Telstar Tuesday - Joe Meek Died for your sins

This day in history, 45 years ago satellite communication was born! However the importance to music is not as talked about. From Wikipedia: "Joe Meek (born Robert George Meek; April 5, 1929 in Newent, Gloucestershire) was a pioneering English record producer and songwriter acknowledged as one of the world's first and most imaginative independent producers."This guys was an AWESOME producer. He was totally crazy and whacked out and out of his mind, but that's probably what made his productions so good. He 'heard a new world' and attempted to bring it to the people with these crazy productions. The song Telstar, inspired by the satellite was his grand opus - he wrote, recorded and produced it, the Tornados performed the original. In my opinion it's one of the happiest sounding songs ever recorded. It's just got that vibe with so many different emotions in it.Joe Meeks production style and his sound has influenced countless artists over the past 40 years or so. But in a way, you'd never know it. He's still too much of an underground icon. He truly had his own vision and was one of a kind. Today isn't really a day for the satellite, but rather for Joe Meek - another fallen soldier in the war against the jive.Sadly, Joe Meek did not come to a good end: "On February 3, 1967, the eighth anniversary of Buddy Holly's death, Meek killed his landlady Violet Shenton and then himself with a single barreled shotgun..."Now for the Nerdy part of today's post. Where would we be today without satellite communications? Just to remind us how far communication systems have come in 45 years, I pulled the following information from a couple of websites:Telstar 1 was launched on July 10, 1962 into a 514 x 3051 nmi. orbit by a Delta launch vehicle. The spacecraft weighed 171 pounds (the Delta capability was for a maximum payload of 180 pounds). The shape was a faceted sphere with a diameter of a little over 34 inches. Of six spacecraft built, two were launched. Telstar relayed its first television pictures (of a flag outside its ground station in Andover) on the date of its launch. Almost two weeks later, on July 23, it relayed the first live transatlantic television signal. The first broadcast was to have been remarks by President John F. Kennedy, but the signal was acquired before the President was ready, so the lead-in time was filled with a short segment of a televised major league baseball game between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field.Even as the success of Telstar I was becoming apparent, AT&T lost the chance to control commercial satellite communications. On August 31, 1962 President Kennedy signed the Communications Satellite Act which gave a monopoly on international communications via satellite to a new corporation called Comsat. AT&T went ahead with Telstar II anyway to complete its experimental program. It was launched on May 7, 1963. The publicity from Telstar had been very positive for AT&T.I must recognize and thank my good friend Tim L (not a mogger unfortunately) in the Detroit area for constantly reminding me of Joe Meek and his contributions to the word of music. Otherwise I'd know a lot less about Telstar and Joe Meek. Thanks Tim!!