VALENTYNE SUITE COLOSSEUM 21st July 21st 1969

Great album by a Great band.

Had a chance to catch them live in England but just went drinking instead that night... Ho hum!

That was the later reincarnation though late 90.s so not feeling too guilty.

Saw then performing at Keitele Jazz, Finland, July 2011 in a small venue, a remote little village in the middle of nowhere ! Last time they were here was Ruisrock Festival Turku, August 1970 ! You know, COLOSSEUM were those legendary classic rock bands that practically never visited our remote country. I almost missed them, my buddy had noticed the ad and immediately bought tickets. How fortunate we were. Polite and silent and luckily small audience only music lovers.
Barbara Thompson wearing big boots of Dick Heckstall-Smith, doing a great job and actually bringing a lightly different reed sound to the mix, a new kinda feminine aspect to the already fantastic mixture of blues, jazz, rock and classical. To my great delight she wasn´t worse than Heckstall-Smith, just a lightly different yet powerful approach to the music. Stunnig performance, the 2nd best concert I have had a pleasure to witness in my entire life. Just music, no BS hype of any kind. And of course, we got a drum solo, musical with intense drive and power, well as always. And not a single dull moment. And Chris Farlowe was as good as ever, really. All these guys were nearly 70 !

I've the next four albums they made after Valentyne Suite, but have never heard that one. I'll have to look at Amazon.com music tonight and see if it's still in print. I'm surprised at all the newer material that came out years later from the bands later incarnations. Is any of that any good?

Mike

Valentyne is great.

The other classic albums are Those who are about to die, salute you (also 1969) and Daughter of Time (1970).  To which we can add Colosseum Love (1971).  That's the heart of the original output.

Those are the ones I have twoleftears, plus The Grass Is Greener from 1970 on the ABC/Dunhill label I was pleasantly surprised by this post others knew of and enjoyed them. I never heard them mentioned anywhere before. I’ll have to break some out tonight to play. And sure enough, Valentyne Suite is still available on Amazon in both CD and vinyl. A copy shall soon be mine.

Mike