Showing posts with label Cream. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cream. Show all posts

Saturday, August 2, 2014

Cream Rises or Goes Flat and Dry


Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker , forever known as the stellar power trio Cream from that drear and diffuse decade we term "The Sixties", staged a short reunion tour in 2005 . I was a Cream partisan, a newly minted blues fan, someone who debated with other mid-teen zealots as to who was the better guitarist, Clapton or America's own, if transplanted Jimi Hendrix.  In any event,  the live recordings were what brought me to them, especially the track "Spoonful", a bloated, elongated, loud and gloriously  bombastic reading of the Howlin'Wolf/Willie Dixon classic . 

Composed of two chords and lots of groin-twisting obnoxiousness, the Cream rendition was a plodding, wandering, snarling crawl of an extended improvisation, with Baker on drums and Bruce on bass seeming to wander about and otherwise stray in their function as a rhythm section. Baker liked poly rhythms and jazzy offbeats  , playing ahead and behind where the pivotal bass note landed and Bruce, not so much a time keeper or a tempo technician as was a  musical nervous system all his own, dueled with Clapton's guitar phrases furiously. Where other rock bassists, whatever their skill level, maintained their task of keeping things moving and marrying the melody to the beat, Bruce was a jazz man at heart; even with blues tunes and pop songs that rarely had more than a few chords and blessed with complicated melodies, the two of them reverted to their jazz backgrounds and deconstructed the material until it was a snarling, snarky bit of ker thump and cement-splitting thump. Clapton had no jazz back ground and was, technically, the least versatile of the three of them, but he had soul, style, a true grasp of the blues and was one of the very first white guys who became notable for developing his own distinct voice in a the twelve and sixteen bar tradition. 

But Clapton, the alleged "Slow Hand" of repute, was game to try his hand at extended jamming and brought his limited but stylish expertise to a strange mix that gave us some exciting results; tone, texture, short, biting riffs, much of what Clapton as the ostensible lead instrumentalist was repetitious. But there was energy, and in the best moments they actually got a groove going, a call and response of simple yet compelling ideas that rivaled the best intensities I've heard from John Coltrane. Just as often, the band's preference to extend their songs with improvisations quickly exhausted itself and you  could sense the  boredom behind the notes Clapton bent and the off beats Baker tossed out , all while Bruce seemed to be playing bass as though he were jacked to the tits on strong coffee and black beauties. 

Then it seemed like a date with someone you didn't like and it was a long ride home and you were thinking all the while that too soon the car would stop and somehow you'd have to decide to go through with your bad faith and hate yourself in the morning, or just end the night abruptly, coldly, either driving off without a kiss or a promise to call, or a slammed door on the passenger side, a fast walk to the front door and through and locking it behind you, turning off the porch light as the final message of "go away".

Monday, March 8, 2010

Cream that does not rise


Royal Albert Hall May 2-3-5-6 2005 --Cream (Reprise)


I have to admit that I have had an unnatural attraction for Cream's busy, jittery and bombastic blues improvisations for decades, as they've been a source of pleasure since I saw them first and three-time total at Detroit's Grande Ballroom in the late Sixties. Euphoric recall? Maybe, but I still play the thirteen minutes of "Spoonful" from Wheels of Fire a couple of times a year, and the sheer mania of Goodbye's "I'm So Glad" gets played just as often. The riffs, interweaving, and interjections of the three musicians holding the stage was a busy sort of vibe that was somewhere between musical worlds--too fast and loud for blues, too repetitive and unmelodious for jazz, too arty for rock and roll. It was a sound from the nascent electronic wilderness that was a new kind improvisational sound, influenced by the three aforementioned styles (with occasional garnishes from Classical or English music all traditions), but coming in the end as a new sort of strident, crackling noise; metallic, assertive, all-conquering, sometimes searing when guitarist Eric Clapton was in the mood and made each of his blues intonations speak volumes of what his own voice could not manage.It is something that has less to do with sheer mastery of their respective instruments--in a heartbeat I could name a dozen musicians who are better guitarists, bassists and drummers than Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker--but with how the three of these guys gibed and gelled, how well their busy techniques meshed."Meshed" might not be the right word, but what it gets called, Cream's sound was a wonderful clash of distortion and blue notes, a feedback-laden trio of howling wolves. There is less of that shamanistic howl in the reunion double CD set Royal Albert Hall May 2-3-5-6 2005, which is understandable given that all three members--Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton on drums, bass and guitar respectively--are in their Sixties. It wouldn't be incorrect to say that there are enough rousing performances here of old Cream and blues standards to fill one excellent live disc. Still, this is better than any expectation I've had over the last four decades daydreaming in off hours about a make-believe- reunion; the performances are solid for the most part, and I'm glad that Cream's essential duty as performers is to stand there and play their instruments. Unlike the Rolling Stones, whose rebel youth glory days have given way to a routinely graceless stage presence that would make a newcomer to their music wonder what the big deal ever was about these guys, Cream has only to instrumentalize, extemporize, improvise. Again, you wish there was only one disc, as some of the material suffers from obvious nerves, miscues, a lack of direction. There are moments when Clapton's guitar work simply quits in the middle of an idea, with the rhythm section failing to pick it up again and fill the arena with the sort of muscular blues Cream made it's reputation. The best performances, in fact, are the blues number, especially Albert King's "Born Under a Bad Sign" and "Stormy Monday", wherein Clapton vexes self-anointed blues traditionalists yet again with some guitar work that transcends income, nationality, or skin color. It's not a conspiracy against the blues that B.B.King and Buddy Guy have no hesitation saying wonderful things about his playing. The muse is something that moves around and is not at all loyal to matters of class, race or political stance, and in this case the essence of what allows blues music to convince you, at least momentarily, of the universality of a nuanced sort of suffering has taken a home in the center of Clapton's best fretwork. His own solo work in the days since Cream's demise in the late Sixties has been largely wretched pop variations on roots music--please note that Layla is the very notable exception-- but however mediocre a songwriter he has become, his touch on the blues is the touch of a master."It's all in the wrist" said Frankie Machine, the junkie in Nelson Algren's masterpiece The Man With The Golden Arm as he tries to describe the sort of body finesse it takes to win at throwing dice. It's all in the wrist with Clapton as well, and the fingers as he awards us with one ghostly tremolo and one screaming ostinato after another, the approximation of the human voice emerging from the din of electronic straining. It's spellbinding work, and it is these moments that make the less animated performances on Royal Albert Hall...2005 worth the while.