?) (1987) *
as The Justified Ancients of Mumu - most copies have been destroyed, the rest are collector's items.
- Who Killed The JAMs? (1988) *
as The Justified Ancients of Mumu - Chill Out (1990)
- The White Room (1991)
Other Records - Shag Times (1989) (a collection of non-album singles)
- The "What Time is Love?" Story (1989) (remix album)
This band provides examples of:- Aborted Arc: They never did find the white room, or finish the film, or stage that art exhibition, or build the people's pyramid, or fuck the millennium...
- Arc Symbol: Sheep
- On the Cover of Chill Out
- They were the audience to the only showing of the unreleased White Room film.
- A dead one was thrown into the 1992 Brits aftershow.
- This image,
 ◊ which appeared in The White Room album liner notes. (If you can't read the caption, it says "Why sheep?")
- Arc Number: 23.
- It was 23 years between the release of Tammy Wynette's single 'Stand by Your Man' and her appearance in 'Justified & Ancient'
- Jimmy and Bill won't discuss the reason why they burnt £1 million for 23 years
- Their reunion as 2K in 1997 lasted for Exactly 23 minutes.
- Their first single "All You Need is Love" was released with the Catalog number "JAMS 023"
- It's worth noting that 23 is also an Arc Number in Discordianism.
- All There in the Manual: well, as far as the Timelords episode goes, anyway.
- Black Sheep Hit: Doctorin' The Tardis was essentially an attempt to invoke this deliberately. And It Worked. They were never able to duplicate its success though, although they did have several other fairly large hits later in their career.
- Boastful Rap: Frequently, from their debut "All You Need Is Love" onwards ("We're the hottest MCs on the River Clyde!")
- Book Ends: The White Room begins with Black Steel singing yet another version of "They're justified and they're ancient..." but he gets cut off after the first verse. At the end of the album, he gets to finish singing the song.
- Canon Discontinuity: Their entire back catalog.
- Censored Title: ***K The Millennium. They were never going to get away with it uncensored, but at least they got to choose which letter survived.
- Clumsy Copyright Censorship: 1987 (What The Fuck Is Going On?) was pulled from the market due to having a massive amount of unauthorized sampling. In response, the band released 1987 (The JAMs 45 Edits), which consisted of all of the original material from the album with long stretches of silence where the samples were. The liner notes cited what samples would have been there, and suggested the listener could use this information to replicate the original version of the album themselves. This edited version of the album had such a small amount of actual music on it that it was formally classified as a 12 inch single.
- Concept Album: Chill Out is the soundtrack to a road trip in the Southern US.
- Cool Car: The Jamsmobile (aka Ford Timelord), claimed to be an ex-stuntcar and credited as the "talent" in The Timelords. Possibly parodied with the Ice Cream Van.
- Discordia: Drummond and Cauty both embraced Discordianism, which inspired the majority of their antics. Their initial name, The Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu, was taken from The Illuminatus! Trilogy.
- Early Installment Weirdness: Aside from the contentious samples, Cauty and Drummond spend most of 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On) attempting to be the British equivelant of The Beastie Boys. They continued this here and there on Who Killed the JAMs, but by the time they started recording as The KLF, most of the hip hop elements of their sound were long gone.
- Early-Bird Cameo: Both 'Justified & Ancient' and 'Last Train To Trancentral' both appear in Chill Out before their eventual release on The White Room.
- Everything's Louder With Bagpipes: "America No More"
- Fading into the Next Song: 1987, Chill Out, side one of The White Room. (In the latter, the fading was accomplished via crowd noises sampled from U2's Under a Blood Red Sky. These samples were removed from from the US release of The White Room, which eliminated the fading.)
- Fun with Acronyms / Xtreme Kool Letterz: The KLF stands for the Kopyright Liberation Front.
- The JAMs stands for Justified Ancients of Mu Mu.
- Hardcore Punk: Memorably teamed up with the crust punk/grindcore band Extreme Noise Terror for a spectacular performance at the Brit Awards.
- I Have Many Names: see top of page.
- The Illuminati: The Justified Ancients Of Mu-Mu are named after a society from The Illuminatus! Trilogy who subvert the Illuminati by infiltrating it and feeding it false information. The KLF Communications "pyramid blaster" logo is also a parody of the "eye in the pyramid" Illuminati symbol.
- Keep Circulating the Tapes: The group deleted their entire catalogue in the mid-nineties and they've been out of print ever since. Even before then, original versions of 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?) were difficult to find because copyright issues resulted in it being withdrawn from circulation, as mentioned above.
- Listing Cities: "It's Grim Up North" and the full-length version of "America: What Time Is Love?".
- Missing Episode / What Could Have Been: The group were working on an album called The Black Room which would have been utterly abrasive in the style of their collaborative performance with Extreme Noise Terror. However, they decided to retire from the music industry and it was never finished or released.
- Money To Burn:
- First, when Amanda Whitehead refused to accept the K Foundation's award for being "the worst artist of the year", Drummond and Cauty threatened to set fire to the cash prize. Whitehead accepted the cash at the last minute, saying she would donate it to charity.
- Later, when the K Foundation's art work "Nailed to the Wall"—which consisted of a million pounds in cash, nailed to an easel—failed to make the impact that they wanted, Drummond and Cauty found themselves with a million pounds and no idea what to do with it. So they burned it. And filmed the whole thing.
- New Sound Album: Chill Out was completely different from anything they'd released before, and The White Room was completely different from that. If they'd ever finished it, The Black Room was supposedly going to be a different sound again.
- One Hit Wonder: as The Timelords, they were this.
- Overly-Long Gag: ***K The Millennium in its radio edit includes a verse from the hymn Eternal Father, Strong To Save. That's a gag. The full-length version includes three - that's an Overly Long Gag.
- Rearrange the Song / Evolving Music: All their hits went through extensive rewrites, reworkings, remixes and reissues.
- Recurring Riff: Several of these, "Mu! Mu!" is probably the most iconic. Another would be guest rapper Chike's "ANCIENTS of Mu-Mu" which was reused several times, as well as the whole "They're Justified, and they're ancient...." verse.
- Shout Out: 'Kylie Said To Jason' is packed with these.
- Sampling:
- 1987: The Monkees '(Theme From) The Monkees', Abba 'Dancing Queen', The Beatles' 'All You Need is Love', MC5's 'Kick Out the Jams' (later to be used on the S.S.L version of 3 A.M. Eternal) just to name a few
- Chill Out: Elvis Presley's "In the Ghetto", Fleetwood Mac's "Albatross", Van Halen's "Eruption", 808 State's "Pacific", Pink Floyd's "On the Run", various preacher samples, Russian broadcasts, Tuvan throat singers, etc.
- Stage Names: Rockman Rock (Cauty) and King Boy D (Drummond). Initially these were adopted for legal reasons (Plausible Deniability) but it took about 23 seconds for everyone to find out who they really were. They kept the names anyway.
- Stylistic Suck: "Doctorin' the Tardis", a mashup of the Doctor Who theme and Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll, Pt. 2" intentionally written as a Springtime for Hitler. It ended up going to #1 on the charts, and provided the duo with enough material to write The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way), a satirical manual about how to achieve a hit without talent or money.
- Train Song: "Last Train To Trancentral".
- Word Salad Lyrics: Ricardo's raps tended toward this.
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