Chaz Charles and the Voluptuary of Sound, Dr. Glund, continue their descent into Colosseum’s Daughter of Time.
And apparently nobody told Colosseum that albums are occasionally supposed to cheer you up.
This week:
“TIME LAMENT”
Six minutes and thirteen seconds of strings, brass, jazz, rock, theatrical weirdness and Chris Farlowe singing like the sands of time have personally wronged him.
It is ambitious.
It is bizarre.
It may also require antidepressants.
The studio recording piles on the layers: shifting rhythms, pastoral passages, strings, brass and a section Chaz and the Doctor decide sounds suspiciously like a circus on acid. Meanwhile, Chris Farlowe delivers two brief verses about ghosts, bitter memories and the relentless passage of time.
You know…
Party music.
The guys dig into the track’s unusual construction and the increasingly obvious realization that Daughter of Time has a mood—and that mood is roughly:
We’re all getting older and everything is terrible.
Then come the live versions.
An April 1970 BBC performance captures Colosseum during a fascinating personnel transition: no Farlowe, no Mark Clarke, Clem Clempson in place and Barbara Thompson contributing to the proceedings.
Then they reach the later John Peel session.
Now it’s Hiseman. Greenslade. Clempson. Heckstall-Smith. Clarke. Farlowe.
And Chris Farlowe changes everything.
The song gets heavier, bigger and considerably more intense. Without the studio strings and brass, Colosseum has to create all that drama themselves—and Farlowe responds by delivering approximately seventeen tons of emotional force.
Which leads to another uncomfortable modern observation:
AI might imitate the instruments.
But good luck manufacturing another Chris Farlowe.
And then…
THE DIGRESSION.
Someone notices that the bass player on the studio recording isn’t Mark Clarke.
It’s Louis Cennamo.
That sends Chaz and the Doctor wandering through Cennamo’s résumé—Renaissance, Steamhammer and Armageddon—before sampling Steamhammer’s sprawling Speech album.
And somehow that leads to…
SIR LORD BALTIMORE.
A Brooklyn power trio making astonishingly heavy music in 1970.
“Master Heartache.”
“Hard Rain Falling.”
“Hell Hound.”
Chaz’s metalhead brain promptly explodes.
Suddenly the Colosseum podcast has become an investigation into the origins of American heavy metal, why nobody talks about Sir Lord Baltimore—and whether a certain Canadian power trio might have been paying attention.
Uh-oh, Alex.
The Doctor has opened a door that probably should have remained closed.
Eventually somebody remembers they were discussing “Time Lament.”
Along the way: Lawrence Welk in a Dodge, psycho clowns, a circus on acid, 22-minute Steamhammer excursions, Cactus, Dr. Glund remembering the Fillmore, and two old dogs discovering that considerably older dogs can still teach them new tricks.
And underneath all the chaos remains one strange, ambitious, melancholy piece of music.
“Time Lament” is weird.
It’s theatrical.
It’s progressive.
It’s moody as hell.
It’s absolutely Colosseum.
The guitar rocks.
The mind expands.
Nobody sells out.
The Blade of Judgment remains sheathed.
Now somebody cheer up the Doctor.
Let’s go grab a visky.
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