Thank You Benjamin Disraeli

Cream, Live Cream, Vol. 1(1970)

Live Cream, Volume. 1

I never liked Clapton when I was younger. Probably because I always had a hard on for Jimmy Page, and they were opposites in style and ideology. I never even liked Cream back in the day. It just never made sense, never clicked... Until I heard this album. It didn't leave my turntable for 3 weeks. It’s always been hard for me to appreciate artists that I haven't heard live and the first time I heard this album I freaked the fuck out and bought every single god damn Cream album I could get my hands on. Live records say a lot about an artist’s dexterity, stamina, improvisational ability and creativity. And by that measure this album is out of fucking control. Cream is a big goddamn deal to say the least. Their sophomore album, Disraeli Gears came out in 1967, when NOTHING sounded this heavy. This was HEAVY HEAVY HEAVY shit, nobody sounded this raunchy, so raw and original. They were psychedelic and heavy metal and the craziest fucking thing was that there were only 3 of them. Jerry Garcia said in an interview that I read once 'nobody in America could figure it out, how 3 guys could make that much noise.'

Vastly different from their studio work, Cream’s live performances earned a reputation for freewheeling, collective improvisation still grounded in the blues, but flirting dangerously with jazz and never crossing entirely into that sub-genre's frequent chaos. The free form of jazz that is embraced most whole-heatedly by Ginger Baker on this album, gives the boys the luxury of capricious unrestrained signatures that really expanded the definition of Rock.  They create a vortex of syncopation, the wind is howling, the masts just snapped and Hydra’s are about to eat your mother, but the inevitable destruction that has been anticipated never comes, Clapton’s strict, and timely executed scale successions drive this thing onwards… cruising… total control now, his momentum propels the band through the chaotic vortex and right back to the bridge, where your soul is shoved back into your body, and for the first time in 9:00 minutes, you realize that you still have a physical manifestation, and this cyclical, interplay, tug-of-war between Jazz and Blues that you have been riding upwards towards intergalactic destruction, gives way to that familiar, restlessly British, pop hook, which began the song, eons ago.

Download Live Cream, Vol. 1   -Donnie Feclor