![]() ![]() There were more conventional releases, most notably teenage fantasy Angela Jones by Michael Cox, heavily supported by Jack Good's television programmes and making number seven, arguably not going higher due to Triumph's inability to press enough copies through independent pressing plants. Joe Meek/The Blue Men - I Hear A New World Due to finance issues only the first side came out as an EP, the whole album not fully issued until 1991 (the 2002 reissue has a half hour interview with Meek about his processes added). Playing on Meek's penchant for outer space and equipment manipulation and largely made flesh by The Blue Men, an adapted skiffle group, it was Meek's largely instrumental attempt "to create a picture in music of what could be up there in outer space", a blend of the band, found sounds, electronic pulses and special effects that was less late 50s kitsch the subject might suggest than presaging psychedelia and Eno ambient. One of its first releases was his own I Hear a New World - An Outer Space Music Fantasy. By day working in studios, he set up a small recording facility in his flat where he'd record tone deaf demos of songs he'd written, mostly inspired by his point of obsession hero Buddy Holly.Īfter being sacked from Lansdowne Recording Studios (where the Sex Pistols would later record Anarchy In The UK, following any number of 60s British Invaders) due to a clash of personalities with the owner, in 1960 Meek co-founded Triumph Records, possibly the first British independent label. It became trad jazz's first top 20 single. One such ploy saw him mess with the final mix of Humphrey Lyttleton's Bad Penny Blues, putting the piano part to the front and distorting the bass. After demob, he bought an acetate disc cutter and in 1953 moved to London to become a sound engineer for a radio production company that made programming for Radio Luxembourg and then a studio recording engineer, and would surreptitously add effects and tricks onto recordings regardless of whether he'd been asked to. A National Service spell in the RAF as a radar technician helped his interest along. ![]() It was a fascination with electrics that was his real first love, though, building his own gadgets by taking the backs of old radios and record players, rigging up nascent PAs and setting up a mobile DJing kit. Robert George Meek, born 1929 in Newent, Forest Of Dean (home to the National Birds of Prey Centre and Europe's largest cul-de-sac) had an early interest in putting on a show, staging magic shows for children and being dressed as a girl by his mother. High time, then, to look into why he's so revered. Following the close friends, associates and fans interviewing documentary released to art festival showings earlier this year A Life In The Death Of Joe Meek comes the premiere as part of the London Film Festival on 25th October and again on the 28th of Telstar, the film of the well regarded play co-written, adapted and directed by Nick Moran, starring acclaimed musical actor Con O'Neill as Meek and also featuring Kevin Spacey, Pam Ferris, Ralf Little, James Cordon, Rita Tushingham, Nigel Harman, erm, Carl Barat and Justin Hawkins. Joe Meek was as much a pop producer at heart as any of those, albeit for a shorter period (three UK number ones), yet his pioneering DIY and independently rebellious auteur image has given him the kind of outsider status that cults thrive on. It's not the same for producers, for whom the most progressively minded producers (not as in those who produce themselves, let's make clear) are still seeing themselves as bringing their ideas to the pop sphere, so whether it be Sam Philips, Phil Spector, Norman Whitfield, Arif Mardin, George Martin, Trevor Horn, Tony Visconti, Timbaland or whoever, these are all producers whose clients are instantly recognisable throughout the ages. A certain sphere of music criticism enjoys celebrating the underdog, those that sold nothing in their day but went on to be surface influential to those who conquered the world. ![]()
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