How a Chris Morris sketch show became Warp Records’ strangest release
Picture the scene. You’re drifting to sleep to the dulcet tones of The Shipping Forecast. Letting half-understood wind speeds and tide warnings wash over you. Then, just as your eyes fully relax, as you completely switch off and fully set off on your own trip to the land of nod, you realise that this week’s narrator is talking to you. Yes, you. You, right there, reading this article. WAKE UP, MICHAEL.
You’re probably not called Michael, but it was worth it to freak out those that are and freaking people out is very much the name of the game with what might just be Chris Morris’ masterpiece. If you like your comedy black, it’s a show you might be well familiar with. If you’re not, then giving it a listen will be a fine litmus test to see whether you the genre was calling to you all along. Because sweet baby Jesus and the little Donkey too, Blue Jam is like a trip to the bogs after 13 Guinnesses. Some horribly dark shit.
The show premiered in 1997 and was inspired by the scene pictured at the start of this article. The moment between sleep and wake, where dreams start to infiltrate your real life and vice versa. This was reflected in the way that Morris insisted the project be premiered. Despite being the lone comedy show broadcast on BBC Radio 1 at the time of its release, its airtime was midnight until 1am. This was a compromise, Morris wanted it to be even later.
Then you get the sketches themselves. Deadpan to the point of rigor mortis, yet tackling themes just as grotesquely morbid. Parents completely unbothered that their child has gone missing. A tough-as-nails, ruthless fixer in the world of organised crime, who’s also four years old. A disease called ‘The Gush’ that’s only affecting actors in porn films. These are just a few of the deeply disturbing moments depicted in Blue Jam, and in comparison, not even the particularly dark ones.
How did Warp Records get involved with Blue Jam?
Now, to call Blue Jam a hit is laying it on a little thick. When everything from the content to the presentation to even the timing of the show itself is as off-putting as possible, the idea of it breaking into the mainstream is just as absurd as anything it actually deals with. Yet, whatever Chris Morris did in the 1990s, his fanbase followed, and people who loved Blue Jam really loved Blue Jam. So much so that it even got a one-series television adaptation, which gamely adapted the best sketches of the series.
However, that’s not the most interesting version of the show out there. You see, music was always a huge part of the existence of Blue Jam. The dialogue of each sketch sometimes fading in and out of a dazed, trip-hop style score that was as much of a hallmark of the project as any of its punchlines. Combine that with the fact that the radio show (and its TV adaptation, quite incredibly) managed to get away without having any commercial breaks, then each episode came with an unbroken, hour-long suite of music that was just as tasteful and atmospheric as anything on the pop charts of that era.
Perhaps this was why, when the time came to release what was essentially a Blue Jam greatest hits album, Morris and co eschewed working with the BBC or Channel 4’s in-house labels in favour of something a little cooler. Quite fittingly, the Blue Jam album came out on the achingly hip experimental techno label Warp Records, who made their name as the home of Aphex Twin, Flying Lotus and Boards of Canada. For a way into such an otherwise impenetrable show, there are few better places to start.
WAKE UP, MICHAEL.