[ I have to agree that the GR article greatly elevated Scratch's profile amongst college radio types.
Perry was already getting college radio airplay back then as there was no and is no reggae radio station on the FM dial and he certainly was not getting played on rap radio. College radio is the only place he could have been heard on the radio.
Horseleech said:
I started listening to Lee Perry in '81/'82
So did I.
Horseleech said:
There's no doubt that the Grand Royal article revived interest and introduced him to a public he had not reached before, I watched it happen.
again, maybe within the rap world or beastie boys fans and that's about it.
Dude, what you're missing is that "beastie boys fans" meant something totally different in the early/mid nineties than it does now--as corny as they might seem to you (or me) those dudes were tastemakers and there was a clique of kids at every suburban high school across America that dedicated themselves to imitating them in every conceivable respect. Their cosign brought Scratch all kinds of attention that he never would have received otherwise. I don't know why you find this idea so objectionable.
yeah sorry i'm not buying it man. i seriously doubt every beastie boy & girl in suburbia was lining up to buy up Lee Perry records or go to his performances after beasties gave him the nod thus sustaining his career. maybe they found out about him that way but that's about as much as they know about him. "The reggae dude on the beastie boys album bro".
There's no doubt that the Grand Royal article revived interest and introduced him to a public he had not reached before, I watched it happen.
again, maybe within the rap world or beastie boys fans and that's about it.
The problem with your logic is this - at that point in time the average Beastie Boys fan was not a rap/hip hop head, but a rock fan. The hip hop heads I knew back then couldn't stand them.
At that point, the Beastie Boys had millions of fans - people who never would have heard of Lee Perry otherwise.
And the other fact is that right after that article came out a flood of Lee Perry reissues hit the market and continued to do so for years, whereas before that there was very little Lee Perry you could actually go out and buy. If you were paying attention then like I was, the effect was obvious.
as a dude who rolled with the hackey sack crowd in college, mainly cuz i really liked hackey sack but hated their music, i can honestly say none of those goof offs were checking for the beastie boys or their magazine or whatevers. i think what most you guys are talking about is it becoming popular in the suburban rap lover set, which really wasnt crossing over into the world of suburban sipa sipa. the hippies in my college experience were more about bob marley, pink floyd, grateful dead, and those ridiculous drum circle jams.
so you're saying that rock fans were finally getting around to discovering Perry because of the beasties? then how about the rock fans that like the clash? were those rock fans no longer around back then to sustain Lee Perry's career by buying his records and attending his show? are you telling me that rock fans didn't buy Perry records prior to the beastie boys album?
Broad-minded music fans aside - I think what we are really talking about is the US/UK divide?
I am not sure how popular GR was outside of the N American university fanboy demographic already described, but it seems those in the UK or with a UK bend in their musical taste already had way more references to Perry than their American counterparts.
Aw man, I saw that this thread got bumped and was all geeked because I thought I remembered this thread as being the one where Jah Orthodox faux_rillz went off on Whities Who Like Dub Too Much. That must have been a diffrent one. This is/was a decent thread, too, but still.
I wanna say that it was the I who claimed that, but maybe Old Man Hogg's memory is failing. Studio kinda real cloudy foggy, as I would say.
Hmm. I could swear that I remember the issue framed in your man and mineses' patented "People who only like [subgenre] never really liked [genre] in the first place," but I might be wrong about that.
As an occasionally offending WWLDTM myself, though, I would of course love to hear either of you speak on it.
Broad-minded music fans aside - I think what we are really talking about is the US/UK divide?
I am not sure how popular GR was outside of the N American university fanboy demographic already described, but it seems those in the UK or with a UK bend in their musical taste already had way more references to Perry than their American counterparts.
Thank you.
[strike]I don't think anybody else in this thread is even considering this though, as that would be akin to openly admitting newjack status on a national-level, and as the 'Euromang' phrase only has negative, you-know-not-what-you-speak-of connotations, some back-peddling might be in order.[/strike]
Surely anybody with an interest in reggae deeper than owning/listening to Legend will come across Perry pretty quick as his influence is so deep. Anybody with more than a passing interest in reggae will therefore tell you that Perry's status is only under-rated among those not familiar with reggae.
Broad-minded music fans aside - I think what we are really talking about is the US/UK divide?
I am not sure how popular GR was outside of the N American university fanboy demographic already described, but it seems those in the UK or with a UK bend in their musical taste already had way more references to Perry than their American counterparts.
so you're saying that rock fans were finally getting around to discovering Perry because of the beasties? then how about the rock fans that like the clash? were those rock fans no longer around back then to sustain Lee Perry's career by buying his records and attending his show? are you telling me that rock fans didn't buy Perry records prior to the beastie boys album?
They weren't, simply because there was nothing available, at least not in the U.S. Aside from a couple of his more famous productions (Police And Thieves), there just wasn't anything you could go into a store and buy. I know, because I was looking on the regular in stores in NYC and around the Northeast. If nothing else, the Beastie's hype helped make his music available here. I'm sure plenty of people who were picking up these reissues had no idea of any Beastie Boy factor, but at least they had something to buy.
A quick look at Perry's discography reveals this - In the ten years prior to '95 (the year of the GR article), there were 3 Lee Perry compilations/retrospectives released. In the ten years after '95 there were at least 20. No, they were not entirely responsible, but certainly they had an impact.
Broad-minded music fans aside - I think what we are really talking about is the US/UK divide?
I am not sure how popular GR was outside of the N American university fanboy demographic already described, but it seems those in the UK or with a UK bend in their musical taste already had way more references to Perry than their American counterparts.
Thank you.
[strike]I don't think anybody else in this thread is even considering this though, as that would be akin to openly admitting newjack status on a national-level, and as the 'Euromang' phrase only has negative, you-know-not-what-you-speak-of connotations, some back-peddling might be in order.[/strike]
Surely anybody with an interest in reggae deeper than owning/listening to Legend will come across Perry pretty quick as his influence is so deep. Anybody with more than a passing interest in reggae will therefore tell you that Perry's status is only under-rated among those not familiar with reggae.
We are not talking about people "with an interest in reggae deeper than owning/listening to Legend"--we are talking about the widespread interest in Scratch amongst people who did not otherwise have an interest in reggae which occurred in the mid-nineties. Like it or not, he became a hipster/college radio totem for several years there.
From a 1998 article written by none other than Ras Trent himself:
This incredible amount of recognition that The Upsetter is now getting points to the fact that now in the late 90's the Reggae world is witnessing a Lee Perry renaissance as a new wave of fans embraces the Upsetter's music. This was started off mainly due to the Beastie Boys' excellent Grand Royal retrospective of Scratch in 1996. The record companies weren't slow to react to public interest and in 1997 Island released "Arkology", a Black Ark anthology with 3 CDs, 52 tracks, and a 52 page booklet (Sleeper 5). This collection allows the listener to hear the Upsetters genius at a creative apex. It stands as a monument to the man, an irrefutable mark of genius. Overall, Perry is now getting the credit that he deserves, and people recognize that.
we are talking about the widespread interest in Scratch amongst people who did not otherwise have an interest in reggae which occurred in the mid-nineties.
And that's the divide - widespread interest and at the very least a decade difference. I first heard of Perry from another 13 year old, in a culture in which everybody has a little knowledge of reggae; The Police, Madness, UBfucking40 - reggae was for a time pop music here, or at the very least pop music wore it's reggae influences so unashamedly that you might as well say anybody with more than a passing interest in music was likely to know that the white jah-less version came from somewhere else, and that anybody who'd scratched* the surface was likely to have heard of Perry. I, nor my friend, were *deep* music headz at 13. When he said he was into dub, I thought that was copying tape cassettes. When he mentioned Perry, I wanted to know if he was called Scratch because he had a skin condition.
Like it or not, he became a hipster/college radio totem for several years there.
Cool. More power to his elbow. I've debated and deleted numerous poasts about this, and still for the life of me can't fathom what the point is in trying to argue for or against the idea that a mid nineties magazine article is the reason for his Indian summer. If it was, great I guess. I just didn't realise reggae had ever been overlooked, and assumed it was like marmite.
we are talking about the widespread interest in Scratch amongst people who did not otherwise have an interest in reggae which occurred in the mid-nineties.
And that's the divide - widespread interest and at the very least a decade difference. I first heard of Perry from another 13 year old, in a culture in which everybody has a little knowledge of reggae; The Police, Madness, UBfucking40 - reggae was for a time pop music here, or at the very least pop music wore it's reggae influences so unashamedly that you might as well say anybody with more than a passing interest in music was likely to know that the white jah-less version came from somewhere else, and that anybody who'd scratched* the surface was likely to have heard of Perry. I, nor my friend, were *deep* music headz at 13. When he said he was into dub, I thought that was copying tape cassettes. When he mentioned Perry, I wanted to know if he was called Scratch because he had a skin condition.
Like it or not, he became a hipster/college radio totem for several years there.
Cool. More power to his elbow. I've debated and deleted numerous poasts about this, and still for the life of me can't fathom what the point is in trying to argue for or against the idea that a mid nineties magazine article is the reason for his Indian summer. If it was, great I guess. I just didn't realise reggae had ever been overlooked, and assumed it was like marmite.
Then why do you continue to do so?
The contributions of most people who are resistant to the idea can be boiled down to "But I was into Scratch before Grand Royal!"
That's fine, but it's not relevant.
HarveyCanal"a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
None of the Beastie Boys, hackey sack types I knew read Grand Royal nor listened to college radio nor probably know anything about Lee Perry to this day.
I didnt read about Perry's contributions until i came across Reggae International - Steven Davis.
And my College hacky sack patuolli friends knew and liked Perry, but didnt suck on him like Jerry Garcia, Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix and all the other T-Shirt icons. That was 87/88 and Dancehall was dominant and distant from Golden Age Perry.
I'd like to know if there was an deep articles on Perry that pre-dated Grand Royal or maybe was a pre-cursor to their gathering of info.
I'd like to know if there was an deep articles on Perry that pre-dated Grand Royal or maybe was a pre-cursor to their gathering of info.
I don't know how "deep" it was, but Spin had a full page on him sometime in the late 80s. And I'm reasonably sure he was at least name-checked in shit like David Toop's Rap Attack and Dick Hebdige's Cut 'N' Mix. I know David Katz was a major contributor to the Grand Royal thing, and I'd guess that he was to thank for a lot of its depth.
I first heard Scratch's name in a mid-80s interview with Billy Idol. I wish I was kidding. I thought his name and song titles sounded really bugged, so when I came across some of those Rohit budget tape bullshits, I bought/shoplifted them on the strength. I was mostly lukewarm on that material, but then that late-80s Chicken Scratch compilation tape on Rounder kinda cracked it open for me.
I'd like to know if there was an deep articles on Perry that pre-dated Grand Royal or maybe was a pre-cursor to their gathering of info.
I don't know how "deep" it was, but Spin had a full page on him sometime in the late 80s. And I'm reasonably sure he was at least name-checked in shit like David Toop's Rap Attack and Dick Hebdige's Cut 'N' Mix. I know David Katz was a major contributor to the Grand Royal thing, and I'd guess that he was to thank for a lot of its depth.
I first heard Scratch's name in a mid-80s interview with Billy Idol. I wish I was kidding. I thought his name and song titles sounded really bugged, so when I came across some of those Rohit budget tape bullshits, I bought/shoplifted them on the strength. I was mostly lukewarm on that material, but then that late-80s Chicken Scratch compilation tape on Rounder kinda cracked it open for me.
i think alot of people got into Lee Perry thru punk in some way or another... like seeing his production and songwriting credit on the first Clash record...
i think my first experience with people writing about his "mystique" was the punk history book "england's dreaming" where he is called "the most smokiest and mysterious Jamaican producer of them all" and there was a decent discography of his stuff in the back...
Aside from a couple of his more famous productions (Police And Thieves), there just wasn't anything you could go into a store and buy.
This is a slight exaggeration. Many of the records featured in that GR article were relatively recent and available (more or less) at the time. I bought the Shocks of Mighty comp on Attack (1988) in NYC before GR#2 (1995) came out and the Trojan Upsetter box (1985), Soundzs From The Hotline (1992), Upsetter Collection (1981), Public Jestering (1990), Excaliburman (1989) Megaton Dub (1983), Some of The Best (Heartbeat 1986), Magnetic Mirror Master Mix (1989), Chicken Scratch (1990, CD only though), Heart of The Ark Vols. 1 & 2 (both 1982), Open the Gate (1989), Turn and Fire (1989), Build The Ark (1990), Scratch and Company (Clocktower, 1981) Full Experience (1990), Upsetting The Nation (1993) and Give Me Power (1988) comps (and probably a few other titles) were all around then too. Looking at a reliable Lee Perry discography (note: Eternal Thunder, not Wikipedia) many Upsetter compilations came together in the late 80s, 7 to 10 years prior to GR#2. Perry's profile was definitely lower in the US b4 GR #2 though, so most stores here wouldn't stock any of this stuff, since they had virtually no customers looking for it.
As for "Overrated?Overfetishized?Overexoticized?", absolutely not. Overexploited by bogus bootleggers and unscrupulous record labels, absolutely. I think the number 1 contributor to Perry's bad rep is the flood of bogus releases claiming to contain his productions which contain either third and fourth rate barrel scrapings or, even worse, not one note of music connected to Scratch.
Comments
oh, wait - there were millions of them.
Dude, what you're missing is that "beastie boys fans" meant something totally different in the early/mid nineties than it does now--as corny as they might seem to you (or me) those dudes were tastemakers and there was a clique of kids at every suburban high school across America that dedicated themselves to imitating them in every conceivable respect. Their cosign brought Scratch all kinds of attention that he never would have received otherwise. I don't know why you find this idea so objectionable.
WHITEBOY LOGIC!
The problem with your logic is this - at that point in time the average Beastie Boys fan was not a rap/hip hop head, but a rock fan. The hip hop heads I knew back then couldn't stand them.
At that point, the Beastie Boys had millions of fans - people who never would have heard of Lee Perry otherwise.
And the other fact is that right after that article came out a flood of Lee Perry reissues hit the market and continued to do so for years, whereas before that there was very little Lee Perry you could actually go out and buy. If you were paying attention then like I was, the effect was obvious.
They had a pretty big profile by then.
whatevs.....its pretty obvious that early adopters and late comers have over-embraced dude hard in the last twenty years.
cant wait for the second Dilla fetishizaton.
I am not sure how popular GR was outside of the N American university fanboy demographic already described, but it seems those in the UK or with a UK bend in their musical taste already had way more references to Perry than their American counterparts.
Hmm. I could swear that I remember the issue framed in your man and mineses' patented "People who only like [subgenre] never really liked [genre] in the first place," but I might be wrong about that.
As an occasionally offending WWLDTM myself, though, I would of course love to hear either of you speak on it.
Thank you.
[strike]I don't think anybody else in this thread is even considering this though, as that would be akin to openly admitting newjack status on a national-level, and as the 'Euromang' phrase only has negative, you-know-not-what-you-speak-of connotations, some back-peddling might be in order.[/strike]
Surely anybody with an interest in reggae deeper than owning/listening to Legend will come across Perry pretty quick as his influence is so deep. Anybody with more than a passing interest in reggae will therefore tell you that Perry's status is only under-rated among those not familiar with reggae.
Yeah, I think you've probably nailed it there.
They weren't, simply because there was nothing available, at least not in the U.S. Aside from a couple of his more famous productions (Police And Thieves), there just wasn't anything you could go into a store and buy. I know, because I was looking on the regular in stores in NYC and around the Northeast. If nothing else, the Beastie's hype helped make his music available here. I'm sure plenty of people who were picking up these reissues had no idea of any Beastie Boy factor, but at least they had something to buy.
A quick look at Perry's discography reveals this - In the ten years prior to '95 (the year of the GR article), there were 3 Lee Perry compilations/retrospectives released. In the ten years after '95 there were at least 20. No, they were not entirely responsible, but certainly they had an impact.
We are not talking about people "with an interest in reggae deeper than owning/listening to Legend"--we are talking about the widespread interest in Scratch amongst people who did not otherwise have an interest in reggae which occurred in the mid-nineties. Like it or not, he became a hipster/college radio totem for several years there.
This incredible amount of recognition that The Upsetter is now getting points to the fact that now in the late 90's the Reggae world is witnessing a Lee Perry renaissance as a new wave of fans embraces the Upsetter's music. This was started off mainly due to the Beastie Boys' excellent Grand Royal retrospective of Scratch in 1996. The record companies weren't slow to react to public interest and in 1997 Island released "Arkology", a Black Ark anthology with 3 CDs, 52 tracks, and a 52 page booklet (Sleeper 5). This collection allows the listener to hear the Upsetters genius at a creative apex. It stands as a monument to the man, an irrefutable mark of genius. Overall, Perry is now getting the credit that he deserves, and people recognize that.
And that's the divide - widespread interest and at the very least a decade difference. I first heard of Perry from another 13 year old, in a culture in which everybody has a little knowledge of reggae; The Police, Madness, UBfucking40 - reggae was for a time pop music here, or at the very least pop music wore it's reggae influences so unashamedly that you might as well say anybody with more than a passing interest in music was likely to know that the white jah-less version came from somewhere else, and that anybody who'd scratched* the surface was likely to have heard of Perry. I, nor my friend, were *deep* music headz at 13. When he said he was into dub, I thought that was copying tape cassettes. When he mentioned Perry, I wanted to know if he was called Scratch because he had a skin condition.
Cool. More power to his elbow. I've debated and deleted numerous poasts about this, and still for the life of me can't fathom what the point is in trying to argue for or against the idea that a mid nineties magazine article is the reason for his Indian summer. If it was, great I guess. I just didn't realise reggae had ever been overlooked, and assumed it was like marmite.
* excuse I
Then why do you continue to do so?
The contributions of most people who are resistant to the idea can be boiled down to "But I was into Scratch before Grand Royal!"
That's fine, but it's not relevant.
http://www.soulstrut.com/index.php/forums/viewthread/70811/
And my College hacky sack patuolli friends knew and liked Perry, but didnt suck on him like Jerry Garcia, Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix and all the other T-Shirt icons. That was 87/88 and Dancehall was dominant and distant from Golden Age Perry.
I'd like to know if there was an deep articles on Perry that pre-dated Grand Royal or maybe was a pre-cursor to their gathering of info.
I first heard Scratch's name in a mid-80s interview with Billy Idol. I wish I was kidding. I thought his name and song titles sounded really bugged, so when I came across some of those Rohit budget tape bullshits, I bought/shoplifted them on the strength. I was mostly lukewarm on that material, but then that late-80s Chicken Scratch compilation tape on Rounder kinda cracked it open for me.
i think alot of people got into Lee Perry thru punk in some way or another... like seeing his production and songwriting credit on the first Clash record...
i think my first experience with people writing about his "mystique" was the punk history book "england's dreaming" where he is called "the most smokiest and mysterious Jamaican producer of them all" and there was a decent discography of his stuff in the back...
This is a slight exaggeration. Many of the records featured in that GR article were relatively recent and available (more or less) at the time. I bought the Shocks of Mighty comp on Attack (1988) in NYC before GR#2 (1995) came out and the Trojan Upsetter box (1985), Soundzs From The Hotline (1992), Upsetter Collection (1981), Public Jestering (1990), Excaliburman (1989) Megaton Dub (1983), Some of The Best (Heartbeat 1986), Magnetic Mirror Master Mix (1989), Chicken Scratch (1990, CD only though), Heart of The Ark Vols. 1 & 2 (both 1982), Open the Gate (1989), Turn and Fire (1989), Build The Ark (1990), Scratch and Company (Clocktower, 1981) Full Experience (1990), Upsetting The Nation (1993) and Give Me Power (1988) comps (and probably a few other titles) were all around then too. Looking at a reliable Lee Perry discography (note: Eternal Thunder, not Wikipedia) many Upsetter compilations came together in the late 80s, 7 to 10 years prior to GR#2. Perry's profile was definitely lower in the US b4 GR #2 though, so most stores here wouldn't stock any of this stuff, since they had virtually no customers looking for it.
As for "Overrated?Overfetishized?Overexoticized?", absolutely not. Overexploited by bogus bootleggers and unscrupulous record labels, absolutely. I think the number 1 contributor to Perry's bad rep is the flood of bogus releases claiming to contain his productions which contain either third and fourth rate barrel scrapings or, even worse, not one note of music connected to Scratch.