Between 1976 and 1978, Lee Perry was at the peak of his creative powers-- and his acid consumption. This is when the apocrypha was born-- Perry might've burned down his Black Ark studio after liberally pooping in it for years; he might've walked backwards and hit the ground with a hammer. He definitely put mirrors all over his clothing, claimed to have extraterrestrial help at the mixing board, and made a bunch of records. Despite reputation for general whacked-outness, the Black Ark classics-- Max Romeo's War Inna Babylon, Junior Murvin's falsetto textbook Police and Thieves, and The Congos' Heart of the Congos, Perry's own Roast Fish, Collie Weed & Cornbread-- weren't sound-qua-sound adventures, they were strong songs smeared by a fearless, extremely stoned hand.
Ape-ology reissues Roast Fish (originally rejected by Island Records' Chris Blackwell), along with 1976's Super Ape and 1978's Return of the Super Ape (also rejected, somewhat less surprisingly). Super Ape is a common gateway for the Perry experience because it's overtly badass: A friend recently told me about discovering the album as an adolescent, saying, "I wasn't sure which was the best one, so I just bought the one with the comic-book gorilla smoking a gigantic joint on the cover." A stoned gorilla is a workable analogy: Super Ape is heavy, hairy, slow, warm, pulsing, and only part human. Nothing takes precedence in a Perry mix; each sound seems to disappear into another. The psychedelic tension here is rhythmic; the literal, locked groove of the bass and drums bounce under a swirling mess of sounds overhead. Even the vocal chants by Full Experience and the Heptones (whose Party Time is unfairly overlooked in the roll of Perry's Black Ark work) drift off into, apparently, nothing. Not to be unfair to the spookier cutting-room treats of Return, but a better title would've been, I dunno, Footprints of the Super Ape or Bugs Picked Off Super Ape's Back or something. Shove it to the second disc. It's alright.
What needs more love is Roast Fish. Lee Perry is not an awesome singer. He makes this apparent within thirty seconds. But nobody-- not Junior Murvin, not Max Romeo, not Bob Marley-- could make "Soul Fire" sound as haywire as Perry does. And because he's free from the responsibility of wrapping his crooners in velvet, he can cover his own record in grunts and hissing noises. And babies crying. What might be a cow. He can use auto maintenance as a metaphor for personal hygiene and fitness. This is sort of like when Brian Wilson got fat and started singing about vegetables. Perry either says "drink some whiskey" or "drink some fishy," neither of which sounds like good advice. But like any diligent stoner, he falls quickly from the ecstatic to the fearful-- "Evil Tongue" is overtly paranoid; the title track is practically screwed and chopped. This is where the myths sound real.
The problems with Ape-ology are the problems with pretty much every Trojan collection: It's a sloppy, economical job in an already glutted market. The liner notes are bursting with typos. There's no roster of musicians, which is just embarrasing-- in the rush to fetishize Perry as a producer, someone must've assumed the music made itself (doubly galling given that Perry regularly hired the best in the country: Bassist Boris Gardiner, drummer Sly Dunbar, and guitarist Earl Smith among them-- guys who might warrant their own compilations). Also, these albums are all still available on CD. But, sigh, not for 20 bucks in one case. A more considered package would've been nice--and worth another five bucks at least-- but in a way, a half-hearted package keeps the myth and context at bay and lets the music bleat, cackle, and fart for itself.
