newjazz.com

In 1989 Joe Gallivan began residing in Hawaii. From Maui he ran his own label, newjazz.com, whose 1998 website offered these five CDs. The pages below are quoted from the archived site.

“Spontaneous improvisation, the soul of jazz, arises from mastery of musical knowledge, passionate abandon, and total focus in the moment.”

The catalog

Reviews

In June, 1972, at one of a series of concerts in Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C., an unearthly performance disturbed then-prez Dick Nixon, causing him to phone aide H.R. Haldeman with orders to pull the plug lest the strange music "levitate the White House". At least that's the claim of the Love Cry Want liner notes. Upon listening to this historical release, I can't say I blame Nixon...for his reaction, at least. This is not pretty music; it's angry. (Uh, some people were upset about a war in a place called Vietnam.) On a bed of polyrhythmic drumming and percussion, guitarist Nicholas leads three others--most notably the late organist Larry Young--in totally freeform improvs that are presented in four- to 15-minute snippets. Taped on-the-fly, tracks sometimes start sensibly, other times jumping in after the musicians have begun a new piece. While Young coaxes atounding timbres from his Hammond, Joe Gallivan works lots of good magic on the Minimoog, which had been introduced only two years earlier. Love Cry Want is an intriguing assault on the ears.

Offhand I can't think of any valid reasons why Joe Gallivan is not more celebrated. He worked with well heavy geezers like Eric Dolphy, Gil Evans and Wilson Pickett, participated in a longstanding duo with Charles Austin, and ran admirable outfits like Neon Lighthouse and the Soldiers Of The Road, in whose ranks warriors like Evan Parker, Steve Williams Paul Dunmall and Guy Barker served.

Cast in cycles of form, freedom and surrender, Gallivan's suite of pieces concerns the innocence of creative music-making in an essentially pragmatic culture. Though the basic structures are scored, they are left open for both the ensemble and the soloists to explore their own natures and thereby renounce control to the flow of ideas and inspirations.

Joe Gallivan has obviously accumulated a wealth of experience; thankfully, he's developed an avant-bop style that's quite a kick to listen to.

Drummer Joe Gallivan is a road warrior who's had significant tenures in New York, London and Europe. Though now comfortably ensconced in Maui, the music is anything but mango breezy. Indeed, it's bracing. Collaborating with pianist Brian Cuomo and altoist Elton Dean, Gallivan plunges into the deep waters of open-ended improvisation. It's a risky proposition that nonetheless pays big dividends. Indeed, one hears echoes of the kind of soundscapes once spun so effectively by Charles Lloyd. This is spontaneous composition made accessible by the musicians' maturity, their shared vision, and paradoxically, their discipline (tracks average about five minutes a piece, thus setting up constantly shifting moods and atmospheres). It's a piece of haunting beauty.

Jackie Ryan's voice is really the story here; her tone has a way of pulling the listener into the piece. Even if this disc is played as background music, she make you pay attention. Not by screaming or hitting very high notes or by being sultry, but by the fact she can put a story across.

Source: newjazz.com as archived by the Internet Archive, July 1998. The newjazz.com domain no longer belongs to the label.