The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu 'It's Grim Up North (Part 1)'

Chart Peak: 10

YouTube

Despite, or maybe because of, their prankster reputation, Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty are fairly well represented on the Now! album; perhaps they thought it was a good way to subvert the mainstream. This is their only representation under their original pseudonym, but they show up on the albums either side of this as the KLF and long-terms readers of this blog will have met them on Now 12 as the Timelords.

Personally, I'm not all that interested in the meanings behind all their stunts. At least, I might spend an odd half-hour reading about it when I'm supposed to be doing something more important, but I'm not interested to the extent of speculating about it in detail or treating it as a selling point of the record. When I enjoy their work, it has to be on the entertainment level or not at all, and in this context 'It's Grim Up North' isn't one of their finer moments. It's no more or less than Drummond reciting a list of Northern English towns in a heavy Scottish accent (presumably the irony that all these places are south of Scotland is intentional, although an early version of the track featured Pete Wylie on vocals instead) over a techno beat - until at the end it mutates into an orchestral version of 'Jerusalem'. Which is a cute enough idea I suppose, but unlike some of their other songs it's really only an idea. Possibly it's more dramatic in the full ten-minute version, but for the purposes of this blog I've assumed they'd use the 7" edit (see the YouTube link).

Of course, this track is no longer available, along with the KLF catalogue. It's not the greatest loss, I must say.