A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Vinyl Me Please edition of Super Ape by Lee “Scratch” Perry.
Music is a wonderful thing. If you listen to it correctly and put in the time, it can form a sort of six degrees of Kevin Bacon in your mind; bands get interconnected and genres get mixed and involved. As artists borrow from each other, new sounds are created and the inspirational wheel keeps turning.
What am I talking about? I’m not sure, but if I had not gotten into music in high school, I would never have heard punk rock, and would never have heard NOFX, which led me to the Ramones, then the Clash, then to their album Sandinista!, then to the Trojan Sub Box Set, then to this album: Super Ape by Lee “Scratch” Perry and the Upsetters. Dub, for the uninitiated has nothing to do with dubstep. Dub is essentially a sub-genre of reggae that consists of instrumental remixes of existing reggae songs. For a punk example, like I said, listen to the Sandinista! album by the Clash. In other words dub is actually good, and dubstep sucks. Super Ape is considered an essential dub album, and you can’t really understand British punk rock and The Clash (which everyone should) without listening to it.
Super Ape sounds like the cover looks; it creates a jungle atmosphere from the get-go, it’s wacky, marches along at a steady, slow pace and sounds dirty, warm and fuzzy. It really has to be heard to be understood. It’s perfect as music for celestial pondering or a badass background soundtrack.
Now we already reviewed this record on another Vinyl Vlog (#20 to be exact – where readers may remember having seen parts of this review before), but this is the Vinyl Me Please version of the record. We are doing this not just to highlight albums that might be lost in our archives, but also as an appetizer for a more formal introduction we’re doing on Vinyl Me Please in an upcoming Vinyl Vlog.
Do yourself a favor and check out Super Ape. It works magic. In the summer it fits right in, in the winter it warms you up. Beyond that, it’s strange and exciting anytime.
Artist:
http://www.lee-perry.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Lee-Scratch-Perry-official-172796666113415/
https://twitter.com/scratchlee
Album:
The Vinyl Me Please reissue of Super Ape is available now. Buy it here from Vinyl Me Please. http://vinylmeplease.com/record-of-the-month/super-ape/
