Product Description

When Cream released WHEELS OF FIRE, they had established themselves as the premier blues-rock band due to the success of their first two albums and the extraordinary chemistry between the band's members. As a result of this synergy, Cream also enjoyed a fiery live reputation. The double-album represented both sides of their musical persona. The first recordwas a studio job, where the band mixed in originals with covers of Howlin' Wolf ("Sitting On Top Of The World") and Albert King ("Born Under A Bad Sign"). The songs written by theband all contained unique touches. "As You Said" found JackBruce putting his bass down and picking up a cello, "Pressed Rat And Warthog" sounded like an English folk tale due to Ginger Baker's clipped recitation and the inclusion of baroque horns, and "White Room" overflowed with waves of Eric Clapton's wah-wah-drenched guitar.
The second record was recorded over a four-day span at San Francisco's Winterland andFillmore West. Extended versions of "Toad" and Willie Dixon's "Spoonful" demonstrate the band's intricate interplay, but most impressive is a blistering reading of Robert Johnson's "Crossroads", in which all three members seem to be soloing simultaneously in a jaw-dropping display of fury and bravado.

Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. White Room
2. Sitting On Top Of The World
3. Passing The Time
4. As You Said
5. Pressed Rat And Warthog
6. Politician
7. Those Were The Days
8. Born Under A Bad Sign
9. Deserted Cities Of The Heart

Disc 2:

1. Crossroads
2. Spoonful
3. Traintime
4. Toad

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6272 in Music
• Released on: 1998-06-01
• Number of discs: 2
• Formats: Box set, Live, Double CD, Original recording remastered
• Running time: 80 minutes

Customer Reviews

Sterotypical 60s rock
To set the cat amongst the pigeons here a little, I will have to disagree with those who view Cream and this album as a kind of holy grail of rock. This album suffers from that 60s disease known as selective memory, a disease which with one hand inflates the value and worth of anything that was produced during the years 1966 - 69 and with the other wipes the board of everything that was done since, in the end we talk of Cream as if it all happened a number of centurys sgo and in a far away land in which everything was bigger and better, the truth however is that Cream were then and everything that has come after struggles to get past the nostalgia block that selective memory creates.

This album like so much of the 60s stuff is another white attempt at black American spiritual music and like all the others it sounds like it. This album is great if you wish to study a particular part of music history and specialise in the 1960s however I feel that the album does not stand up to the original masters of the blues that it attempts to copy. But then again, thats selective memory isnt it?....

The 16min 'Spoonful' is probably the greatest achievement of rock music so far
This performance of 'Spoonful' is the 3rd/5th/9th* Symphony of Rock. It's 'The Rite Of Spring' and Bruckner's 8th. Jack Bruce is the human race individualised. He is the first and last man on earth. He is Job, Mani and Zarathustra. His song is a great Humanist Assertion or a great song of Gnostic defiance or both. You say it's just a blues with two chords. No, it's the blues transcended. It's the apotheosis of the blues - and it could only be achieved with Bruce's 'heroic jouissance' as a singer and simultaneously playing bass, which is partly where the incredible tension comes from (i.e doing both: Robert Johnson achieved a similar contrapuntal tension singing and playing the guitar at the same time but only connoiseurs seem to be able to hear it). No one else could have achieved this, and the performance also benefits of course from the tensions contributed by the other two as well. These tensions, need I say, are mainly rhythmic and contrapuntal (rhythmic contradictions and ambiguities are also what this neo-contrapuntalism are all about). And I havn't even mentioned the improvisation, which is sustained concentration but with plenty of light and shade and variation of dynamics. The most powerful example in music apart from this is Stravinsky's 'Rite Of Spring'. There aren't really any other examples worth mentioning: there are no examples of it being the sustained principle of the work or the piece - outside of Cream live and and a very few other (usually shorter) pieces of rock music that is.
Cream did occasionally play straight blues but in their best work they achieved a Beethovenian affirmation of life in the face of everything that ALL human beings are confronted with. In these performances the blues has come a long way from social marginalisation and right to the existential centre.
I havn't said anything about 'Crossroads' because many others have done so and I have nothing to add except that there is no equivalent to it at all'.

*Beethoven obviously.

They're On Fire!
This is a classic. It unfortunately doesn't quite reach the peaks that "Disraeli Gears" had the previous year, but gets very close.

It starts with a cracker; "White Room". This is one of rock's classic tracks which mingles Jack's weird and wonderful lyrics with Ginger's crashing drum beats, an opening that sounds like it's out of a spaghetti western and Eric's wah-wah laden solo that that comes from nowhere and eclipses most things done before or since. Things quieten down slightly with the old blues staple "Sitting On Top Of The World". "Passing The Time" is probably the albums weakest track, but has a nice hypnotic feel to it. "As You Said" is an weird track for Cream, cos it's acoustic. It's very creepy at points, but brillient - it's probably the first time someone thought of putting a cello with an acoustic guitar. "Pressed Rat And Worthog" is a very funny (what's this!?! humor on a rock album!) and adds a variety to an album already laden with different types of music. "Politician" takes us back to good ol' blues with a crunching base riff. "Those Were The Days" isn't a classic by all means, but still packs a punch. "Born Under A Bad Sign" is an excellent cover version of another blues track. "Deserted Cities Of The Heart" is a fantastic ending to the first disc, with violins, acoustic guitars and a fiery solo from Clapton. However it's not till we get to the "Live At The Fillmore" disc do we get to hear Cream in all their glory.

The second disc starts off with "Crossroads"; the quintessential Clapton track. It takes an old fashioned blues song by Robert Johnson (yeah the guy who sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads to be a good guitar player) and brings it bang up to date with a furious beat and the inferno that is Eric's guitar playing. The solo is quite simply genius. It's worth buying the album just to hear this track. "Spoonful" is yet again a blues cover, and provides the guys a simple basis to go all out and over the top. Jack's singing is better than ever and the 10+ min improvisation is classic Cream, with everyone going crazy, especially Eric. "Traintime" gives Jack a chance to show off. Ginger keeps a locomotive beat as Jack gets jiggy with the harmonica while singing yet again in great voice (yes men can multi-task aswell). Heaven knows how he keeps it up for 7 mins without collapsing. And then the track stops with Eric crancking out the distortion on his guitar for "Toad", Ginger Baker's tour de force. After 2 mins 23 secs Jack and Eric leave Ginger to it, and we're treated to a quarter of an hour of the best drummer in the business - mesmerizing.

It's a classic. Buy it now!