Colosseum Live

Eleven years since ‘Tomorrow’s Blues’ and an incredible 45 since ‘Valentyne’s Suite’, Colosseum are still creating music and still creating something that only happens when this collection of grizzled old musicians get together and, mostly, there is still magic there…

The Collectors' Colosseum is a compilation album by Colosseum that was released in England in 1971. Colosseum are an English jazz rock band, mixing blues, rock and jazz-based improvisation. Colin Larkin wrote that "the commercial acceptance of jazz rock in the UK" was mainly due to the band. Between 1975 and 1978 a separate band Colosseum II existed playing progressive rock.

Colosseum's debut album is a powerful one, unleashing each member's instrumental prowess at one point while consolidating each talent to form an explosive outpouring of progressive jazz-rock the next. Those Who Are About to Die Salute You is coated with the volatile saxophone playing of Dick Heckstall-Smith, the thunderous keyboard assault of Dave Greenslade, and the bewildering guitar craft of James Litherland. Together, Colosseum skitters and glides through brisk musical spectrums of freestyle jazz and British blues, sometimes held tightly in place by Greenslade's Hammond organ, while other times let loose by the brilliancy of the horn and string interplay. Each song sparks its own personality and its very own energy level, giving the band instant attention upon the album's release in 1969…