"Free As You Wanna Be", the first album by drummer Bubbha Thomas and his band The Lightmen, is a harbinger of the profound, unconventional jazz of bands like Tribe and Strata East: this album is a harbinger of the collective resistance to the musical and cultural status quo that developed in the jazz underground of the 1970s.

Drummer, bandleader and activist Bubbha Thomas had toured America with R&B revues, worked as a studio musician for Peacock and Backbeat records and played straight-ahead jazz with legends before the political and social upheavals of the late 1960s led him down a path first charted by Coltrane. Most of the tracks remain strongly groove-based and have a clear sense of cohesion, but some of the performances go further than one would expect from later Lightmen releases, revealing the band's deep roots in avant-jazz. This line-up features a very young Ronnie Laws, clearly moving away from the jazz fusion style he was to develop in the late 70s. In addition to Thomas on drums, the ensemble is completed by Doug Harris on tenor saxophone, Carl Adams on trumpet, Kenny Abair on guitar and Joe Singleton on trombone.