Various – Joe Meek – A Curious Mind Outer Space! Horror! Death Discs! The Wild West! Demos!. Cherry Red
Joe Meek, astronaut extraordinaire (in his Holloway flat), was the launchpad for some of British pop’s most eccentric experiments. But while the stars get most of the spotlight, A Curious Mind – a new 3CD box set from Cherry Red – reminds us that Meek’s imagination roamed far beyond the stratosphere. Horror, death, and the Wild West were just as vital to his mythos. If Telstar was Meek’s moon landing, these demos and odd tracks are his funeral parlour ditties and saloon swan songs.
Disc Two is where the ghouls come out. Meek’s horror productions are exactly what you’d expect, equal parts Hammer Horror and US novelty horror 7-inch. ‘Jack the Ripper’ by Screaming Lord Sutch remains a campy bloodbath, all shrieks and organ stabs, though the less often aired, ‘She’s Fallen in Love with a Monster Man’ is even dafter, despite Jimmy Page being on guitar. Also on session duties is Chas Hodges, whose bass drives the instrumental ‘The Spook Walks’ by The Outlaws. ‘Night of the Vampire’ by The Moontrekkers sounds like a surf band possessed by BBC Radiophonic ghosts. A wind machine, creaking doors and screams make sure you’ve got the gist. Meek’s own ‘You Make Me Feel Evil’ is more chilling, a cavernous reverb-heavy groan that leaves in a hurry but lingers long after. The oddness of Meek lends an extra level of unease – rarely have ‘unearthed tapes’ sounded exactly as described.
Meek’s studio was a laboratory of sonic unease, where tape hiss became fog and distortion stood in for decay. There’s a theatricality to it all, sure, but also a sincerity. These weren’t novelty tracks; they were expressions of Meek’s inner hauntings. He understood that horror wasn’t just about monsters, it was about mood, about the uncanny, about the things we bury and the sounds they make when they claw their way back. The BBC wouldn’t touch them, regardless.
Meek’s fascination with death wasn’t confined to horror tropes; it bled into his pop sensibilities, too. The so-called “death discs” were tragic ballads, often mourning real-life losses, and they reveal a more vulnerable side to his sonic storytelling.
His tributes to Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran are heartfelt laments, wrapped in echo and longing. Tracks like ‘Just Like Eddie’ (Heinz) and ‘Johnny Remember Me’ (John Leyton) are steeped in melodrama, but Meek’s production elevates them to mythic status – cold, stark, and bleak. These songs tap into a post-war British melancholy, a sense of loss, distance, and emotional repression. Meek wasn’t just producing hits; he was channelling grief through circuitry.
Then there’s the Wild West. Disc Three is a dusty panorama of cowboy fantasies, filtered through Meek’s peculiar lens. ‘Jesse James’ by Chad Carson gallops along with outlaw swagger, while ‘That Set the Wild West Free’ by The Outlaws feels like West Clacton more than the Wild West. Meek’s take on Americana is stylised, surreal, and deeply British. These aren’t authentic country ballads, they’re rubber stamps from Meek’s sleep -deprived mind, steeped in mossy memories of things he may or may not have seen and heard.
What’s striking is how Meek treats the West not as a genre but as a mood. ‘Riding the Rails’ and ‘Blowing Wild’ (Houston Wells & The Marksmen) evoke loneliness, longing, and mythic escape. There’s a sense of distance, not just geographic, but emotional. Meek’s cowboys aren’t rugged heroes; they’re spectral figures drifting through echo chambers, chasing freedom across reverb trails.
Taken together, the horror and western tracks reveal a Meek who was less a pop producer and more a diarist. He wasn’t chasing trends, he was trying to make sense of both his imagination and the world he saw around him. These demos, many rescued from the legendary Tea Chest Tapes, offer a glimpse into the mind behind the myth. They’re raw, strange, and often more compelling than his polished hits. Or hit. You hear the obsession, the experimentation, the refusal to settle.
And that’s what makes ‘A Curious Mind’ so intriguing. It reframes Meek not just as a pioneer of space-age pop, but as a genre-hopping visionary. His curiosity wasn’t limited to the cosmos, it extended to graveyards, ghost towns, and the psychic hinterlands of British music. He saw pop not as a formula but as a playground, a place to explore fear, fantasy, and the weirdness of being alive.
There’s a tragic undertone, of course. Meek’s life ended in violence and isolation, and these recordings, especially the demos. feel like dispatches from a man trying to fight his way out of a fog of confusion. In the echo of a vampire’s wail or the twang of a ghostly guitar, his voice lingers: curious, haunted, and defiantly out of time.
Daz Lawrence
