This will be a pretty long post, as it's a huge album, which is why I'm splitting it into 8 pieces, disc one will be today, tomorrow Friday, Saturday and disc 2 will be from Sunday through to Wednesday. I will be going song by song, per disc, giving my opinions and my views on this songs on this huge collection of Eric Clapton songs, spanning his career, from Cream, to his solo projects, which he is still doing today.
Funnily enough, I'm listening to this album, as I write this review, not wasting anymore time, lets begin with.
'I Feel Free'- it's the opener of the album, and from my experience, generally album openers are really good (Rock and Roll Train, Chinese democracy, Ghost, Stiff Upper Lip) so I was let down when this one was worse than most of what I've heard on the album. It's one of the shortest song on the album, sitting in at a pleasant 2:55 seconds, so you don't have to sit through much of it, before you get to a much better track. It's a little everywhere, there's not much of a structure, and there's a lot of wide panning, with guitars and vocals flying in from each side. This brings us swiftly on to our next track
'Sunshine Of Your Love' This is a great Cream song, Cream was one of Eric's bands that he was in, the other being the Yard birds Cream is composed of Eric Clapton on guitar and backing vocals, Jack Bruce on bass and lead vocals, and Ginger Baker on drums. Sunshine of Your Love is a really good track, it's got a lot happening, for only being a 3 piece band. It flows really well, and the vocals are really done, following on from each other, as a call and response in some sections. It's a simple structure of Intro, Verse, Chorus, Verse, Chorus, Solo, Verse, Chorus/outro although each section is surprisingly shorter than what I would have expected, with the song sitting at around the 4:00 minute mark, 4:12 to be exact. The solos is out of this world, it's so good, Eric really let himself go with with one, it starts off simple and slow, using a lot of bent notes, although speeds up and gets more complex near the end.
'White Room' Another good Cream song, this time with Eric Clapton on lead vocals. It's pretty good, following on with the streak of successful songs that was started by Sunshine. It starts off a little like 'I Feel Free' in that it's a little free form, although as it all kicks in there is a sense of structure, which is good. Each instrument sits nicely and sounds fantastic, there's a lot more going on with this one, as far as I can hear that there's a horn and brass section, but I might be mistaken, there wasn't a main solo in the middle of the song, although there was one after the horn section, which indeed, closes off the track, all in all, it's a pretty good song and a good length of 4:59.
'Crossroads' The famous Robert Johnson track, redone with Cream, made more modern and with electric instruments, and in more of a rock context, rather than a blues piece. It's reminiscent of the Robert Johnson version although with the typical Cream accents, as you're used to hearing from the last two tracks. It's not exactly like Robert's version, although I'm not most familiar with it, I believe the lyrics are the same, although the instrumentation and what each instrument is doing, is a lot different, more what Cream are used to playing, and what they were certainly known for playing. The solo in this one, is again, incredible, really good, really well played, and as good as the Sunshine solo, so it's all good from me, very good song, worth finding on YouTube or I-tunes, and picking it up sitting at a respectable 4:08 seconds long, it's not that bad either.
'Badge'- This song, is the shortest on the album, sitting at 2:43, and in my opinion it's pretty good, it's got a good groove on it, one that'll get your foot tapping in time with it, it does sound like there is 4 instruments playing, guitar, drums and bass, and vocals, so, unlike White Room, although it's good as a song on it's own, really good, a lot slower than what Cream were typically known for, and what you should be used to hearing so far on the album, there's a small solo, under some lyrics, which again, is very well done on Clapton's behalf.
So, that was the first 5 tracks of this killer 38 song album, spanning Eric's career, we'll look through disc 1 part 2 tomorrow, and then so on, until the album is done. I'm impressed with these tracks, although I would've liked it if they kept these songs until the later part of the album, and put some of the tracks that were worse, nearer the front, instead of wasting their 'trump' songs, so to say.
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