In the early 90s, it was almost impossible to score good reggae. Flipping through chests of used UB40 and Steel Pulse records, I never found any treasure, and the Trustafarians at school had all but ruined Bob for me. To top it off, most Jamaican records I could find were so aesthetically off-putting as to warrant hesitation. As it turns out, whether encased in hand-drawn covers featuring dreadlocked lions in military gear smoking joints, poorly photocopied text, severely warped, pock-marked pressings, or cheesy back covers with the wrong titles, times, or musicians, these records were Acapulco Gold. As dub reggae-- and Lee Perry, in particular-- enjoyed a renaissance in the middle of the decade (courtesy of Tortoise and the Beastie Boys), that all changed, and like rain after a drought, it soon became a deluge. There were suddenly so many damned Lee Perry records to be had-- some legitimate, some shady-- that one wouldn't know where to begin, and still may not, even today.
These two discs cull his turns as producer from 1971-1973, after his important early work with Bob Marley & The Wailers and before founding his infamous Black Ark Studio. Slim though these two years may be, they're a crucial segment of Perry's career to investigate. The early 70s were a heady time for Jamaican popular music, as it began to segue from the shuffling dance of rocksteady and American R&B; influence into its own homegrown sound, and the harder rhythmic edges of skank. The gaps between those beats, which the flipside of the singles (called "dubs") explored more thoroughly, would soon lift off into the atmosphere as their own musical form, metamorphosing the normal sounds of studio instruments into abstracted space dust within a three-minute side.
Also of growing interest was the development of "roots reggae", which embraced Afrocentric thought and Rastafarianism, a religion that had a profound effect on the music of the time. It would transform soft-core lothario Max Romeo into a Marxist of the roughest sort, and make already-excellent singer Marley an international superstar. Lee Perry was there through all of these phases, instigating trends, and developing from others a sound wholly his own. Disc one begins with Marley & The Wailers doing an Impressions track, which is then turned around by future toasting great Big Youth, who shouts until the song is his very own beast. Already socially conscious by way of a Curtis Mayfield cover, you can see the growing influence Afrocentric thought had on Perry in the studio. There's Junior Byles' classic "Beat Down Babylon", which was such a huge hit that police were reported singing the lyrics on their beat. At least four versions of the Marcus Garvey-inspired "Place Called Africa" are compiled here, each resonating with the theme as pertains to its interpreter, be it by Byles, Dennis Alcapone, or Winston Cool (aka Dr. Alimantado, the best-dressed chicken in town).
In another four-cut span, the same basic track is run through the gamut of all possible island styles, illustrating in microcosm what Lee Perry was capable of with the barest of elements, and how much his music changed in two short years. It begins with the Stingers' "Give Me Power", rendered as a soulful group sound; "Give Me Power No.2" continues the beat, but replaces the ensemble with a bellowing toast from King Iwah, waxing more biblical than the previous version. "Sunshine Showdown" is that riddim once again, but this time it's made ridiculous by Perry himself. You can hear ringside cheering as he steps to the mic, musing and mumbling about "Smokey Joe Frazier Razor" and other inane observations about the sweet science. By round four, "Scratch" has totally deconstructed "Give Me Power" to its essence: the mix is disconcerted with sirens, brassy baritone croaks, and backwards tape chirps, with just the slightest trace of the original vocals left as ghosts. These last two takes lead the way for the more innovative breakthroughs (and breakdowns) that would take place inside the Black Ark by 1974. By stripping down certain sounds and tightening up the drums and bass, reggae could liberally take from American radio hits and make them into tougher tracks. The Chi-Lites' "(For God's Sake) Give More Power to the People" is absorbed by the Upsetters, while Byles infuses Little Willie John's standard "Fever" with his own brand of madness, leading to even further permutations by the legendary Augustus Pablo and toaster Jah T. On the latter half of the second disc, "Jungle Lion" smokes some sticky Al Green and brings in that Hi Records organ brightness; it sounds deliriously whacked-out as Perry growls into the echoplex.
Sequenced right before the move into Black Ark, the skanks and sonics at the end of the set define what people generally imagine when they think of Lee Perry. His odd sense of humor is most evident on "Bathroom Skank", which provides an excellent "towel"/"bowel" rhyme, and would lead to further scatological fixations in the future. Most prophetic are the echoed intonations that introduce the more skewed studio elements in instrumentals like "IPA Skank", "Freakout Skank", "Bucky Skank" and "Cow Thief Skank". Not only are these some of Perry's best early works (aside from the curiously absent "Clint Eastwood" instrumentals), they point the way into the future of the genre, and remixing in general, insofar as all the sounds are fair game for tweaking. This set, while not as uniformly tight as Soul Jazz's excellent Studio One overviews, or the compilations of legendary producers Leslie Kong, Sonia Pottinger, and King Tubby, has a little bit of everything to compensate, from a young Marley, to early toasting, with dashes of hard skank, proto-dub instrumentals, and oddball covers thrown in for good measure. As for compiling "Scratch", it remains an unsatisfactory effort; his cosmic joker legacy will forever elude capture, and these are all too brief glimpses of that genius at play.
