Dok (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} cyberinsekt) wrote,@ 2008-02-21 12:07:00 |
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Cream - White Room
Today's track comes from the first album ever to go platinum. From a modern perspective, it's rather shocking that it wasn't the Beatles or the Stones that did this. Instead it was a band who drew their sound from the blues, psychedelia and jazz. It wasn't even as if Cream were like Led Zep in being solely an album band; they released singles as well and were successful with them. So why was Wheels of Fire, their third album, so successful?
Well, it is a great record, of that I have no doubt. That may have something to do with the circumstances where I first heard it: as a callow teenager, sitting around a huge bong on a barge in Amsterdam. Can you say impressionable? But I think this record, now 40 years old, has some claim to being the first modern rock record. Prior to this, Cream had either drawn more strongly from traditional blues forms or indulged more heavily in psych. But with Wheels of Fire everything seemed to come into balance, and the band acquired the first edge of the acid sound that would go on to become heavy rock or metal.
Here's the opening track, White Room. If your only knowledge of Eric Clapton is all of the excruciatingly dull stuff he recorded since leaving Cream, I can understand your reluctance to listen to this. But the important thing is that Clapton, although the lead guitarist, was probably the least important member of the band. Jack Bruce wrote most of the songs, and the real innovator was the drummer, Ginger Baker. Was he the man who liberated rock from the 4/4 square beat? That might be too fanciful a claim. Yet there's no doubt that this music, unlike so much that went down in 1968, still has a freshness and vitality that continues to surprise us.
Cream - White Room
Today's track comes from the first album ever to go platinum. From a modern perspective, it's rather shocking that it wasn't the Beatles or the Stones that did this. Instead it was a band who drew their sound from the blues, psychedelia and jazz. It wasn't even as if Cream were like Led Zep in being solely an album band; they released singles as well and were successful with them. So why was Wheels of Fire, their third album, so successful?
Well, it is a great record, of that I have no doubt. That may have something to do with the circumstances where I first heard it: as a callow teenager, sitting around a huge bong on a barge in Amsterdam. Can you say impressionable? But I think this record, now 40 years old, has some claim to being the first modern rock record. Prior to this, Cream had either drawn more strongly from traditional blues forms or indulged more heavily in psych. But with Wheels of Fire everything seemed to come into balance, and the band acquired the first edge of the acid sound that would go on to become heavy rock or metal.
Here's the opening track, White Room. If your only knowledge of Eric Clapton is all of the excruciatingly dull stuff he recorded since leaving Cream, I can understand your reluctance to listen to this. But the important thing is that Clapton, although the lead guitarist, was probably the least important member of the band. Jack Bruce wrote most of the songs, and the real innovator was the drummer, Ginger Baker. Was he the man who liberated rock from the 4/4 square beat? That might be too fanciful a claim. Yet there's no doubt that this music, unlike so much that went down in 1968, still has a freshness and vitality that continues to surprise us.
Cream - White Room
