The Heptones: Book of Rules vs. Lee Perry's Party Time

During the mid to late seventies Lee Perry produced a number of albums that have since formed the foundation for most people’s understandings of roots and dub. Out of that clutch of records, there are undoubtedly a grouping that won’t ever be surpassed in quality. For whatever reason the Heptones’ Party Time has been included in clutch of discs that haven’t had a tremendous amount of proper criticism heaped upon it.

The disc isn’t bad, but it hardly deserves the constant fawning over it generally receives. And that’s a problem for Perry as well as the Heptones.

For any group, pin pointing its high musical summit is difficult. And it’d be stretch to figure the Heptones’ Book of Rules, issued in 1973, as the band’s strongest recording. It might be. And it might not be. But either way, the album is stronger throughout than Party Time, which would be released a few years later. Of course, Book of Rules doesn’t sport that Bob Dylan cover, relegating this earlier album as something less of a politicized effort, but nonetheless, more enjoyable as music for music’s sake.

Vocal harmonizing is a constant during each album’s run time, but the odd spin Perry puts on the music for Party Time isn’t really conducive to the group’s singing talents.

This earlier Harry J produced and Sylvan Morris engineered effort, though, focuses on those joint vocals while still being able to coax a standard, if not overwhelming effort from the backing band here.

“Baga Boo” isn’t set to become a standard within the genre, even if the phrase was and remains pretty prevalent in JA music. But the clavichord voicing here works perfectly with the trio’s singing. Of course, the simply reggae groove being in play allows for any number of simplistic approaches to work properly. But Morris and Harry J seemed to have understood the best way to showcase the Heptones’ talents.

Not to slight Perry, he remains the avowed face of dub, but this is all just a case of a figurehead being lauded for being a figurehead. Neither Party Time nor Book of Rules is going to suddenly warrant gobs of attention to be directed at the genre. But this earlier disc more aptly represents the time and place it was recorded – not to mention the group that it was supposed to capture. There’re reasons to count both disc’s in one’s collection, but not more than a few reasons to toss on Party Time.