Widely regarded as the creator and an ongoing pioneer of dub music, the Jamaican legend and Grammy award winner, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry brings his full live band to Mr Kyps for a low key and intimate show. Throughout his lengthy career he’s been celebrated as an experimenter and innovator, as well as a groundbreaking producer, songwriter and performer.

He’s been at the forefront of Jamaican music since the 1950’s Ska movement and worked with most of the greats, including Bob Marley and the Wailers, Junior Murvin, The Congos and Max Romeo as well as finding time to release some of dub music’s masterpieces with his own studio band, The Upsetters. As genius and madness so often go hand in hand, his eccentricities and oddball reputation proceed him and controversy has dogged him throughout his colourful career, most famously when he burnt his own legendary Black Ark studios to the ground in a rum fuelled fit of rage back in 1978.

The venue is thick tonight with the heady vapour of the electro cigarette when ‘Scratch’ takes to the stage dressed in a pink suit, his trade mark shiny hat, bright orange hair and draped like a magpie in numerous trinkets, badges, necklaces and gold rings. As the show commences we are transported back by the bass driven dub sounds to ‘70’s Kingston, when records were sold off the back of motorbikes and music was made solely to celebrate the mighty cause of Jah.

Now into his early eighties, the elder statesman of reggae proves from the outset that he can still work his crowd and firing on all cylinders tonight he shows no signs of slowing down any time soon. He paces the stage relentlessly stopping only to shake the hands of the more devoted members of the audience and raise a Zippo lighter flame above his head.

The set of reggae and dub classics features highlights such as the Upsetter masterpiece, Zion Blood, as well as re workings of the mainstream hits he wrote for Bob Marley; Sun is Shining and Chase those Crazy Baldheads out of Town. He keeps his stage lit with candles and numerous smoking joss sticks in bananas as the venue management watch on nervously, possibly with visions of the famous Black Ark fire in the back of their minds.

History doesn’t quite get to repeat itself tonight and we get away with only a couple of burnt guitar and microphone leads for which he apologises profusely before throwing water to douse the live electrical cables. No harm done! It’s certainly a sign of the times when he eulogizes the late, great Bob Marley again holding aloft his lit Zippo and only a couple of members of the audience are actually in a position to follow suit as those carrying lighters these days appear definitely in a minority.

Along with the legendary music we also get plenty of crowd interaction and banter along with his rants on the evils of smoking drugs although it can be difficult to decipher most of his thoughts through his heavy set Jamaican accent.

As the set closes and he retires back to his dressing room the crowd are encouraged by the band to chant "Lee Scratch Perry, Lee Scratch Perry" and to this we are rewarded with his return to encore with an epic re-modelling of Bob Marley’s international hit, Exodus. Definitely a very special evening for all those who took part and Perry’s unique sound still burns as bright as ever. We have spent an hour and a half in the company of a true icon and one of the most important figures in the history of reggae music.