Justified And Ancient.
"Justified and Ancient" is a song by British band The KLF (Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty) which featured on their 1991 album The White Room but with origins dating back to the duo's debut album, 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?).
The song was remade and re-released in November 1991 as a pop-house single subtitled "(Stand by The JAMs)", featuring the vocals of country music singer Tammy Wynette. This version was an international hit, reaching #2 in the UK Singles Chart, #11 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, and hitting #1 in 18 countries. "Justified and Ancient (Stand by The JAMs)" was the final release by The KLF through retail channels - shortly after their next release, the mail-order only collaboration with Extreme Noise Terror on "3 a.m. Eternal", Drummond and Cauty quit the music business, retiring the KLF name at the same time.
The title "Justified and Ancient" refers to The KLF's pseudonym and earlier incarnation, "The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu" (The JAMs). The JAMs took their name from - and mirrored - a fictional subversive cult from the 1960s intellectual conspiratorial novels The Illuminatus! Trilogy. Just as the fictional JAMs made it their remit to propagate chaos and confusion, so too did the real JAMs and The KLF. Their attempts to subvert the music industry and other establishments were frequent, unconcealed and controversial. The song "Justified and Ancient" is a statement of identity and rebellious intent. Moreover, it deliberately understates this intent. In contrast to the provocative and abrasive lyrics of The JAMs' album 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?), on which "Justified and Ancient" first appeared, the song has a soft and innocuous tune, and quaint lyrics:
"We don't want to upset the apple-cart, and we don't want to cause any harm, but if you don't like what we're going to do, you'd better not stop us 'cause we're coming through."
In November 1991, the single "Justified and Ancient (Stand by The JAMs)" was released, featuring the lead vocals of country music singer Tammy Wynette, introduced in the sleevenotes as "the first lady of country". This was an upbeat and funky version of the song, the subtitle referencing Tammy Wynette's solo hit "Stand by Your Man", and the inclusion of subtle pedal steel guitar also referencing Wynette's country origins. This was the final single to be aired commercially by The KLF, following the US release of "America: What Time Is Love?".
The "Justified and Ancient" single marked a departure from The KLF's previous "Stadium House" trilogy of hits, which were driven by hooks and riffs and emulated a live performance by using sampled crowd noise. In contrast, the riffs, samples and rap of "Justified and Ancient (Stand by The JAMs)" were secondary to its conventional song structure of verses and choruses. Still, a riff borrowed from Jimi Hendrix' Voodoo Child (Slight Return) runs through the choruses.
A longer mix of this arrangement, "Justified and Ancient (All Bound for Mu Mu Land)", dispensed with the pedal steel and substituted Wynette's lead vocals with those of Maxine Harvey, a regular contributor to The KLF's material.
Commentators were suspicious that the surprising pairing of Wynette with The KLF ("perhaps the oddest modern-day pop pairing") was a marketing ploy. Other commentators pointed to The KLF member Bill Drummond's fondness for country music as motivating the collaboration, or to the fact a period of almost exactly 23 years separated the first airings of "Stand by Your Man" and "... (Stand by The JAMs)".
"I really don't know why they chose me. I was apprehensive at first, but I'm really excited with the way it's all turned out", Wynette said. "Mu Mu Land looks a lot more interesting than Tennessee.... But I wouldn't want to live there." In April 1992, Wynette collapsed while on tour in Australia; for this she cited overwork during the promotion of "Justified and Ancient".
The single reached # 2 in the UK Singles Chart, being held off the Christmas # 1 spot by the re-release of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody". "Justified and Ancient (Stand by The JAMs)" also reached # 11 in the US Billboard Hot 100, # 3 in the Australian singles chart,, # 1 in Sweden, and # 1 on the Austrian Top 40. The UK music press received the release generally positively: it was "single of the week" in New Musical Express (NME) and Melody Maker. NME noted the "beautiful ethnic chorus lines! Ice Cream Vans! F--king awful lyrics!" [censorship preserved], and found that although the single "...lacks the sheer frantic rush of 'Last Train to Trancentral' ..., The KLF model a spiritual crown which elevates them several tower blocks above their amateur peers."
In 1995, a celebrity panel working for The Times compiled a list of 90 songs that represented the decade in music so far, with no more than one song per band allowed. "Justified and Ancient" was The KLF's entry (at number 44), with the lyrics described as "delightful nonsense". Splendid Magazine echoed this, but even more eulogistically. "I still maintain that this song deserves a place among the greatest artworks of the 20th century. Not only is it a brilliant, gleefully daft, wholly nonsensical, perfectly ludicrous pop song with a chorus to kill for, not only is it a slyly subversive comment on the cynically repulsive old-artist-collaborates-with-young-artist phenomenon at the expense of itself, but, self-referential irony and all, it is and always will be globe-straddling pop music incarnate. Were a decision reached that all pop music was deemed unfit for human consumption and had to be destroyed, save for one song to keep us fickle masses in choruses, this would be have to be the one, folks."
Following their collaboration with Tammy Wynette, and the subsequent appearance of Glenn Hughes on "America: What Time Is Love?", The KLF were, according to mixer Mark "Spike" Stent, swamped by phone calls from fading music stars, including Neil Sedaka and Sweet, who were eager to work with The KLF to revive their careers. This side-effect of The KLF's collaborations was at odds with their aim to subvert the music industry, as noted by GQ magazine in 1995. GQ published a retrospective of The KLF's career and interview with Bill Drummond, and suggested that such collaborations were a contributory factor in The KLF's abandonment of music: "[Bill Drummond's] distaste for the machinery of pop was at war with the creative populism of KLF", and "KLF had become bona fide pop miracle workers... It was all spinning way out of Drummond's contro
Promotional material and antics for "(Stand by The JAMs)" used iconography of ice cream and an ice cream van, while the lyrics coined the phrase "Make mine a '99' ". Indeed, a working title for the "Justified and Ancient" project was allegedly "The Ice Cream Men". Several months prior to the single's release, The KLF appeared at the Liverpool Festival of Comedy, where they sold ice creams to the audience while, on stage, figures swathen in grey and yellow robes chanted "justified...ancient...".
The ice cream van, introduced upon release of The JAMs single "It's Grim Up North", superseded the JAMsMobile (aka Ford Timelord) as The KLF's vehicle of choice. The van appeared with the The KLF on stage when they 'performed' "Justified and Ancient" on Top of the Pops, with Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty (The KLF) dressed as ice cream cones and Tammy Wynette appearing behind them on a large screen.
The "ethnic chorus line" to which NME referred is the refrain "All bound for Mu Mu land", a reference to the Lost Continent of Mu, which is identified with the fictional land Lemuria in The Illuminatus! Trilogy novels. Some research suggests that underwater archeological remains located off the coast of Japan may be Mu. Indeed, at the end of the "Justified and Ancient" music video, The KLF exit in a submarine.
