The Lightmen Free As You Wanna Be

• The Lightmen – Creative Music
• The Lightmen – Free As You Wanna Be
• The Lightmen – High Pockets
• The Lightmen – Talk Visit
• The Lightmen – May '67
• The Lightmen – #109 Psychosomatic
• The Lightmen – Luke 23:32-49

• 1. Creative Music
• 2. Free As You Wanna Be
• 3. High Pockets
• 4. Talk Visit
• 5. May '67
• 6. #109 Psychosomatic
• 7. Luke 23:32-49

Free As You Wanna Be predates the deep-set, maverick jazz issued by the likes of Tribe and Strata East and is a harbinger of best of the 1970s jazz underground, a collective voice of resistance to the musical and cultural status quo. Presented in both stereo and previously unissued mono mixes.

Drummer, bandleader and activist Bubbha Thomas had toured America with R&B revues, served as a session musician for Peacock and Back Beat Records, and played straight ahead jazz with legends before the political and social upheaval of the late 1960s led him to a path first charted by Coltrane. Free As You Wanna Be predates the deep-set, maverick jazz issued by the likes of Tribe and Strata East and is a harbinger of best of the 1970s jazz underground, a collective voice of resistance to the musical and cultural status quo.

This is the first time that Free As You Wanna Be has seen reissue, and it is presented in both the issued stereo and previously unissued mono mixes as a double LP. Bubbha and his band’s story is told in great detail by Houston music and cultural historian Lance Scott Walker (Houston Rap / Houston Rap Tapes) and Now-Again’s Eothen Alapatt, in a booklet that contains dozens of unpublished photographs.