Jazz-beyond-rock: Tony Williams addressing today’s emergency

Spectrum Road — electric guitarist Vernon Reid, bassist Jack Bruce, keyboardist John Medeski and drummer Cindy Blackman — playing high energy, high volume music at the Blue Note (NYC) this weekendÂ inspired by the jazz-rock amalgam the late, great Tony WilliamsÂ created 40 years ago, seems utterly cutting edge. Or is it just my old ears, getting deaf to quieter subtleties?

Opening night the quartet was over-the-top exciting, as Reid’s fast-fingering of long and urgent phrases, Bruce’s unfalteringly creative and propulsive bottom lines (he’s the guy who kept Cream’s long jams like the 16-minute “Spoonful” from bogging down), Medeski’s swirling, splashing organ-and-synth physicality and Blackman’s ferocious full-on attack cohered into a huge sound with a single intent: improv intense enough for headbangers, bluesy but harmonically exploratory enough to satisfy avant-jazzers.

These musicians have plenty of cred in this vein, incidentally:Â Reid most famously in Living Colour, Bruce forever known for Cream, Blackman in Lenny Kravitz’s band as well as leading her own projects like last year’s Another Lifetime, Medeski the first up in Medeski, Martin & Wood.

The full house for the first set was obviously appreciative, getting just what it had come despite a snowstorm to hear: the free-flowing, unmuted sound WilliamsÂ (1945 – 1997)Â introduced with his trio Lifetime on Emergency!, a two-lp set released in 1969 which broke open heated-debated back thenÂ about what jazz, rock and soul could/should be. This crowd looked of the age to remember that, old enough to have lived through it the first time around.

Experiments in crossover were already occuring then. Among those leading the charge: flutist Jeremy Steig and his Satyrs; the Free Spirits with guitarist Larry Coryell, saxophonist Jim Pepper and drummer Bob Moses; the Blues Project; Paul Butterfield’s Blues Band; Blood, Sweat and Tears under the direction of Al Kooper, and Miles Davis, Tony Williams’ boss (Frank Zappa and Jimi Hendrix, too).Â Miles had not yet had his breakthrough with Bitches Brew — in fact, Williams left the trumpeter, who’d been his mentor, before then, because Davis had cast guitarist John McLaughlin, whom Williams had brought from England to be in Lifetime, for In A Silent Way. As if Miles could steal Williams’ thunder!

Williams provided only a tight, sizzling drum figure to IASW. He cut loose entirely on Emergency!Â with McLaughlin and organist Larry Young, as well as on its follow-upÂ

from left – Larry Young, Tony Williams, John McLaughlin. promotional photo – no copyright infringement intended

Turn It Over (Jack BruceÂ joining to make Lifetime a quartet) and Ego (different personnel), before getting swamped by who-knows-what for Lifetime’s least successful outing,Â The Old Bum’s Rush. None of these records were admired by the old-guard jazz fans of the early ’70s who mostly ruled the critical roost, but that didn’t stop Williams’ cohort — kids 25 and younger, who were open to psychedelia as well as jazz, from eating them up. Lifetime rocked. Oh yeah — Williams took a lot of heat for his wimpy vocals, but as sung by Bruce (“There Comes a Time”) especially, and Blackman (“Where”), the lyrics and songs are just fine.

I liked Lifetime’s maximallism then, and I like such sophisticated power-ups now. What’s the point of having a lot of amplifiers onstage if not to let us hear what a musician can do with all that gear? Bands such as McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra, Santana (Cindy Blackman is now Mrs. Carlos Santana), organist Young (aka Khalid Yasim)’s Fuel that recorded Spaceball, Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band and even the Grateful Dead were explosive but also went for substance and believed in what they were doing. Not just noisy for noise’s sake, they matched the ebullience, perhaps idealism, and, ok, bombast of their followers and gave us some serious music to hold onto. Like Prince says, they featured “real music by real musicians.”Â Same with Spectrum Road (named for a Williams composition).

Is such jazz-rock fusion dated now? To me, it seems right on time to ~~blow the lid off~~Â Â balance a strain of jazz-referencing music that favors studied but too often empty virtuosity, pretentiously abstract and precious conceptualization, rather than grit and juice, confrontation and resolution. Biting, funky fusion is also bait with which to reel in adventurous listeners who want more than repetitious beats over sing-song chord progressions. When jazz is typified as “parents’ music” or thought to have died after a fabled golden age, Spectrum Road, its constituent members and many colleagues prove that’s a lie.

Forty years is a long time in this culture for a style, movement, repertoire to survive. That jazz and rock, blues, roots, salsa, soul have all mixed themselves up and remain fervently alive at a time when so much else in the world of entertainment is glitzy yet conventional, Â virtual and mediated speaks well for the American soundscape. Now, as in the ’60s and ’70s, we have an emergency! Thanks to Spectrum Road for looking ahead while recalling the not-so-distant past, for clearing cobwebs off works and, moreover, an approach that are as vital today as decades ago. Reid, Bruce, Medeski and Blackman play hard, smart, loud, proud, fun, strong, open-ended music. Listen.

[ps. — Prior to Emergency!, Tony Williams recorded a beautifully mysterious,Â airy, acoustic album titled Life Time for Blue Note Records. After 1975, Williams reformed Lifetime with guitarist Alan Holdsworth, keyboardist Allan Pasqua and bassist Tony Newton, for two albums I’ve never cottoned to, as they feature a lighter if still “progressive” sound:Â Believe It and Million Dollar Legs, which Â have been reissued as Lifetime: The Collection. After 1985, though he still found time to drum for Public Image Ltd. and Bill Laswell projects, WilliamsÂ Â concentrated on composition studies and recorded several solid albums with a relatively more straightahead jazz quintet, which have been reissued by Mosaic. Williams was a brilliant drummer in every context — all his performances on ’60s Blue Note albums and with Miles’ quintet with Ron Carter, Her
bie Hancock and Wayne Shorter make for fine listening. But for the still generative big bang of jazz-rock, I recommend Spectrum – Anthology. which has most of the best of Emergency!, Turn It Over, Ego and The Old Bum’s Rush].

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