(Original image of the wrong set of Tony Williams recordings by There Stands the Glass.)
When Thundercat named The Tony Williams Lifetime’s Emergency! a perfect album in a recent Pitchfork social media post, I realized I hadn’t heard it in its entirety for more than forty years. Two cataclysmic sets of things occurred as I revisited the seventy-minute opus yesterday.
A burst of chaos erupted almost immediately when Emergency! began to play. Unexpected good news from one family member nonetheless imposed a correspondingly demanding series of actions. I also learned that a usually imperturbable wing of my clan is struggling with a difficult challenge. Meanwhile, an ongoing debacle involving my finances took a distasteful turn for the worse.
Emergency indeed! The sudden exigencies made me long for a brigade of psychologists and accountants. My confidence was further battered by the uncomfortable realization that Emergency! is directly and indirectly a fundamental reference point for much of the avant-garde music I’ve consumed in the past decade.
Keeping such a seminal recording out of regular rotation is a personal failure. The improvisational noise made by guitarist John McLaughlin, organist Larry Young and drummer Williams in 1969 is obviously a landmark readily recognized by everyone but me.
The proto prog-punk of “Vashkar” and the violent chaos of the title track remain thrilling 57 years on. The home truths expressed on “Beyond Games” contain sentiments I couldn’t have understood as a teenager. Only the stoned hippie relic “Via De Spectrum Road” sounds dated.
Did the alarming sound of Emergency! somehow summon the spate of mind-blowing events I’m still attempting to properly address? I’m tempted to believe it’s true. So, thanks for the tip, Thundercat! I guess.