Songoftheday 11/26/17 - I'm gonna kick this hard and you can catch it, down with the crew crew talking 'bout the Mu Mu...
from the album The White Room (1991)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #5 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 12
Today's song of the day comes from the KLF, which was one of the musical monikers used by producers/artists Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty for their dance music releases. Getting together in London in 1987, Drummond, a record executive, and Cauty, a guitarist with the band Brilliant that had recorded with Stock, Aitken, and Waterman (Rick Astley, Kylie Minogue), started out as the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu. With a pretext of being a subversive art-dance act, they used samples liberally, cribbing the Beatles and Samantha Fox for their bootleg single "All You Need Is Love". After a positive reception with DJs, it was reworked to avoid lawsuits on the samples, and the resulting "All You Need Is Love" climbed to #3 on the UK independent singles chart in 1987, and centered their first album 1987 (What The Fuck Is Going On?). The duo released a series of one-off singles in the remaining part of the year, with one, "Whitney Joins The Jams", which sampled Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody", helping them grab an American distribution deal with Arista Records. In 1988, recording under the name The Timelords, their homage to the Dr. Who sci-fi television franchise, "Doctorin' The Tardis", became the pairs' first mainstream success, reaching #1 on the British singles chart for a week. Meanwhile, it reached #16 on Billboard's Dance Club Play chart, #17 on their Modern Rock radio list, and blasted onto the pop Hot 100 at #66. From the reception and success of the single, they even published a book, The Manual (How To Have A Number-one Record the Easy Way). At the same time, Drummond and Cauty rechristened themselves the KLF, and set out to record a movie with a soundtrack called The White Room. The original version started with a single closer to Cauty's Brilliant work with Stock Aitken Waterman, "Kylie Said To Jason", which hit #5 on the indie singles charts in the UK but stiffed nationally. The film was axed, and the album was redone with the techno track "What Time Is Love" leading the new White Room. The result was that single, originally released in 1988, shot all the way to #2 on the British singles chart, and #13 on the American Dance Club Play tally. Their next release, "3AM Eternal", would prove to be their international breakthrough. Written and produced by the duo, and featuring a rapid-fire rap from British hip-hop artist Ricardo Da Force, the pulsating record was irresistible to mainstream radio in the U.S...
"3:A.M. Eternal" became the KLF's first stateside pop success, reaching the top 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 in September of 1991. The single also hit #1 on their Dance Club Play chart. Internationally, the record topped the charts in the UK and Finland, and made the top ten in Sweden (#2), Australia (#3), Germany (#3), Austria (#4), Switzerland (#4), Norway (#5), the Netherlands (#6), and New Zealand (#10).
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Here's the trance remix that helped the song top the American dance chart in 1988...
and the act appearing on Top Of The Pops to promote the single..
In 1992, the KLF hired punk act Extreme Noise Terror to perform "3AM Eternal" on stage with them, ending with Drummond firing machine gun blanks over the audience, and subsequently quitting the music business...
Finally, in 2011 DJ Serge Devant remade "3AM Eternal" into a HI-NRG club jam...
Up tomorrow: An animal of a singer is losing his mind.
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