Colosseum - Those Who Are About To Die Salute You (Expanded Edition) (1969/2004)

Colosseum's 1969 debut album is a notably pioneering endeavor in its combination of British blues-rock with British jazz-rock, even if the writing and singing aren't as impressive as the confident playing. Graham Bond and some of the horn-augmented, late-'60s work by John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers had explored similar directions, but Colosseum did so with more confidence and a more comfortable blend of the differing styles, adding a nose for well-executed improvisation. The extra material on the 2004 expanded CD edition on Sanctuary Midline is not extraneous, adding six bonus tracks and informative, lengthy historical liner notes. All but one of those bonus cuts are taken from late-'60s BBC radio broadcasts (actually one of the two BBC versions of "Walking in the Park" is undated, but it seems almost certain that it, like the others, was broadcast in 1969). The oddest, and from a collector's standpoint perhaps the most interesting, of the BBC tracks is "A White Spade from Mayall," a song not included on Those Who Are About to Die Salute You. As the humorous title suggests, it borrows some of its melody from "A Whiter Shade of Pale," also briefly quoting from the Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"; perhaps it was felt to be too much of a goof-off to merit consideration for placement on the LP. This and the rest of the BBC material boast excellent sound, with a few performances of songs that did make it on to the album -- Graham Bond's "Walking in the Park" (perhaps the finest item in the band's repertoire), "Beware the Ides of March," and "Plenty Hard Luck." Rounding off the dig through the archives is the studio outtake "I Can't Live Without You," an acceptable but unthrilling James Litherland song that has a little more of a standard blues-rock feel than much of the early Colosseum discography.