Various Artists: I Am The Upsetter: The Story Of Lee "Scratch" Perry : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

In "Black Panta," Lee "Scratch" Perry announces, "Calling the meek and the humble! Welcome to Black Board Jungle!" It's an excellent introduction to a reggae producer who got lost in his own sonic world. Perry has been heavily compiled, most thoroughly on the 1997 box Arkology, but there are still many treasures left for I Am the Upsetter, a four-disc tour of his 1968-1978 prime. The further out Perry gets, the better he sounds, especially on the all-dub fourth disc, where he indulges one of the wildest audio imaginations ever to run amok in a studio. Junior Murvin's 1977 single "Bad Weed" is one typical highlight, eight minutes of distorted bass and eerie percussion effects, as Murvin raves about "too much bad weed in the garden" and prays, "Jah's gonna weed them out." The voice fades in and out of focus, drowning in reverb and delay. Perry brings it all back home -- bad drugs, bad religion, a bad night of dread in a bad corner of town.

The first two discs on I Am the Upsetter introduce his early sound, such as the 1968 organ/sax instrumental "Return of Django," which became a surprise U.K. pop hit, securing his international reputation. But his music really blew up in the 1970s, as he built his own Black Ark Studios in Kingston, Jamaica, to make pioneering singles such as Mistic I's "Forward With the Orthodox" ("Away with the income tax"), the Twin Roots' "Know Love" and Max Romeo's "Fire Fe the Vatican," a bit of Rasta pyromania. The early tracks sound almost conventional compared to the brain-scrambling Scratch dub classics on the fourth disc, especially the Upsetting Upsetters' "Flashing Echo" and the Mighty Upsetter's "Enter the Dragon," which invents dub kung fu. "Kojak" does a protosampling Black Bart job on the 1970s TV detective, turning Telly Savalas into a Lion of Judah. "Caveman Skank" begins with a Native American chief reading the Book of Genesis in the Cherokee language. Then it gets weird.

Upsetter is no comprehensive career summary, as if that were possible with Perry. It digs deep in the crates, omitting the most famous hits compiled elsewhere, such as Romeo's "War in a Babylon" and Murvin's "Police and Thieves." But Upsetter is as good a place as Arkology to begin exploring the way it sounds inside Lee Perry's head.