Colosseum
Bread & Circuses

Among the not so many "dinosaurs" of the '70s rock capable of recycling themselves greatly in more recent times, it is right to count these Colosseum, who encountered their destructive "meteorite" very early, already in 1972, but then regrouped in the '90s managing to produce a handful of still excellent albums. This is the first of them, dated 1997.

Colosseum is a decidedly crossover group comprising a blues singer, a jazz saxophonist, a progressive keyboardist, a rock guitarist, and bassist. All these people are assembled by the bandleader Jon Hiseman, an absolute drum superstar at ease in rock, jazz, blues, progressive...in everything basically: a true rhythm god!

The second career cycle of Colosseum passes through songs of normal duration, all oscillating between four and five minutes. The full-bodied solos, the half suite and the very long instrumental codas are left to live performances. Here they focus on offering songs with verses, refrains, and a central or final solo, but the talent and creativity of this handful of exquisite musicians, some of them true champions (the saxophonist and the drummer) still emerge greatly.

It starts with a rocky rock blues called "Watching Your Every Move" driven by the obligatory, gnarled guitar riff but then the solo, tasty indeed, is of the tenor sax. The eponymous song of the album that follows immediately after is an up-tempo, embellished by unusual oriental-sounding counterpoints of the keyboards.

"Wherever I Go" is a rhythm & blues ballad conducted by the beautiful Hammond chords. The strong and rich voice of Chris Farlowe, a sort of Jack Bruce but with an even better timbre, elevates the pathos of the song, further amplified by the passionate guitar solo of the never enough appreciated Clem Clempson, a worthy proponent of the admirable, masculine sound of the Gibson Les Paul Standard, a jewel of an instrument that will never go out of style.

"High Time" is an academic soul funky, without much personality but with all the ingredients in their place, like the fluid Hammond organ solo. More intriguing is the following "Big Deal" which decidedly leans towards cool jazz, laid-back and nocturnal. Perhaps not very suitable for the vibrant and emphatic voice of Farlowe, but equally among the peaks of the album. We are in one of those atmospheres rendered to the maximum of the maximum in the prodigious album of Donald Fagen (Steely Dan) "The Nightfly", from 1981, a masterpiece!

"The Playground" is the only vocal contribution by the guitarist Clempson and rests on jazzy arpeggios and rhythms of adamantine class. The voice is poor, but everything else is superb: Dave Greenslade on the organ starts playing Bach-like like the great Matthew Fisher (Procol Harum), the sax does what you expect it to do given the individual in action, and in short, this song expounds to the maximum power the exact definition of jazz-rock: unpredictable and interesting chords, atmosphere changes, rotation of instruments to the forefront, absolute class from everyone.

"No Pleasin’" powerfully displays the incredible drive that John Hiseman, known as Jon, put into his sticks and his pedals. It's a fusion blues with an extensive melodic structure, also harmonically very rich and embellished by a fluid, double guitar solo, the best of the album. The best sax is instead found immediately after in the rock jazz ballad "I Could Tell You Tales": the "voice" of Heckstall Smith on the tenor is invaluable. The same thing on "Storm Behind the Breeze", a ballad that is somewhat academic after the previous ones were instead filled with surprising chord progressions and airy melodic spans. Chris Farlowe, in any case, displays all his masculine soul emission, filled with the usual emphasis.

"The One That Got Away" is instead an instrumental dominated by the Hammond organ which gradually doubles with the guitar and then also by the sax, in a compact and fluid arrangement, pleasantly balanced, without overdoing it. It serves as a preamble to the closure with "The Other Side of the Sky", unusually dramatic and cadenced, a true stage for the accomplished skill of the horn player in playing alto and tenor simultaneously, inserting both mouthpieces into his mouth and I imagine the lung power required for this technique.

A pity that these albums past their prime, the result of the happy reunion of musicians long descended from their crest of the wave, are the prey and pleasure of the few enthusiasts who keep indelible memories of their golden times, as well as the intact desire to follow them and try to see if the good feelings ("vibes," as they were once called) are still entwined with their music. In the case of Colosseum, the answer is yes: this work has nothing to envy those of the late '60s/early '70s.