Royal Albert Hall London May 2-3-5-6 2005

Cream | Format: MP3 Download

Product Details

• Original Release Date: September 30, 2005
• Release Date: September 30, 2005
• Label: Atlantic Records/ATG
• Copyright: 2005 Reprise Records for the U.S. and WEA International Inc. for the world outside the U.S.
• Total Length: 1:51:32
• Genres:
• ASIN: B00122HW92
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #56,700 Paid in MP3 Albums (See Top 100 Paid in MP3 Albums)

Customer Reviews

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not the Fire of the Gods But Just Good Music, April 10, 2010

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BluesDuke "A sacred cow is worth but one thin... (Las Vegas, Nevada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Royal Albert Hall London May 2-3-5-6 2005 (MP3 Download)

Cream ended its career as a full-time working band with a pair of shows at Royal Albert Hall in 1968 (it's criminal that the best of those shows was never mixed for a live album) in which they left the internal friction that splintered them---and most of what caused revisionists to dismiss them as virtuosity over substance in the years following their split---out the door and delivered some of their most inspired playing.

The shock of their banding up to play three numbers at their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction a decade earlier was probably nothing compared to the shock of the trio reunited for two series of concerts at Albert Hall and at New York's Madison Square Garden (where they ended their final American tour, also in 1968). At various times had they been offered corporate sums to do it in the intervening years and turned them down, if you don't count one occasion when drummer Ginger Baker, experiencing financial difficulties, nearly gave in to the temptation to phone his former bandmates with the proposition, before he shook it off agreeing that was the wrong reason to do it. That the trio still had something special whenever they might get together (as they did every now and then when the occasion, but not the commerce, presented itself) Baker never doubted.

Was he right this time?

For the most part, yes, if you set aside your latent expectations that they might transcend dimension and time the way they originally did on their best nights, accepted that they were old compatriots taking one more rip through their legendary if somewhat inconsistent repertoire, and settled in for an evening in which about the only nostalgic touch was the screenboard behind their round stage showing varying washes of faux-psychedelic imagery that resembled a blur of the famous "Disraeli Gears" colour scheme and design.

They're obviously relaxed and having fun with the old repertoire and with their old split-up. ("Before we were so rudely interrupted," Eric Clapton cracks at one point; "You're trying to embarrass me!" Baker warbles playfully, when Clapton introduces his turn to recite "Pressed Rat and Warthog," that thinly-enough-disguised ode to the trio's pending split.) Maybe too relaxed---granted that they're not 20- or 30-somethings any longer, but it's a little jarring to hear material such as "White Room" or "NSU" played like a an elder bar band at a masonic picnic even if they flash a little of the old brio hither and yon, no matter how good Cream still is at delivering it.

It isn't anything of the kind, however, when the reunited Cream buckles down to what drove their formation in the first place, the blues. They have a bristling wrestle with "Politician"; Eric Clapton digs in passionately with "Stormy Monday," a chestnut not heretofore associated with Cream, and even if you notice there's a little thickness missing from his Stratocaster rig (no Stratocaster ever got near the fullness of those Gibsons he played back in the year) there's no depth of feeling missing from the performance, either from Clapton in the frontline with one after another tastefully melodious improvisation or from Bruce and Baker walking beside him in the rhythm section and not racing past him compelling him to play catch-up. And they give Bruce's best blues, "Sleepy Time Time," a zestful and almost lusty reading for a I-IV-IV-V blues ballad, with Baker unafraid of a little colourism in his cymbal punctuations and Clapton harking back to an old inspiration, Buddy Guy, for a series of smart legato figures.

What strikes home most is the trio's conscious restraint, even when they take a little of their former freewheeling, free-jazz-implicit improvisation ride, as they do now and then with such material as "Spoonful" and "Sweet Wine." As if they took to heart some of the critiques (their own and the critics) of their salad years, they find ways to let fly without letting the heart bleed out of the music. It makes for a few awkward instants at times but makes mostly for engaging if not necessarily transcendental music, even if you might be thinking they're showing their ages a little too brightly. The effort is embracing.

We'll probably have to wait for someone to exhume the tapes of their legendary 1967 tours for the final, definitive Cream concert document, the one that shows most of all what the trio could accomplish when playing their most inspired music (which is not necessarily to say their most incendiary or flashy music). Until then, their reunion show material is pleasant to hear and worth having. Once upon a time people went to Cream concerts expecting to hear the fire of the gods. It's an odd delight expecting to hear a culling from Cream concerts that's not the fire of the gods but, rather, the soul of musicians playing as they are, rather than impossible-to-equal distortions of what people once expected them to be.