Now-Again Records

Bubbha Thomas & The Lightmen – Creative Music: The Complete Works Box Set

Bubbha Thomas – Revolutionary, spiritual jazz bandleader, drummer, and activist from Houston.

ON SALE NOW BUBBHA THOMAS & THE LIGHTMEN – CREATIVE MUSIC: THE COMPLETE WORKS BOX SET

Limited Quantity. Expected ship date – November 28th.

This is the definitive box set of Thomas’s four classic albums with his Lightmen band, each mastered from the original tapes, expanded with bonus tracks and alternate mixes.

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. His first set of self-issued albums predated the deep-set, maverick jazz issued by the likes of Tribe and Strata East and were a harbinger of best of the 1970s jazz underground. Over the course of the decade, he contributed to a collective voice of resistance to the musical and cultural status quo that is just beginning to be understood.

Each album comes with booklet, a download card for WAV files, and footage of live performances included. Album details below. MORE

Announcing: Revolutionary, Spiritual Jazz – The Lightmen Plus One’s “Fancy Pants”

Available at our web store at Rappcats: The Lightmen Plus One’s Fancy Pants

Revolutionary, spiritual jazz from Houston, reissued for the first time – the second in a series of four expanded reissues of drummer and bandleader Bubbha Thomas’s lauded catalog.

Extensive booklet detailing Bubbha and his band’s story, replete with never-published photos. Presented in both the issued stereo and previously unissued mono mixes as a double LP. Download card for WAV files and videos of 1970s performances included.

Also see: The Lightmen – Free As You Wanna Be

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. Fancy Pants is his second LP with his Lightmen band and, like the deep-set, maverick jazz issued by the likes of Tribe and Strata East, is amongst the best of the 1970s jazz underground, a collective voice of resistance to the musical and cultural status quo.

This is the first time that Fancy Pants has seen reissue, and it is presented in both the issued stereo and previously unissued mono mixes as a double LP. This reissue was remastered from Bubbha’s original master tapes. 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. Download card for WAV files and videos of numerous 1970s performances also included.

All four of Bubbha’s 1970s albums will see reissue as expanded albums, with previously unreleased mixes, alternate and unreleased versions, once per quarter, through the end of 2018. Watch a primer of what’s to come below.

Lightmen Plus One – Fancy Pants

Buy it here.

Stereo:

A:
1. Sorrow Bitterness And Revolution (Now He’s Gone) (7:13)
2. Fancy Pants (4:55)
3. On The Road Home (8:28)

B:
1. Blue Tip (6:50)
2. Hope (4:06)
3. Song Of Praise (5:19)
4. Ujimma (3:37)
5. Ashie (2:56)

Mono:

C:
1. Sorrow Bitterness and Revolution (Now He’s Gone) (Mono) (7:18)
2. Fancy Pants (Mono) (4:51)
3. On The Road Home (Mono) (8:38)

D:
1. Blue Tip (Mono) (8:03)
2. Hope (Mono) (5:28)
3. Song of Praise (Mono) (5:23)
4. Ujimma (Mono) (3:26)
5. Ashie (Mono) (2:47)

This anthology produced by Eothen Alapatt. Associate production by Mark Taylor. Liner notes by Lance Scott Walker and Eothen Alapatt, with a contribution by Flash Parks.

Tape and vinyl transfers, restoration and remastering by Dave Cooley for Elysian Masters, Los Angeles, USA. Select tape transfers by Len Horowitz for History of Recorded Sound, Los Angeles, USA.
Lacquered by Chris Potter at Electric Mastering, London, UK.

Art Direction by Errol Richardson.

Licensed courtesy Bubbha Thomas.

2LP, CD, Digital. 2018. NA 5156. Part of the Bubbha Thomas & The Lightmen Creative Music: The Complete Works anthology.

Egon’s First Pop Up Record Shop of 2018 – Selling Bubbha Thomas and his Lightmen Band’s Records

Available now at our web store at Rappcats: The Lightmen’s Fancy Pants.

Now-Again Records celebrated the reissue of The Lightmen Plus One’s Spiritual Jazz classic Fancy Pants with a pop-up record shop at Rappcats. The sale was hosted by Egon, with records sourced from Bubbha Thomas and his Lightmen bandmates – saxophonist Doug Harris and bassist Don Patterson’s collections – and contained both one-of-a-kind rarities and classic soul, funk, jazz and rock LPs and 45s that inspired Thomas and his band. And of course albums by the Lightmen band itself. Don Patterson himself was at the space, talking jazz and signing any copies of the albums purchased from the collections.

Also see: The Lightmen –Free As You Wanna Be MORE