Formed by confederates who met at the Berklee School of Music and led by the creatively restless saxophonist and jazz educator Arni Cheatham, Thing were a regular fixture in Boston clubs in the seventies, as comfortable plying the rock and funk idioms as they were in jazz. Their 1972 LP documents two of their live sets, showcasing their simmering, funky and spiritual
freeform jazz, very much in the vein of early seventies jazz-rock experiments by Miles Davis, Weather Report and the Mahavishnu Orchestra.
The two suites featured on the album are fully improvised, featuring the musicians spontaneously generating and developing musical motifs in real time, bouncing ideas off each other in a communion that is equally suitable for meditating...or dancing like tomorrow will never arrive...
THING is a worthy glimpse into the experimentation and adventurousness that made the seemingly uptight city of Boston a magnet for musical mavericks.