Customer Reviews

Emergency

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was there when this band was playing opposite Herbie Hancock at the Village Vanguard. Tony had just brought John McLaughlin over from England, and he was recording 'In a Silent Way' with Miles at the time. I was totally blown away by the garage band sound and the exotic, funky Bley tunes. This was art. I wore out a stylus and the vinyl long ago. I remember the old ampeg amp and the stratocaster, the Hammond B3 and the mike inside the hi-hat cymbal. Wish I could give another 5 stars.

Alright, I think we can all agree that the sound quality is atrocious, and that Tony's singing (think a hungover Dylan) doesn't do this album any favors.. but the music is hotter than a lava flow.

This stuff is raw, innovative (1969) fusion that thoroughly emphasizes the ROCK half of the equation. Not as sophisticated as McLaughlin's own Mahavishnu Orchestra or Tony's later albums with Allan Holdsworth, but fiery and inspired trio work nonetheless. Larry Young, McLaughlin, and Williams are all playing like they're locked in the studio with guns pointed at their heads; especially Williams, who was probably tired of being held back in his collaborations with Miles, and totally cuts loose here (listen to him on the title track--he's just not HUMAN, I tell you). And Young's cosmic organ kicks it into the stratosphere. Listen to him play off of John on Sangria For Three. Mindblowing!

Minus the vocals, this is landmark music and essential listening for jazz/fusion heads, as is the 1970 followup Turn It Over. About as far removed from the soundtrack of "Miami Vice" as you can imagine.

Blues, rock, and jazz are all in here but strained down to their essence and played with tremendous energy. Three virtuoso musicians coalesce into something great. This is a wild wild wild trip and the music is a real layer of sonic energy. Williams' drumming it at its greatest and most idiosynchratic, and McLaughlin's guitar playing combines the best elements of his work with Miles and early Mahavishnu. Unlike anything else ever recorded and a real underappreciated classic work.

Emergency!, and its companion, Turn It Over, are about as good as it gets. Completely groundbreaking when released, the sound is avante garde even today. Williams plays like a man possessed and McLaughlin, whose guitar virtuosity carries more purpose and funk than it would later in his Mahavishnu Orchestra work, has never been better. The third member of this unlikely trio, organist Larry Young, contributes enormously to the sound's uniqueness with smeared chords that appear according to some unfathomable logic, he is always surprising and interesting.

The Tony Williams Lifetime played so loud that on club dates Williams needed monitors to hear the drums. Hard to imagine just three people produced this tidal wave of music. The singing is forgettable, although not horrible. But the melding of rock, blues, and jazz is truly astonishing. This has been called the first fusion album, and it's true that Williams, along with McLaughlin, were, in collaboration with Miles Davis, at the very edge of fusion. Whether it's the first can be debated, what's indisputable is the way Emergency! raises the bar for rock and jazz, from the vantage points of technical excellence, daring, and sheer unbridled intensity. A must-have recording.

This was truly the first jazz rock album and, 30 years on, it still maintains its classic status. Sure, the recording is rough. (Check out the "apology"/disclaimer in the booklet!), but it still works wonderfully. I am a musician myself and this album was a gigantic influence on me. Tony and John are great, but I think Larry Young steals the show wiwth his outer-outer-space organ. What a master and what a shame that Larry was taken from us at such a relatively young age. My favorite: Sangria for Three, especially the parts where they really slow it down and it's mostly just John and Larry playing. Out there!!!

Emergency! will knock your head for a loop. The sound is raw and more akin to a distorted punk record than a pristine GRP-like digital recording. And the trio is equally raw. And although the sounds are raw and perhaps unrefined-- the songs can actually get pretty complex (especially McLaughlin's "Spectrum"-- tricky head!).
BOTTOM LINE-- check out Tony Williams Lifetime's Emergency! Yeah, there are some dodgy hippie vocals, but so what-- they meant it, and that was the time! Sonically and musically, Larry Young, Tony, and John are totally going for it and rocking!!

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.

I hesitated to purchase this cd for years based on misleading comments about the sound quality. Finally relenting, I now own a copy and this remaster sounds great. The dirty sound has to do with the level of distortion chosen by John Mclaughlin and Larry Young on their respective instruments, and not with the sound engineering of the recording. Tony's drums sound excellent and are recorded with a good deal of dynamic range for 1969. The other reviews are right on concerning the musical content of this ground breaking release . It's a classic of the period.

This is the most important jazz-rock album ever recorded, and I'll tell you why. Let's forget about the idea of "jazz-rock" for a minute, although this recording certainly satisfies that definition. This is the FUTURE. Tony Williams, believe it or not, pioneers the death-metal "blast beat" while Napalm Death are still in swaddling clothes (this is 1968, remember?). John McLaughlin is in top experimental mode here-- his playing on "Via The Spectrum Road" is rhythmically astonishing-- and Larry Young is downright creepy. This music constantly probes and surprises, and it's my favorite to listen to in the dark. Be forewarned. This is strong stuff.

Miles Davis may have added rock beats to jazz, but it was Tony Williams Lifetime that made jazz rock.

Williams, John McGlachlan and Larry Yound formed no less than a jazz power trio in 1969. This music has complex soloing and collosus drumming. But this band plays so hard and so loud, this advanced music has a 100% rock impulse. Picture John Coltrane joining Cream, and you might get an idea of what Lifetime's musical instincts were.

But unlike most power trios, Lifetime did not need a bass. Larry Young is a brilliant organist, but a minimalist. His style is subtle and lends itself well to comping for the guitar and drums' virtuoso excursions. For the function he serves, he is not even using his foot pedals as much as you would think. Most of the music's bottom--and there is not a lot of it-- comes from his organ chords.

Williams lays complex poloyrhythms on top of one another, taking the music far from its center of gravity, and then snapping it back at just the right point to create an incredible dynamic. It's ironic that this material is more rock-oriented than Miles' work at the time, since Miles main change was to provide a much more straight ahead bottom to his music. Lifetime is so hard and heavy, their music can afford to function on an IMPLIED bottom and still work as rock

Mcglachlan's axe is dense and loud, but his playing has its heart in jazz improvosation and not rock crunchiness. Williams also sings on this, and like with any old friend I love and respect, I'll avoid the subject.

The sound on this is horrible. In 1969 recording technology has improved by leaps and bounds, and there is no excuse for the tinny, transister radio buzz of this music; given the times, the engineer must have dropped a few tabs before going to work.

In 2009, there is no excuse for Emergancy to still sound so bad. There has got to be a way today's digital technology can fix this.

If any music deserves it, this does.