JOE MEEK
Joe Meek, eh? – what a cult. Time’s a funny thing – take a record like “I Hear A New World”. It was done in 1960, you know. And believe me you will know, because anyone into Joe Meek will tell you so, again and again and again. Why? Because it is the only remotely noteworthy thing about the track. Had this nonsensical druggy goop been issued in 1970, it would have been laughed off worlds Old, New, Borrowed and Blue. But no, it was 1960 and hence Joe Meek is a genius! A forgotten hero! An analogue pioneer! This despite his ‘weird’ tracks being gimmicky tat (he recorded toilets flushing…..backwards!) and his ‘normal’ stuff being Cliff or Alma with a bit of echo on. His biggest hit as a producer was “Telstar”, a cash-in record about a satellite which sounds unimaginably futuristic….if like Joe you imagined the future as a place where people play Ennio Morricone knock-offs on the paper and comb.
People into Joe Meek are the worst kind of music snob – they’ve missed every contemporary bus going, but if they’re too slow or bored to discover new stuff now, at least they can stake claims to all those ‘forgotten genii’ who lurk in pop’s lobby, just waiting for the right advert to come along and usher them through the main doors. No matter how many people eulogise Joe Meek or, worse, rip him off, to these fans he’ll always be underrated. Piffle: he was a pitiable nutter whose fusty records stopped selling and who ended up murdering his landlady. Some hero.
Your comment here on Joe Meek is absurd and inaccurate. There is absolutely no record of him ever working with Cliff Richard or Alma Cogan. Since you can’t be bothered to get your facts right, then why should anyone bother reading your rant? I agree with some points you raise… I am a Joe Meek fan but to be dismissed as “the worst kind of music snob” is truly pathetic and insulting. Pity Meek blasted himself off the planet. Had he been able to read this he would have blasted your head off!
Mr Baz as Tanya’s long-suffering editor I think you’re misreading the piece. “Cliff or Alma with a bit of echo on” is not saying that the records were literally Cliff or Alma, just that they might as well have been.
Your writer Tanya is CORRECT! Mr So-Called “Meek” was a filthy little pervert and a cowardly murderer who deserves to rot in Hell where he belongs. Why did these filthy Socialists erect a Blue Plaque in his honour to pollute the srreets of Holloway? I suppose they’ll be putting one up for Myra Huntley next! Bring back National Service! Enoch was RIGHT!!
“if like Joe you imagined the future as a place where people play Ennio Morricone knock-offs on the paper and comb.”
Interesting, since ol’ Ennio didn’t start composing music for films until… 1962, two years after Meek made I Hear a New World.
Dude, little alien voices (little alien voices) little alien voices!
Fuck uw toilet van eendeieren twister, Meek is de grootste moorde verslagproducent ooit behalve Spector maar hij wordt niet nog geprobeerd. Ga en luister aan uw cilinder van Peters en van Lee vóór I vivisect uw groene panda!
“If they played it in 1970…” Well they played it twice in the 60s under the names “Pet Sounds”, and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and both times it was a massive commercial success asskissed worldwide to this day.