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.