COLOSSEUM LIVE

Colosseum

Jazz Rock/Fusion

4.21 | 144 ratings

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octopus-4
Special Collaborator
RIO/Avant/Zeuhl,Neo & Post/Math Teams

When speaking of Progressive music, in general I prefer studio albums to lives because the studio work allows the artists to put as many details as they want in their music.

This album is the exception. It's first of all a rock album. The quality of the sound is "Fit for purpose" in the sense that you know clearly that it's live music and this is the kind of sound that a rock live must have.

Then if a heavy-blues subgenre existed this is how this could be called.

"Rope Ladder to The Moon" is a great opener. It conquered me at the first spin. "Walking in the Park", alone, is enough to make it a five-stars album, but all the tracks are excellent: Skelington is another masterpiece of blues-rock. Just a note: if I'm not wrong, "I Can't Live Without You" wasn't on the vinyl version of the album and was added later to the CD edition. The original double album had two tracks on sides 1 and 3 and 1 track on side 2 and 4. This is the reason why this song is not of the same level of the other 6.

Another remarkable thing is the sax work on Tanglewood 63, the most progressive track of the album. Finally, "Lost Angeles" has all the things that one can ask to an epic, even if "only 15 minutes long.

The internal sleeve of the vinyl edition was full of photos from the live session, and i remember at least one with Dick Heckstall Smith playing two saxes at the same time (he does it some times in this album) and is something that other than him I've seen done only by James Senese, but the whole lineup is skilled and talented.

This album is son of its times. Something unrepeatable today, so other than an excellent album it's a document of how good blues-rock was sounding after the blues revival period. A great live full of great songs.

octopus-4 | 5/5 | 2010-8-25

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