Secret History of Rock. The Most Influential Bands You've Never Heard (30 page)

Mase, De La Soul:

We did a show with Lee “Scratch” Perry in Belgium. He ripped it. I’ve been inspired by the way he mixes his music. The warmness of the songs. I’m always inspired by good production, but reggae definitely has something in common with hip-hop in that it’s always been really low-end and bassy, really deep and thick. That was something that we applied to our style of music as well.

Now in his 60s and living in the Swiss Alps, Perry has come back in the public eye. In 1995, the Beastie Boys made him the cover story of their magazine, Grand Royal, and Perry reissues have increased since. In 1997, Perry did his first U.S. tour in over 16 years and appeared at the Tibetan Freedom Concert. Alongside musicians who weren’t born when Perry had his first hit, the Upsetter not only held his own but seemed to occupy a space as timeless as his music.

DISCOGRAPHY

(AVAILABLE RECORDINGS)

(the Upsetters)
The Upsetter
(Trojan, 1969; 1996)
; Perry and group’s earliest tracks,

(the Upsetters)
The Return of Django
(Trojan, 1970; 1996)
; features the group’s early western-inspired instrumentals.

(the Upsetters)
Eastwood Rides Again
(Pama, 1969; Trojan, 1996)
; more spaghetti western reggae,

(the Upsetters)
Africa’s Blood
(Trojan, 1971; 1996)
; a soulful early reggae album,

(the Upsetters)
Blackboard Jungle Dub
(Upsetter, 1973; RAS, 1988)
.

(the Upsetters)
Double Seven
(Trojan, 1974; 1996)
; features
U-Roy
, I-Roy, and other toasters,

(the Upsetters)
Kung Fu Meets the Dragon
(DIP, 1975; Lagoon, 1995)
; dub inspired by Bruce Lee movies,

(the Upsetters)
Super Ape
(Mango, 1976; 1993)
; a classic dub album at Black Ark’s highpoint.

(the Upsetters)
Return of the Super Ape
(Mango, 1977; VP, 1990)
; Perry’s classic dub at its most extreme.

Roast Fish, Collie Weed and Corn Bread
(1978; VP, 1994)
; features late Black Ark material,

(the Upsetters)
The Upsetter Collection
(Trojan, 1981; 1994)
; a good compilation spanning 1969-1973.

(w/ the Majesties)
Mystic Miracle Star
(Heartbeat, 1982; 1990)
; recorded in the U.S. with a white reggae backing band.

History, Mystery, & Prophecy
(Mango, 1984; 1993)
; recorded during Perry’s early ‘80s slump.

Reggae Greats
(Mango, 1984; 1993)
; a compilation featuring Perry and his productions for others.

The Upsetter Compact Set
(Trojan, 1988)
; combines three early albums:
Africa’s Blood
,
Rhythm Shower
, and
Double Seven
.

Battle of Armageddon
(Trojan, 1986, 1994)
; an ‘80s comeback, and his last to feature the Upsetters.

(w/ Dub Syndicate)
Time Boom X de Devil Dead
(On-U Sound, 1987; 1994)
; a strong collaboration with
Adrian Sherwood
’s dub group.

Give Me Power
(Trojan, 1988; 1994)
; a compilation of Perry productions.

Some of the Best
(Heartbeat, 1988)
; a compilation of Perry’s early reggae works, including an early Bob Marley track.

Scratch Attack!
(RAS, 1988)
; combines two early albums.

Chicken Scratch
(Heartbeat, 1989)
; a collection of early Perry ska songs from 1964-66, backed by the Skatalites.

Open the Gate
(Trojan, 1989)
; a two-CD compilation of Black Ark material.

BRIAN ENO

Bono, U2:

Some bands went to art school; we went to Brian Eno.

As an independent musical adventurer, Brian Eno has been alternately the most artfully sophisticated mind in pop and the catchiest composer in experimental music. A musical creator with truly equal-opportunity ears, his huge body of work serves as a meeting ground for minimalism and glam rock, techno and pop, European intellectualism and non-Western folk styles, obscure composers and stadium rock. Eno has stood at ground zero in the development of art rock, ambient, new wave, no wave, New Age, trance-dance, and mannered pop. As a producer, he has played a critical role in the careers of some of rock’s most significant acts. As an inspiration, he has been cited by artists in all forms of contemporary music.

Mark De Gli Antoni, Soul Coughing:

When I was in, like, sixth grade, I went ape over Roxy Music’s second record. The credits said Brian Eno did “treatments,” and I thought, “Wow, what does that mean?” Then I got [Genesis’] The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, and the credits called the way the piano was treated “Enosification,” and I was like, “So what did Eno do there?” It was such a big deal to me, all those things. It started the spark. Through learning more about what Eno was doing with tapes, I started playing with that stuff... Soon after I heard
Music for Airports
, I gave away all my records and decided to start from scratch. I only listened to
Music for Airports
for two or three years... And I really liked working with unfamiliar sounds and
musique concrète
, but I also really liked pop music. Eno was very important to solving the problem of living in both worlds at the same time.

Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno grew up in a middle-class neighborhood in Suffolk where his father was a postman. At a young age Eno began tuning in American radio broadcasts from the nearby U.S. Air Force Base, where he first heard sounds that seemed to come from another world: early rock ‘n’ roll, doo-wop, easy listening pop. Eno also became fascinated with tape recorders as a kid, and when he finally got one he constantly investigated its possibilities. The tape recorder, essentially, became Eno’s first instrument.

As Eno entered art school in the mid-‘60s, he began hearing the work of modern composers such as
John Cage
and
LaMonte Young
. Soon he fell under the influence of British composer Cornelius Cardew, with his collective of anarchic musical experimenters the Scratch Orchestra, and joined a similar group, the Portsmouth Sinfonia. Simultaneously, Eno pursued rock music with Maxwell’s Demon, a band for which he sang and operated electronics.

In 1971 Eno settled on a single musical pursuit when he formed Roxy Music, an eccentric art rock band that took its cues from the Velvet Underground and early German krautrock bands. Eno was nominally the keyboardist, but his true function was something closer to sound engineer, handling “treatments.” Eno’s musical direction and freakish glam look – with makeup, glitter suits, and feather boas – dominated Roxy Music’s first two albums and tension developed between Eno and singer Bryan Ferry. In 1973, Eno decided to move on.

Scott Kannberg, Pavement:

We had all these electronic keyboards on our first single, and I think that came from him. I was in a record store and I heard this amazing electronic solo on a Roxy Music bootleg, Eno was just going off on this warped accompaniment. A week later I was like, “Oh, we gotta have something like that on our song.”

Eno’s first stop was
(No Pussyfooting)
, an experimental guitar album with King Crimson’s Robert Fripp, on which the two developed a system of delayed tape looping (called “Frippertronics”) that enabled Fripp to layer guitar parts and essentially accompany himself. Eno also embarked on a solo career with 1973’s
Here Come the Warm Jets
and the following year’s
Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)
, two excellent records – both playfully melodic and sonically adventurous – that at different points seemed to prefigure both punk rock and synth pop.

Eric Bachmann, Archers of Loaf:

If you listen to the guitar stuff on those first two pop records, we owe a lot to that. The production things that he was just starting to work out, that’s totally how I see us. By no means do we have the kind of brain that he has, but I admire his attitude. He would just try anything, where a lot of people wouldn’t have the energy.

Eno subsequently recorded two more ambitious pop-oriented records,
Another Green World
(which featured the Velvet Underground’s
John Cale
as well as future pop star Phil Collins) and
Before and after Science
(featuring the German duo Cluster, with whom Eno would collaborate often). These albums, though, were clearly informed by a new direction Eno had begun to take in music, following a 1975 car accident. While recuperating in bed, Eno found himself listening to a record with the volume turned very low. Unable to get out of bed to make the music louder, he simply let it play at a barely audible level. As he later wrote, “This presented what was for me a new way of hearing music – as part of the environment just as the color of the light and the sound of the rain were parts of that ambience.”

Beginning with his record,
Discreet Music
, Eno began to investigate music “that could be listened to and yet could be ignored” – quite similar to the goals of early 20
^th
-century composer
Erik Satie
’s “furniture music” – which Eno termed “ambient music.” The first part of
Discreet Music
involved a system of tape delay loops that processed two synthesizer melodies in various permutations, while the second part reconfigured the popular classical piece Pachelbel’s
Canon
by altering the tempo of certain instruments. Both works clearly fell more in the realm of experimental composition than pop, and furthered Eno’s earlier interests in self-generating and tape music.

Jim O’Rourke, solo / Gastr del Sol:

I loved Eno. His record
Discreet Music
was absolutely huge, massive, gargantuan, one of the biggest eye-openers for me. He explained what he was doing in the liner notes, and that was the key because it was the first time one these records explained exactly what they were doing. That really got me into minimalism.