Rhythm Helps Anchor ‘Scratch’ Perry’s Circus

As one of reggae’s great record producers and songwriters, Lee “Scratch” Perry helped foster Jamaica’s early wave of Rastafarian musical prophets, including Bob Marley and the Wailers.

Babylon hasn’t fallen yet, but Perry did transform some of the sonic properties of pop music. From his backyard studio in Jamaica, the Black Ark, came mid-’70s “dub style” recordings whose distinctive, wall-shaking bass echoes in hip-hop. Perry’s echoey ambiences and cut-and-paste sound insertions and deletions stand as prelude to the now-popular art of remixing.

Playing the role of tormented-genius producer beyond the hilt, Perry wigged out in 1979 and torched his studio. Now based in Switzerland, and having returned in April for his first U.S. performances since 1980, his role is that of Holy Fool, comically eccentric to the point of risking dismissal as a possibly addled crank yet still proclaiming prophetically on behalf of Jah and against Babylon.

At the Coach House here Monday night, Perry, 62, was a cartoonish apparition, decked out like a bush-guerrilla Johnny Appleseed in camouflage vest, stars-and-stripes shirt, canteen over his shoulder, corncob hanging phallicly from his belt, and enough shiny baubles around his neck, on his fingers and set into a mirrored headband-cum-crown to start a jewelry booth at a Deadhead convention.

He moved with a spry bounce, baptized the stage, front-row fans and himself with bottled water, periodically honked a bicycle horn that he never relinquished, issued contradictory proclamations casting himself as both prophet and charlatan, alluded to his supposed extraterrestrial connections and played with the whole image in a tongue-in-cheek song called “I Am a Madman.”

Perry engaged 200 or so fans with the amiability of a weird uncle. Not noted for his singing during his heyday, Perry delivered his odd mantras (besides the usual Rasta boilerplate, he threw in do-re-mi scales and a Hare Krishna chant) in a wizened, burry voice draped in the thickest of accents.

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Ironically, given the startling presence and definition-amid-chaos of his ‘70s studio achievements (“Arkology,” a recent three-disc anthology, covers his pioneering dub period), Perry was almost undone by a murky sound mix that aborted the sort of beautifully nuanced performance his four backing players (plus an effects-triggering sound engineer, Mad Professor) give on a new album, “Lee Scratch Perry, Live Maritime Hall.” The excellent Robotiks Band was reduced to a booming drums-and-bass rhythm section as keyboards got squelched and the guitar simply vanished.

But absorbing rhythms, coupled with the most catchy of Perry’s singsong incantations, were enough to make a significant chunk of the 90-minute show memorable for more than its eccentricity. “Come Go With Lee” and “Soul Fire” carried his message with a mellow, funky bounce; “Heads of State” countered with a taut, stormy vision of Armageddon unleashed; and “Open Door” was a warm, comforting closing chant holding out the possibility of spiritual transformation via gentler means.

Perry’s encore cover of “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” promised much--reggae’s most innovative sonic inventor taking on one of Motown’s most ambitious sonic inventions--but turned into a platform for his least-focused rambling.

There is a line of costumed, myth-equipped eccentrics in pop that includes Sun Ra, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, George Clinton and Dr. John in his voodoo-steeped Night Tripper period. It’s an illustrious company, and Perry rates inclusion, albeit as the least of an entertaining lot.