Customer Reviews

Live 1

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This is undoubtedly Cream's best with Volume II a close second. It is also very possibly the best rock album ever. Live rock albums are usually noisy and a bit off key with a lot of screaming fans but this is the exception. Incredible riffs and improvisation with unparalled power and technical mastery, far more satisfying than any of their fine studio albums. Thirty years of enjoying this album and it still gives me goosebumps. Very intense and highly recommended.

Cream was basically a power trio that went super nova, which is pretty easy to do when you have Eric Clapton on guitar, Jack Bruce on bass, and Ginger Baker on drums. Their first album came out in 1966 and by the time their fourth album "Goodbye" came out in 1969 they had already disbanded. But one thing they proved with those four albums was that they were better on stage than they were in the studio, which explains why half the tracks on the last two albums were recorded live. Their last album was also their most successful, making it to #2 on the Billboard album chart, which explains why the next year their label came out with this album.

Four of the five tracks on "Live Cream, Volume 1" appeared on their debut album, "Fresh Cream." The fifth, is the traditional blues piece "Lawdy Mama," given the Clapton treatment. It also stands out as being the only track on the album that does not represent the band's jazz-oriented approach to rock music, which simply means that they were into high-energy improvisation and extended solos. Add to this list that the song was only 2:46 while "N.S.U." clocks in at 10:15 and "Sweet Wine" at 15:16 (without Baker, who co-wrote it, ever going off on an extended drum solo), and "Lawdy Mama" ends up being like a postscript to the rest of the album, where the emphasis is on their improvisational playing of what are basically blues tracks reved up to the rock level. To top everything off, it sure sounds a lot like "Strange Brew."

Cream and Led Zeppelin were both into doing tunes by the old blues masters, which we see here with Muddy Waters' "Rollin' and Tumblin,'" which is only a couple of minutes longer than the original. That is why the two monster tracks are the best on the album, because there are points where you do not even remember what song these guys were playing to begin with. The other thing of note with this album is being able to hear the band egg each other on during these tracks, which provides something a bit different and really captures what it was like at a Cream concert. What more would you want from a live album? Two years later "Live Cream, Volume 2" would come out, which includes "White Room," "Tales of Brave Ulysses," and a nice long version of "Sunshine of Your Love."

Cream's dichotomy boiled down to this: In the studio, they graduated from a blues trio restless with the constrictions of most British blues of their day to a group of equally restless pop and rock experimenters not unlike the Yardbirds. (Irony of ironies: it was that group's move toward both more accesible pop and more post-blues experimentation precisely that prodded Eric Clapton to leave that group in the first place in favour of a career-making term with John Mayall.) In concert, they earned a reputation for freewheeling, collective improvisation still grounded in the blues but approaching free jazz without crossing entirely into that subgenre's frequent chaos. The former at its best created best-selling albums from which a hit single or three was almost entirely incidental; the latter created an impression that, depending upon whom you listened to, was either transcendental or pretentious.

Revisionist critics---including, occasionally, the members of Cream themselves---fault the trio for excess and self-indulgence in their improvisational extensions, and it's easy to understand why: three virtuosi giving reign to the fullest of their imaginations, under the pressure of one-night-stand touring that isn't always conducive to genuine inspiration, collding with the pressure of a pair of clashing egos and personalities (bassist Jack Bruce, drummer Ginger Baker) roiling a third personality (guitarist Eric Clapton) who ended up becoming a kind of referee between the two while coming to terms with his musical inclinations versus his unexpected international elevation. (It was one thing to be called God, as he was during his days with the Mayall group, but it was something else to be treated like one.) But at their absolute best, Cream accomplished what a lot of their contemporaries merely stabbed at doing on stage, earning intense adulation merely for showing up and playing their instruments (showmen they were not), and if they could be guilty of self-indulgent jamming at the expense of genuine musical expression, they at least had popular music's best interest at heart and, on their best nights, presented genuine possibilities for reimagining the blues and rock (they were the no-questions-asked inventors of the power trio, for one thing, a distinction they may not have sought overtly) that less worthy successors would turn into hamburger.

On the first of two live collections assembled after their split in late 1968, drawn almost entirely from selections that were part of their first studio album, it's the best of what earned their concert reputation for the most part. This is so especially for "Sweet Wine," an almost nondescript selection from their first studio album that becomes, here, as textbook a case as you'd want for what was so overwhelmingly impressive about the trio's improvisational style in the first place. You had to wait until side two on the original vinyl release to get there, but there's an ebb and flow in which the three players' dynamics, melodic sense, harmonic dextrousness, and synchronicity never flag, even in the more restrained passages, so much so that you almost forget there was an ensemble vocal verse to open and close. Baker here is as colouristic a percussionist as his reputation long suggested, Bruce is a second lead instrument without leaving the bottom to sink out of hearing, and Clapton draws on practically his entire store of the blues to spin a series of fluid, melodious lines that float and soar with striking passion and lyricism. (In other words, Cream achieves here what they merely tried to reach in the extension of "Spoonful" that highlighted the live half of "Wheels of Fire.") "Sleepy Time Time," from the same studio premiere, is as luminous a pure blues expression as the trio ever delivered, from the playful laziness of the lyric to the gripping thrust and cry of the playing. The early Muddy Waters highlight "Rollin' and Tumblin'" in their studio hands amounted to a tank gone berserk, with Baker particularly as the big gunner; here, before a concert audience, the tank isn't going berserk so much as it's cutting a deliberate swath. Clapton's shape-shifting rhythm guitar playing (as on the studio cut, Bruce dispenses with his bass entirely, while Clapton exercises variations on the core riff as though he's a second percussionist as well as a guitarist) and Baker's polyrhythmic rumbling clear, not bludgeon Bruce's route for a round of crisp if occasionally exhausted-sounding harmonica and a particularly fiery vocal.

"NSU," which kicks the set off, is probably the only genuinely weak point---it launches at full power and tries to stay there, but about four minutes in you begin to sense the trio trying to prime the pump a little too anxiously; it's as though they fired their guns furiously and forgot to account for replenishment ammunition, going from there mostly to survival mode and seeming relieved when they come away in one piece. If you want recorded evidence of Clapton's eventual recollection that inspiration isn't easy to come by night after night after night, you'd be hard pressed to find more acute evidence than this.

Anomalously, the set includes a studio cut, Clapton's rework of an ancient blues, "Lawdy Mama," into the foundation that ended up becoming the superior "Strange Brew" with a little help from Felix Pappalardi and Gail Collins. As a foundation it's not half bad, but archival and bootleg recordings since have suggested it developed away from the shuffle the guitarist originally devised for the song. As the gestation of one of Cream's most enduring studio recordings, it's an interesting listen (especially for the very different bass line, if not for Clapton's almost hesitant guitar break), but on a live album it's something along the line of fitting a sports car with a taxicab engine.

Wow.
Clapton, Bruce, and Baker all going wild for a concise album's worth of material. Starting with the wild 10-minute N.S.U. jam, and ending with a studio take of Lawdy Mama, which is just Strange Brew with different lyrics, this album is worth every penny.

What was so amazing about Cream, is how they could all go in completely different directions in a song, and it doesn't sound discordant. They'd increase songs by 5, 7, 10, minutes, and most of it would be improvised. Being able to know how to morph the song into something completely different, then bringing it back to where it should be is something most musicians cannot do, or at least not as well as groups such as Cream and Hendrix.

This is probably the best live Cream album I've heard, and it has my favorite version of Rollin' and Tumblin' done by anyone. Highly recommended for anyone who likes electric blues, live music, or wants to be in a jam band.

Cream was always known as a superb live act, but collecting all their best live jams on one disc is hard to do. However, Cream Live: Volume 1 does a respectable job showing you the bands many creative talents on the stage. Beginning with a 10-minute jam "N.S.U." the band doesn't let up at *all* to allow the listener to catch their breath. The first few minutes of the song features a really good vocal melody, and then the rest of the 8 minute track consists of a very fast-paced and exciting guitar jam. Really, the drumming and everything else takes a back seat to the incredible power of the guitar work. Amazing stuff.

The next track called "Sleepy Time Time" is a shorter bluesy number that mostly focuses on the vocal work, but eventually reminding us that Cream used to be a powerful beast live with some really nice guitar playing in the middle that unfortunately only lasts two or three minutes. "Sweet Wine" is incredible. What might seem like a tiring guitar jam at first actually becomes a really exciting and melodic display of guitar playing with repeated listens, showing the listener that Cream used to be a near-heavy metal band in the late 60's. I've always wanted to trick some younger people into thinking Cream was actually a brand new band that came out only yesterday when playing for them one of Cream's more lengthier and heavier numbers such as this one, and seeing if the kids go along with it!

"Rollin' and Tumblin" is all about showing off some SMOKIN' hot harmonica work. Very melodic, too. "Lawdy Mama" is just a three minute little track dominated with a bluesy vocal melody that doesn't really display any memorable guitar playing, in my opinion. It's nothing I'd compare with Cream's best work in the studio either. It's just a "there" song. A nice way to end a very solid album.

Overall, a 5 star album easily. While the sound quality isn't the best, the quality of the guitar playing and the songwriting from the band members makes up for that by *far*.

This is undoubtedly Cream's best with Volume II a close second. It is also very possibly the best rock album ever. Live rock albums are usually noisy and a bit off key with a lot of screaming fans but this is the exception. Incredible riffs and improvisation with unparalled power and technical mastery, far more satisfying than any of their fine studio albums. Thirty years of enjoying this album and it still gives me goosebumps. Very intense and highly recommended.

Not one review yet? Strange.... My advice to all friends of Cream: So much good stuff on it, you should listen to. Cream live on stage, still unbeatable! Even 20 years later....

therEs some ORGULOUSlike STRUT YOUR PLOD; like grroves hidden within .the loudSHIMMERONG RIFFAGE /WATTS OF THIS MACHINE-BEAST PRODIGY ENSEMBLE GROWL...ME THINK. RECORDED UP CLOSE VERY INTIMATE POSSIBLY ONE OF THE BEST RECORDINGS EVER, ALMOST AS GOOD AS WATT BY TEN YEARS AFTER