Tony Williams & Lifetime - Emergency
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Tony Williams & LifetimeEdition: Music CD
Format: Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 1997-10-28
Music Label: Polygram Records
Soundtracks:
- Emergency
- Beyond Games
- Where
- Vashkar
- Via The Spectrum Road
- Spectrum
- Sangria For Three
- Something Special
Free Music Notes for Emergency
Free Music Review: Cool Stuff From the Cosmos
Hit: 5 Stars
Along with Miles Davis, Tony Williams helped invent jazz rock in 1969-70. "Emergency" is a definitive album, its somewhat subpar recording quality and Tony's vocals notwithstanding. I actually don't Tony's singing at all. A British reviewer said it added to the "otherworldly" quality of the album, and that's true. I admit the vocals are technically weak (he wanted to sound like Billy Eckstine, of all people!), but they sounds lost and mysterious, like a lost spirit wandering in deep space. His "Beyond Games" is a jazz rap tune well before the age of hip-hop.
The album rocks like an inferno, with all three musicians bouncing madly off each other like grasshoppers on steroids. Larry Young is simply My Man on organ; he is the definitive jazz organist in my opinion. Lifetime allowed him to go as far beyond the everyday as anyone could imagine. He creates fluid sheets of sound like a bubbling rush of raging water, a veritable tsunami. And he improvises with consummate skill. McLaughlin adds his own brand of savagery to the album, albeit in supremely fluent style. He riffs harder than granite, and improvises in classic jazz style. His "Spectrum" fully predicts the sound of the later Mahavishnu Orchestra, which brought Lifetime's innovations to a broad audience. Played in hell-bent style, Carla Bley's classic "Vashkar" suits the band's style down to the ground.
And then Tony! He plays all out, always astonishing with his lashing cymbal (almost his signature sound) and unbelievable thunder. He plays harder than anyone you'll ever hear, yet with frequent subtlety. Tony drums as if he will not survive the session.
The sound quality: it's not clean and pristine by any means, but adds to the primal power of the music. I can hear all the instruments well (the CD sounds better than the LP, certainly). A "pure" recording might have detracted from the music's vitality.
Some say Lifetime didn't mature until "Believe It" and Holdsworth. The A.H. version of the band produced one excellent album ("Believe it") and one rather average one ("Million Dollar Legs.") The latter featured at best limited jazz improvisation and seemed to be designed for commercial radio. In contrast, the McLaughlin Lifetime produced two great albums before it folded. The Holdsworth Lifetime built on what the McLaughlin Lifetime created.
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