Deep Shit was an unreleased flexi single pressed as an edition of 500 according to the JAMs’ first completeist list included with Who Killed The JAMs. Despite making an appearance in said list it hadn’t yet surfaced at that point, though.
They allegedly made the single because in 1987 they received a letter from an American calling himself ‘Don Lucknowe’. Lucknowe warned them about the “deep shit” they had landed themselves in.
A small reproduction of the letter was included with the aforementioned completeist list.
It all eventually turned out to be a joke, though – their only contact address pointed towards a parody news outfit, “Yossarian Universal”. Paul Fericano, the then editor thinks the originator of the letter is James Wallis, a British gamer fanzine writer (which eventually turned out to be correct). The name ‘Don Lucknowe’ has long been thought to be a reference to the catchphrase “Don’t Look Now” of the Three Stooges (Don Lucknowe = Don’t Look Now) but this has since been denied by Wallis.
Deep Shit’s Legacy
In the end a possible future release of Deep Shit was probably thwarted by the MCPS’ copyright infringment notice over the 1987 LP.
The name continued to appear several times in the KLF’s later output, be it as comic book novel, another unreleased single, and one of the alleged track titles from the unfinished Black Room. We can only assume that Bill and Jimmy thought the name to be too good to let go to waste.
