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Joe Meek Just a heads-up to fellow Brits that an excellent BBC 1991 documentary on record producer Joe Meek is being repeated on BBC4 tomorrow.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcf...ce_id=4544 Arena: The Strange Story of Joe Meek
Showing as part of the Hidden Lives season A profile of the legendary maverick producer and song writer Joe Meek, composer of the massive hit Telstar who recorded most of his hits in a home studio using innovative recording methods in Holloway Road. Meek was obsessed with the occult and suffered from depression and paranoia, and in 1963 had been charged with 'importuning for immoral purposes'. In 1967 after becoming paranoid he'd be framed for a murder of someone he knew, he killed himself and his landlady. I've seen the documentary before but am going to record it this time around. He was like a cross between Ed Wood Jr. and Phil Spector. It's so odd that three brilliant gay Englishmen died in 1967 (the year that homosexuality was decriminalised in the U.K.): Joe Orton, Brian Epstein and Joe Meek. My favourite Joe Meek production has got to be 'Have I The Right?' by The Honeycombs. You can watch it on YouTube here. | |
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Doesn't anybody know whom Joe Meek is?  | |
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I know the audio gear he has manufactured. Budget stuff mostly. | |
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novabrkr said: I know the audio gear he has manufactured. Budget stuff mostly.
That's just a company whom licensed his name from his family. | |
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I saw most of that interesting doc about Meek. A true sonic experimentalist whose studio was his upstairs bedsit flat in London, where he made a bass drum sound by miking his foot in the bath and thudding it, getting a unique effect that apparently many later artists, ignorant of its 'basic' origins, later failed to replicate in super-expensive studios.
He was kind of the British 'do-it-yourself' version of Phil Spector, even down to the black shades! He also was obsessed with the idea that he could commune with the spirit of Buddy Holly and that Holly was dictating musical ideas exclusively to Meek via spirit signs and messages. Little known fact - A then up-and-coming young Welsh singer called Tom Jones nearly made a record with Meek in the early '60s. The troubled homosexual Meek apparently made a pass at Tom, and, as Tom puts it, he told Meek in no uncertain terms where to get off! 
[Edited 9/6/07 14:18pm] [Edited 9/6/07 14:20pm] | |
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Miles said: He also was obsessed with the idea that he could commune with the spirit of Buddy Holly and that Holly was dictating musical ideas exclusively to Meek via spirit signs and messages.
He was obsessed with anything otherworldly, whether it was spirits or space aliens. He recorded the first ever concept album in 1959 - eight years before The Beatles' 'Sgt. Pepper'. It's called 'I Hear A New World' and it's very, very... interesting. It's basically a tour of the moon in proto-electronica soundscapes and songs. You can read more about it at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/w..._New_World | |
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