The return of Living Colour is more than just the resurrection of a Rock band. It is the rejuvenation of a concept that was born in the mind of guitarist Vernon Reid more than 20 years ago and carried out with the help of four like-minded Rock revolutionaries under the banner Living Colour in the late '80s and early '90s.

Comprised of four black musicians playing raucous, Jazz-tinged Hard Rock, Living Colour was concerned with the idea of transcending musical and cultural stereotypes, as well as making great music. As a guitarist, Reid was a child of Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page and Miles Davis. As an activist, he was a champion of black bands that bucked the prevailing trend toward the white-dominated Rock arena, starting the New York-based Black Rock Coalition in the early '80s and acting as advocate and spokesman for his band and dozens of others.

Living Colour (Reid, vocalist Corey Glover, drummer William Calhoun, original bassist Muzz Skillings and his replacement, Doug Wimbish) was originally a side project with a rotating membership. When the lineup coalesced permanently in 1985, the band began making a lot of noise in their native New York. Mick Jagger financed and produced a demo for the band after seeing them at CBGB and helped secure their Epic contract. Living Colour's 1988 debut, Vivid, was startlingly ignored upon release until MTV picked up the frenetic video for "Cult of Personality," which jump-started interest in the album.

After an opening slot on the Rolling Stones' "Steel Wheels" tour, two more solid albums (1990's Time's Up and 1993's Stain), MTV and Grammy awards and tons of fascinating session, production and side project work, Reid announced the dissolution of Living Colour in 1995.

"That was very hard for me, and I was very much in crisis" says Reid, currently in the studio working on the band's forthcoming album. "Nothing prepares you for success. People were so used to trying and not succeeding, and success suddenly becomes who you are, projected into the world in a way that's very abstract. That can be very difficult. You become an abstraction but then there's you having to sit on the toilet."

After an almost five-year hiatus (which saw the release of solo projects from both Reid and Glover), Reid was contacted by Calhoun, who had been in a side band, The Head Fake Project, with Wimbish, to see if he would be interested in sitting in for a club performance, since Glover had also been included in several HFP shows. Reid agreed and the one-off gig slowly grew into a full-fledged Living Colour reunion.

"The great thing is that the band really mattered to people," says Reid. "To me, this band is really connected to local pub bands because that's where we started. We just wound up at this place at a level that we couldn't have imagined. The band still matters to people. And where the band is now is pretty cool."

Living Colour continues to pound out as many live dates as possible in advance of their as-yet-untitled new album for Sanctuary Records, currently slated for a fall release, which will likely result in a full-scale tour. Reid is extremely happy with the work so far ("We just finished a song called 'Operation Mind Control' that I'm in love with ... it's very Punk and it rocks."), and he's anxious to take some of the material out and road test it.

Many reunions are powered by wheezing opportunists hoping to cash in on past glories, but when Reid compares the new iteration of Living Colour to the revolutionary band of the decade past, he finds a band looking ahead to new possibilities.

"I think it's closer to what was intended," says Reid of the new Colour. "It was going to be a meeting place for all different kinds of music and feelings and emotions and technologies and rhythms and melodies and improvisational techniques. Day by day, we're getting closer. At the end of the day, you have to give it that one extra try. Relationships do end, conversations do come to a close, there is a last page to that book. Bands have that as well. Part of it is, 'What is this band talking about? What does it have to say?' We're on the road to find out."