Cream Album: “20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection: The Best of Cream”

Against my better judgement, I bought this record to be my first foray into Cream (I'm fourteen, so I'm still catching up on rock's golden years). Despite my reservations after buying the '20th Century Masters' disc of The Who - a disc that, despite the good music had poor track selection, was too short and had only a one page, poorly written biography - I went ahead and bought the same series of disc, only of not The Who, but of Cream. After all, I was saving nearly $15 by buying this one as opposed to 'Strange Brew' or one of the other complete greatest hits discs available. But, my bargain hunting mode just kicked in, and I bought the '20th Century Masters' greatest hits instead of one of the others. As soon as I got the receipt, I was kicking myself.

You see, apparantly the big thing these days for the big multi-million dollar corporations is ripping off it's customers - in most cases the customers that have been loyal to them from day one, even the ones who stood by them during the entire music software deal (like me). I have no problem with record companies' normal purpose, but when they begin doing something like this, it becomes mildly disheartening. They even have the formula for doing it down pat. Take a band's real greatest hits disc, drop everything but the MEGA hits, add a poorly written one page biography (complete, often with historical inaccuracies), and slap the thing onto a bargain bin shelf for $7.99 (Cdn.).

The music itself, however, shines through all this. This being my introduction to Cream other than a couple of covers of 'Sunshine Of Your Love' by Jimi Hendrix that I've heard on his BBC Sessions disc (as well as a few concert bootlegs, but we're not going to delve into detail), I was quite impressed. Although, I admit, at first, only three or four songs actually impressed me. But, alas, I'm seldom accurate on my first listen, so I went back and went through it a few more times.

After I did this, I realized that there were more than just a few great songs. To be fair, nearly everything on the CD is excellent. Eric Clapton shines on the guitar, varying his approach to it throughout - sometimes playing it straight and sometimes drenching it in wah. Jack Bruce's bass and vocals are also excellent, as are Ginger Baker's drums. From the first to the final track, the music speaks for itself. Powerful, emotive, and superbly entertaining music from the music world's first power trio.

However, everything else, like I've mentioned isn't so bright. The one page biography of the band is written fairly poorly, and, if I'm not mistaken, contains one or more inaccuracies. The few photos displayed through the liner notes are also poorly selected, with most (if not all) of them stemming from the band's original albums themselves.

In addition, the song selection is poor. The band had a lot more great songs that were dropped from this release. I just wonder to myself how in the hell one greatest hits album can have 17 or so songs, while this one has 11. Is the definition of 'greatest hits' broadened? I don't quite know the way the record companies set it up, but I'm sure that a band like Cream had more than 11 hits ( although I don't exactly know, because after all, I wasn't around thirty years ago).

Do yourselves a favour, and stay away from this release. It's nothing more than a blatent attempt to garner a couple extra bucks from the dull (i.e. me) record buying populace. Like I said, don't give these guys the satisfaction of knowing that their stupid plan worked. It's best to stay away and invest in a legitimate Cream hits disc anyways.