The Thing in Itself

The Thing in Itself is worthy of your trust. That's right, they know that you've been hurt, and that's okay, they will stand with you. That is because this eight piece Galactic Soul, Freak-Funk & Roll spectacle are ambassadors of a particular spirit that is difficult to locate in today's popular music milieu; The The Thing in Itself are Holy Fools--dedicated to a life of Soul Making. And they are...serving that daimon.

If you go to the Vegas in your mind:not the allegorical Vegas that we know to be America--the Las Vegas of the world--but the real Vegas, the one in Nevada. There you will come to two massive doors set between two garishly adorned corinthian columns. Each door is embroidered with crowds of live bouncing breasts, clusters of grapes, mangos and magnificent jewels. Gently push open the door and you will enter what appears to be a large, 1940's era-MGM studio. A dazzling whir of lights and activity abounds, as it's clear an extravagant movie musical production is in rehearsal. Step toward the stage, the golden moss lathered over each filedstone resonates with light and vibration. Pixie dust fills your nostrils and you get sent toward the stage on the gelatinous suck of the ruritanian bachanal ( look it up ) yes someone hands you a an Oxford English dictionary and the pages autonoumously flip open to words so sexy they stun beyond arousal. The whole damn room stings!!!

Floating forward you notice Godard and Fellini discussing which way to frame Gene kelly's feet in such a way that would best metaphoricize the quintessence of metaphor. Gene is choreographing some delicious Betties, in some campy number. Isaac Hayes and Frank Zappa can be seen going over charts at a conductors podium before the orchestra and band. Members of Chicago and Earth, Wind and Fire are in phalanxes of horn players to the far left. Angus Young and Jimi Hendrix are langorously passin a pipe, with guitars strapped to their backs, waiting for cues. Bootsy Collins is to the right, spraying Windex onto his mammoth, star-shaped sunglass lenses and espousing the merits of doing so, citing the father in the film, My Big Fat Greek Wedding. The string section is fiddling before a concerned Ennio Morricone. Jim Morrison is babbling poems to Will ferrell who entertains singers, Teddy pendergrass, Donna Summer and Barry Gibb with his droll impersonations of Jim. Ronnie james Dio has just returned with coffee and sushi and Jameson and Arrogant Bastard Ale for everyone...and Ben and Jerry's, the Dave Mathews coffee one that they dont make any longer. It appears Bill Murray and Marlon Brando are reclining nearby, poised as producers.

Sipping more pixie dust you, and your friends levitate from the lift, and soar through the shaft of a spotlight connecting to a giant Disco ball hovering above the stage in slow rotation. It sits between a massive, suspended hand, in the Heavy Metal devil horn pose, or mano cornuto, for the legions of Latin scholars in our fan base. Glide on the climactic incline toward the silver and white; the proscenium is a carmine velvet, the ball is redemption and your collision with it is painfully orgasmic--explode into stardust and shower the show below, let them inhale you and imbibe you; you have been hatched, initiated, forged, indoctrinated, absorbed and yoked with, The Thing in Itself.

Jesus, was that pretentious! Well, we all need a lodestar to guide our work. As Thomas Moore once wrote to lead singer and songwriter, Jason Durishin, "Make soul a real life study", The Thing in Itself is doing just that: with humor, an uncommon voice--and in the quagmire of so many advertisers, marketers, rampant consumerism and the ubiquity of "art" in a celebrity obsessed technocracy, they are hellbent on delivering soul music with the kind of honesty that the term "soul music" inherently signifies. Despite the sisyphean quest for authenticity, the the best of us are devoted to reading between the lines; The Thing in Itself will be making music with that notion in mind. And you are invited to the celebration even if you are crying. Get on the Bus!!