Current mood: APEISH
Category: APEISH Music
So, today I promise there won't be any more non-music blogs.
Yes boss, today it's tunes and sound all the way, and what better place to start than with his Royal Highness Lee Scratch Perry??
I can't believe that when I was wittering on about heroes a few weeks ago, I didn't think to mention Mr Perry, because if ever there were a living musical hero for me it would have to be Mr LSP..
Now, I would imagine most of you know at least something about one of the most pivotal and under appreciated figures in music, but incase you don't i'll try and 'steal and tart' something from wikipedia or somewhere to fill in the gaps...
OK...
This is place to knock up on your Perry background and trivia
To condense this into about a paragraph:
Lee Perry was instrumental in making Jamaica and Reggae & Dub the musical underpinning and base structure of more or less everything that has come since.
Starting off working at Studio One, Perry went on to be a key founder and innovator of the dub sound. He sent Bob Marley on his way, worked with Paul McCartney, The Clash and more or less everyone of any Reggae or Dub importance. He's produced, sung and performed music of the highest quality for 50 years and he's still doing it...
It's this vast, vast quantity of quality recordings, the mythical 'mad' life he's led and still leads, his many colours, and the fact that at 70 years old, he's still recording and perfoming new material that makes Perry so very special..
So, I guess I'm gonna concentrate this series of pieces on what I've seen of Perry up close. By up close, i mean the 5 times I've seen him play live...
The first time I saw Perry was at The Forum, Kentish Town, London. It was somewhere around 1999/2000. I was on ecstacy and I was in awe. I'd been listening to Perry for a few years and come to appreciate his music and his fantastic dress sense and then there he was...
But before he played, a strange thing happenned.
Zion Train played first.
Now Zion Train are some 2 bit London Reggae band. They aren't bad and they played some average tunes, and I'm about 15 rows in and the front of the hall is packed solid..
Shit, I'm thinking how the hell am i going to get anywhere close once Perry's on??
Well, Zion Train finished and the hall drained.
Everyones gone to get a drink I think.
But then Perry came on and there's acres of space at the front. I looked around and there must have been half the crowd there for Perry as for Zion Train!!
It was astounding. I mean here you've got one of the most pivotal and important figures in music, who in his mid sixties has to come to play a show in one of the most musically conscious cities on the planet, and all the people have come to watch fucking Zion Train and then gone home?!?
Jesus Fucking Christ!! I learnt something about music and people that day, and it was that music for most is a prop of community and security. It's a social activity and a social glue and most people don't obsess over importance, history, seminality and quality in quite the way i do...
So, things got stranger. I mean I'm edging my way to the front and i have a camera, but I'm scared to use it. Perry has such a prescence, a camera just doesn't feel appropriate or right. I never took a shot..
Some other woman didn't however appear to suffer any fear at all...
Upon arrival on stage Perry had deposited his remarkable jacket over the monitors at the front of the stage...Well, this woman was right up next to it and she was and/or Perry thought she was trying to steal or damage it..
Well, he stopped playing and started placing a curse on the woman!
Shit, if the crowd weren't a little scared and in awe before, they most definately were then and the front area below the stage was almost empty..
It was double wierd with the durgs. I mean you've got a hero on stage who looks like he's just landed from Mars, and he's literally cursing this woman, and she's pleading with him, and the bouncers are trying to throw her out, and my head was just smashing around thinking what the fuck??
Well, it was a spectacle, but music wise, it was probably the weakest of the 5 gigs I've seen..Perrys sound of the time really didn't seem to fit that kind of sized venue, the crowd weren't quite on it and Perrys mood wasn't great on account of the business with the jacket.
The main musical highlight was a fantastic version of 'War Inna Babylon' It stayed in mine and my friends heads all the way home and then it went on loop on the stereo and it stayed on loop in my head for days afterwards...
END OF PART ONE
TO READ, HEAR, LEARN AND SEE MORE ABOUT PERRY CHECK THESE LINKS..
http://www.upsetter.net/
http://www.thewire.co.uk/archive/interviews/lee_perry.html
 | Currently listening : Super Ape By The Upsetters Release date: By 26 September, 2006  |
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