Some argue that this album gave birth to jazz fusion. It was the first time John McLaughlin experimented with combining rock and jazz, with no less than legendary drummer Tony Williams and organ player Larry Young at his side. In many ways,
Emergency! sounds like the hustling experiments that were necessary in order for McLaughlin to arrive at his sound in Mahavishnu Orchestra’s 1971
The Inner Mounting Flame – a harmonic masterpiece revered in the halls of jazz fusion.
Emergency! secures its own place in those halls by being one of the rawest, most violent, and yet still harmonic clashes between three masters of improvisation.
We at The Attic understand that
listening to everything is an impossible task, so we’ll leave you with these five albums. Hopefully, they’re a fair representation of how the 60s was an insanely brave and glorious era for new music.
*main photo credits:
Grant Gouldon,
CC BY-SA 2.0