Have you ever been really stoned? I mean reaaaaaallly stoned, where the most you could do was sit there on the floor, staring into space, concentrating on the smallest speck in the smallest crack in the ceiling, not moving at all, just absorbing the rhythms of the earth? Well, neither have I, and even if I had (say, back in my college days), as a Father of two and EVP of the PTA, I certainly wouldn’t admit it in any kind of public forum. However, that being said, I think the closest you can come to that particular sensation would be listening to dub reggae, and in particular, its most famous practitioner, Lee “Scratch” Perry AKA The Upsetter.

Lee Perry took the tracks from the reggae songs he was producing (classics such as Junior Murvin’s “Police and Thieves“), stripped away the vocals and additional instruments, and concentrated on the interplay of the justly famous Jamaican style bass and drums. He added echo, delays, metric tons of reverb, then slowly brough back in snatches of vocals or guitar, and before you know it, you feel as though you are inside the song, wandering through the spaces between the instruments. Kind of like being…well, you know… And this was all in the 1970s, all analog, before Powerbooks and Propellerhead software. It is truly something else. So Listen, learn, and become one with Jah.

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