Love Cry Want – S/T

What our staff has to say: “Wild record on many levels, recorded at an anti-war rally in DC in ’72, featuring organist Larry Young and percussionist Joe Gallivan. Organ heavy, synthesized improv for fans of post Hendrix freak fusion. Check it out and see why Nixon quickly had their electric pulled! But also, for the jazz freaks, grab this with Superior Viaduct’s stellar reissues of Sonny Sharrock’s Black Woman, Byard Lancaster’s It’s Not Up To Us, and Albert Ayler’s In Greenwich Village.” – Jon

Psychedelic improvisational spiritual avant-rock/jazz featuring the legendary Larry Young on organ and equally astounding Joe Gallivan on drums, steel guitar, Moog synth, and percussion; the mysterious Nicholas wailing on guitar synthesizer and ring modulator; and Jimmy Molneiri on drums and percussion—recorded live at an anti-war rally in Washington D.C., in June 1972. They aimed the speakers at the Nixon White House, and blasted away as an anti-war protest! (The music so completely freaked out President Nixon that he demanded his chief of staff H.R. “Watergate” Haldeman to shut off the band’s source of electricity.)

“After establishing himself as a leader on Blue Note in the 1960s, Young played on Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew, John McLaughlin and Carlos Santana’s Love Surrender Devotion, and the first three Tony Williams Lifetime albums. He emerged from those sessions at an exalted level of inspiration and with a formidable fire in his belly, and these traits helped shape Love Cry Want into a sui generis classic—a tone poem expressed with a flamethrower. Using a self-built guitar synthesizer, Nicholas stuns throughout the disc with brash flashes of Hendrix-ian extravagance. Gallivan displays both inventive exoticness and cyclonic power as he and Molneiri deftly guide the group through its furious paces.”—Dave Segal, Jazz Times