Song:3 A.M. Eternal
Album:The White Room: Special Edition
Today the British duo The KLF are considered to be very influential in the development of 90s dance music. Most fans should be familiar with their 1991 top five hit 3 A.M. Eternal. But they retired soon after and deleted most of their music catalog. Bill Drummond was in the 70s band Big In Japan. Then he was an A&R man for WEA Music in England and managed and developed Echo and the Bunnymen. He left his job at WEA in 1986 and released a solo album. Jimmy Cauty was in the band Brilliant who Drummond signed to WEA. The two wanted to be musical anarchists based on the novels The Illuminatis! Trilogy. They called themselves The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (the JAMs) based on characters in the novels. Their first single was a hip hop version of The Beatles' All You Need Is Love on their own label. They didn't get permission to use any of the samples and they withdrew it and burned all the copies. Then they released Whitney Joins the JAMs based on Whitney Houston's I Wanna Dance With Somebody. Arista Records owner Clive Davis could have sued them but instead he offered them a job. They turned him down and instead released Doctorin' The Tardis as The Timelords. It's a Doctor Who mashup. It topped the charts in England. Drummond said he wanted to have a number one record to prove that he could do it if he wanted. They started releasing music as The KLF. This was mostly R&B based house music. They were very popular in British clubs. They were going to make a film called The White Room. When that didn't work out, they turned it into an album. Arista picked it up for US release and the single 3 A.M. Eternal reached #5 on the Billboard Hot 100. Singer Maxine Harvey and rapper Ricardo appeared regularly on KLF albums. The clarinet solo is by Duy Khiem. The KLF officially retired in 1992. I guess musical anarchy wasn't going as planned. Drummond deleted his entire back catalog except the Arista release of The White Room. It's available on CD with bonus tracks. Drummond and Cauty have reunited occasionally. But mostly they produce art as The K Foundation. Here's the video for 3 A.M. Eternal by The KLF featuring Maxine Harvey and Ricardo.
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