V.A.-Joe Meek: The Alchemist Of Pop: Home Made Hits And Rarities

V.A. - Joe Meek: The Alchemist Of Pop: Home Made Hits And Rarities 1959-1966 (2 CD's)
CD (2002) To MP3 256 Kbit/s.
Included CD Front Cover & This Info.

This is A GREAT COLLECTION, With many rare & unknown artists and groups. ENJOY!

Joe Meek Biography by Richie Unterberger
Not an artist in the traditional sense of the term (he couldn't play or sing at all) producer Joe Meek has nonetheless been belatedly recognized as an important, even inimitable, figure of early British rock & roll. Like Phil Spector, Meek developed idiosyncratic production techniques that, much more than the artists he worked with, stamped a vision of mad genius on his recordings. In Meek's case, this usually amounted to super-compressed sound, wavering sped-up vocals, ghostly backing violins and choruses, spooky echo and reverb, ticky-tack variable-speed piano, and all manners of Halloween and outer-space sound effects. The recordings were all the more remarkable for being produced not in a state-of-the-art studio, but in Meek's own bedroom-sized facility, located over a shop within the flat he rented.

Meek couldn't rightly be compared to Phil Spector -- he favored gawky, dippy teen idol fare for gawky, dippy teen idols, not the gutsy soul- and R&B-infused Wall of Sound. But he was a trailblazer in his own right -- even before Spector, he set up shop as rock & roll's very first independent producer of note, making recordings on his own terms and leasing them to labels for distribution. In the United States, he only scored big with the Tornados' "Telstar" (the first British rock & roll record to top the American charts, a year before the Beatles) and the Honeycombs' "Have I the Right." In the U.K., he produced scores of records, many of them flops, and many others hits, for the Tornados, Honeycombs, Screaming Lord Sutch, John Leyton, Heinz, the Outlaws (featuring Ritchie Blackmore for a time), and many more. Highly prized by some collectors, Jello Biafra noted in the book Incredibly Strange Music, Vol. 2, "You can tell a Joe Meek record a mile away."

Meek's business and production methods may have been ahead of his time, but his actual musical tastes actually started to run behind the times with the advent of the self-contained groups of the British Invasion. He actually recorded a few respectable efforts in the R&B/mod vein, but his career was in a severe spiral by the time his life ended in tragic circumstances in early 1967, when he shot his landlady and himself. John Repsch's book The Legendary Joe Meek (published in the U.K. only) is a biography of this fascinating figure.

Tracklist CD 1:
01. What Do You Want To Make Those Eyes At Me For - Emile Ford & The Checkmates - 1959
02. Be Mine - Lance Fortune - 1960
03. Green Jeans - The Fabulous Flee-Rekkers - 1960
04. Chick A'roo - RickyWayne & The Flee-Rekkers - 1960
05. Angela Jones - Michael Cox - 1960
06. Sunday Date - The Fleerekkers - 1960
07. Paradise Garden - Peter Jay - 1960
08. Can't You Hear My Heart - Danny Rivers & The Alexander Combo - 1960
09. Swingin' Low - The Outlaws - 1961
10. Ambush - The Outlaws - 1961
11. You Got What I Like - Cliff Bennett & The Rebel Rousers - 1961
12. Johnny Remember Me - John Leyton - 1961
13. Tribute To Buddy Holly - Mike Berry & The Outlaws - 1961
14. Night Of The Vampire - The Moontrekkers - 1961
15. Wild Wind - John Leyton - 1961
16. Can't You Hear The Beat Of A Broken Heart - Ian Gregory - 1961
17. Till The Following Night - Screaming Lord Sutch - 1961
18. Son This Is She - John Leyton - 1961
19. It's Just A Matter Of Time - Mike Berry & The Outlaws - 1962
20. Walk With Me My Angel - Don Charles - 1962
21. Lonely City - John Leyton - 1962
22. Telstar - The Tornados - 1962
23. Stand Up - Michael Cox - 1962
24. Traitors Theme - The Packabeats - 1962
25. Can Can '62 - Peter Jay & The Jaywalkers - 1962
26. North Wind - Houston Wells & The Marksmen - 1962
27. Don't You Think It's Time - Mike Berry & The Outlaws - 1962
28. Globetrotter - The Tornados - 1962

Tracklist CD 2:
01. Ridin' The Wind - The Tornados - 1962
02. Jack The Ripper - Screaming Lord Sutch & The Savages - 1963
03. Robot - The Tornados - 1963
04. I Lost My Heart At The Fairground - Glenda Collins - 1963
05. Only The Heartaches - Houston Wells & The Marksmen - 1963
06. Hobbies - Jenny Moss - 1963
07. Wipeout - The Saints - 1963
08. Just Like Eddie - Heinz - 1963
09. Sky Men - Geoff Goddard - 1963
10. My Friend Bobby - Pamela Blue - 1963
11. Country Boy - Heinz - 1963
12. All My Loving - The Dowlands - 1964
13. You Were There - Heinz - 1964
14. Have I The Right - The Honeycombs - 1964
15. Questions I Can't Answer - Heinz - 1964
16. I Can't Stop - The Honeycombs - 1964
17. Little Baby - Blue Rondos - 1964
18. Something Better Beginning - The Honeycombs - 1965
19. Diggin' For Gold - David John & The Mood - 1965
20. That's The Way - The Honeycombs - 1965
21. Crawdaddy Simone - The Syndicats - 1965
22. What'cha Gonna Do Baby - Jason Eddy & The Centremen - 1966
23. Something I've Got To Tell You - Glenda Collins - 1966
24. Please Stay - Cryin' Shames - 1966
25. You're Holding Me Down - The Buzz - 1966
26. I Take It That We're Through - The Riot Squad - 1966
27. Singing The Blues - Jason Eddy & The Centremen - 1966
28. It's Hard To Believe - Glenda Collins - 1966