Legendary Jamaican producer responsible for helping Bob Marley develop his style. He recorded many of Marley’s early singles as well as hundreds of other reggae hits such as The Heptone's "Party Time," Max Romeo's "War ina Babylon," and Junior Murvin's "Police and Thieves."
1973, Scratch built a studio (Black Ark) in his backyard in Kingston, Jamaica and began churning out Dub. He recorded his music on low-budget, eight-track decks, by piling layers upon layers of instrumentation until he achieved the sounds that he heard in his mind. "It was only four tracks on the machine," Perry famously explained, "but I was picking up twenty from the extraterrestrial squad."
Working with his mixing board as his palette, Perry produced an average of a song a day, creating music at a dizzying pace with little sleep or time for anything else. He kept up this lifestyle for years on end, but as the ’70s concluded, cracks were beginning to appear in the atmosphere at the Black Ark. It’s impossible to determine whether it was lack of food and rest, overindulgence in marijuana and alcohol, or "evil spirits" that lead to Perry’s spiral into madness and his decision in April 1983 to burn down his studio. By Perry’s own account, "I did make a dread studio, and I said I’d make a righteous studio and a Godly studio. It was even too dread for me. I had to burn it down to get rid of that dread vibration. I forgot that I was a soul man. It was a dreadful equation. Too dreadful for me."
This first video is about the Black Ark.
This video is Police and Thieves.
This is a old kung fu flick put to a classic dub tune.
www.upsetter.net/scratch www.musicbox-online.com/interviews/lee-scratch-perry-2006.html
My Trusted MOGs
Sweet Post. What are your favorites in the Scratch Canon? Congos and Super Ape for Me...
My Trusted MOGs
My favorites are the dubbed out versions of songs I already love so I'd say Ketch a Dub (Ketch Vampire), Dub a Come (When Jah Come), and Tedious Dub (Tedious). Love the collabo's w/ Mad Professor too...