Gloucester 24th November 2006

Gloucester’s main museum and art gallery is one of the least interesting I’ve seen, but its Folk Museum more than makes up for it. Its focus was on the daily lives of ordinary local people, with lots of artefacts from working life and local industry, but the high point of the permanent exhibition was a mock up of domestic interiors through the 20th century. These always go down a storm with me. I think they appeal to the nosey parker in me; I love the feeling they give you, something like walking past someone’s house at night when they’ve got the curtains open. All the installation lacked was a couple of automata, sat on the sofa having some conversation you could only guess at.
But the icing on the cake was a visiting exhibition on local boy made good, record producer Joe Meek. I say made good, I mean made good, built his own studio over a shoe shop in North London, changed the face of British pop music, became dependent on amphetamines, got sexually obsessed with his blond Germanic protégé Heinz, went a bit bonkers and shot his landlady. It’s a car-crash of a story; terrible and sad, but hard to ignore. The idea of people reinventing themselves seems cheapened these days, when every other daft sod wants to be famous for being famous. But the driven, obsessive way Meek transformed himself from small-town boy to music pioneer by sheer force of will seems almost epic in comparison. He’s mostly remembered now for his big hit, ‘Telstar’, but as the free jukebox of his hits in the exhibition attested, he had a phenomenal work ethic. I could have stood there listening all day.