Love Cry Want

his is one crazy, brilliant record. A trio composed of the inventor/guitarist Nicholas, who only ever went by his first name, drummer and steel guitarist Joe Gallivan, and the late organist Larry Young yielded one of the most intense, freewheeling, and visionary records ever to come out of the '70s fusion era -- even though it took until the 1990s to get released. Nicholas played not only electric guitar, but a prototype synthesizer guitar (he and the Electronic Music Laboratories created and patented the synth guitar) and used a ring modulator as well, adding to the textural and sonic possibilities of Young's already groundbreaking organ sounds. Each of the six tracks here begins with a mode, a rhythm, or a riff, and spirals into the stratosphere. Funk is the motivator on "Peace," where Young plays rhythmic counterpoint to Gallivan, while Nicholas wails his ass off all over the place. On "Tomorrow, Today Will Be Yesterday," a beautiful, long, droning guitar passage that seems to have come out of Jimi Hendrix's "Still Raining, Still Dreaming" sequence form Electric Ladyland is colored, shaded, and deepened by Young's chromatic abilities while Gallivan's drumming brings the two principals so close they are almost indistinguishable. And so it goes for one of most engaging, startlingly accessible free jazz fusion romps in history. The live feel of the music here is underscored by the fact that most, if not all of it, was recorded at various concerts. Whatever; this is one of those long-lost classics that needs to be heard by every succeeding generation of rock musicians who believe jazz harmonics and rhythmic elements have nothing to offer them, and by hipsters who can claim they knew about this back in the day. ~ Thom Jurek|