Various Live It Up: Joe Meek’s Tea Chest Tapes vinyl is one of those releases that stops collectors mid-scroll, and for very good reason. This is the previously unreleased soundtrack written and recorded by Joe Meek for the cult British film Live It Up, surfacing now on Trophy Records under catalog number TRV10 10. It is the kind of find that makes you wonder what else is still sitting in a box somewhere, waiting.
Joe Meek, the Film, and Why This Matters
Joe Meek is one of the most singular figures in British recording history. A self-taught producer and engineer working out of a flat above a leather goods shop on Holloway Road, he built sounds that had no real precedent and influenced recordings for decades after. His association with cult British pop culture runs deep, and the film Live It Up sits squarely in that world. The fact that Meek wrote and recorded an entire soundtrack for it, and that this material stayed unheard for this long, says everything about how much of his work still exists outside the official record.
What Makes Various Live It Up: Joe Meek’s Tea Chest Tapes Vinyl So Significant
The headline here is a previously unheard version of Temptation Baby by Gene Vincent. Vincent recorded with Meek during a period that produced some genuinely strange and compelling work, and an alternate take surfacing now, on vinyl, as part of this release, has caused real excitement among collectors and historians alike. This is not a repackaged greatest hits or a licensing exercise. This is source material that was not available before. The Tea Chest Tapes name points directly to the somewhat chaotic archive Meek left behind, tapes stored in tea chests after his death, many of which took years to properly catalogue and assess.
The Pressing and Format Details
This comes out as an EP on Trophy Records, catalog TRV10 10. Trophy has been careful with Meek-related material, and this release continues that approach. As with any archival release drawn from original tapes of this age and provenance, the audio carries the character of its origins. The recordings were not made under conventional studio conditions, and that is part of what makes them compelling as documents. Collectors interested in British pop history, in Meek specifically, or in Gene Vincent’s recorded output will want this in their collection for what it represents as much as for what it sounds like. A previously unreleased soundtrack, an unheard vocal performance, pressed to vinyl in a limited EP format. That combination does not come around often.
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