Cream Album: “Gold”

What a bargain! Cream Gold is loaded with goodies. You get 4 tracks from Fresh Cream, six tracks from Disraeli Gears (Dance the Night Away is the only notable track missing here), 7 studio tracks from Wheels of Fire (only Pressed Rat and As You Said are missing), the three best tracks from Goodbye Cream and the little ditty called "Anyone for Tennis".

But wait! There's more! Not only do you get all of the above tracks remastered in 20 bit in 2005, you get a live disc that includes a wonderfully barbaric, pounding N.S.U., Sleepy Time Time, Rollin' and Tumblin' (from Live Cream), Spoonful, the amazing Crossroads, and Toad (all but one of the Live tracks from Wheels of Fire), Sunshine of Your Love (from Live Cream II) and I'm So Glad (one of the live tracks from Goodbye).

This is the ultimate collection if you don't want to go out and buy all the CDs. In fact, you get darn near all of Wheels of Fire and I don't think it is even available at this writing.

This is a great remaster, all of the tracks still sound great. Jack Bruce was/is such a great song writer, it's a shame he really doesn't get the credit he's due for Cream's sound. Clapton and Baker are great but Bruce, he provided the foundation with his wonderful song writing skills. It's amazing just how much the young Jack Bruce knew about harmony and melody. And Pete Brown's poetic lyrics are just incredible, especially White Room - a song about losing the center of your world, your love, your "contentment", hoping she'll come back, and then briefly falling for her again at a party only to remember the heartbreak she'll bring:

At the party she was kindness in the hard crowd

Consolation for the old wound now forgotten

Yellow tigers crouched in jungles in her dark eyes

She's just dressing, goodbye windows, tired starlings.

Wow! Bruce and Brown - what a song writing team! I would post the entire lyric (it is so wonderful) but last time I did that Amazon nixed my posting due to copyright blah blah blah.

If you "weren't there" and aren't very familiar with Cream's work, this is a treasure trove. If you are middle-aged, this is a wonderful trip (ha ha) down memory lane!

What are you waiting for, this is a real bargain! Two fantastic disks, newly remastered and positively oozing and overflowing with Cream's best work for the price of a single disk. Unbelievable!

NO Outside Woman Blues? one of the best and bluesiest Clapton solos of all time .. somebody goofed .. hold onto your copy of Disraeli Gears.. It's on there .

Though they were only together for only three years, Cream accomplished more than most bands could in a lifetime. Consisting of rock legend Eric Clapton on guitar as well as the amazinf Ginger Baker on drums and Jack Bruce on bass, Cream were and still are amazing.

This 2 cd, 29 song collection is an ideal Cream compilation. One disc containing classic studio recordings such as "Born Under A Bad Sign" and the immortal classics "Sunshine Of Your Love" and "White Room", and a second disc a sweltering live performance. The sound quality, packaging and liner notes are excellent, and this is overall the ideal Cream collection.

Mr Clyde Bouley (his is the most popular positive review) caused me to buy this. It is truly excellent. The remastering is astonishing. One cannot believe that those old tapes had so much on them that never came through! The selection of tracks is equally superb. This is one of my best buys in recent years, for sure. I always had the masterpiece 'Disraeli Gears', but, having bought 'Gold', I feel I now have the best of the rest. You simply cannot go wrong by adding this to your collection.

These dudes strived to be the freakiest people on the planet. And they succeeded with hardly any objections. Nevermind Clapton's hair, tutti-frutti colored frilly shirts and psychadelic Gibson guitar. Only one rock group could sing about "trembling mermaids", "tiny purple fishes run laughing through your fingers", "yellow tigers", "tired starlings", "pictures with mustaches" and incorporate unlikely instruments like the cello and french horn. They wrote songs that made you feel like you wouldn't mind being an inpatient at the nearest psychiatric unit lest you start to hear strange voices and see polka dot unicorns standing in your living room. Yeah, these dudes were entertaining some serious mind-expanding substances when they weren't jamming at head-shattering sound levels. They complimented Hendrix's acid rock scene like peanut butter going with jelly. You'll wonder why they wrote tunes like "Anyone for tennis" which is perplexing, strange and wonderful but this was the music generation that had an identity crisis at times. If anyone could split their time between playing tennis and hitting the pipe it would be these guys. "I Feel Free" and "I'm So glad" are great tunes to sing along to. There are the great covers of "Sitting on top of the world" and "Born under a bad sign". Clapton's playing on these blues tunes is mesmerizing and earth-shaking with the intuition and sensitivity of a great blues master. He created a wah-wah and fuzz which transformed the guitar world. This is beautiful music with other great songs like "Sleepy time time" and "World of Pain". Baker is a God and has an awareness and knack for accentuating these songs especially in "We're going wrong" which sounds like he's channeling through a native indian drummer. Great live versions including "Spoonful". Bruce's voice commands your attention and he stretches his voice like none other coming up with some eccentric, beautiful melodies and harmonies and his bass lines are wonderful and full of feeling. If they wanted to round out this CD with some real strange stuff they would have added "Pressed Rat and Warthog". You have to get the rest of the Cream collection like "Take it back", "Outside woman blues" and "Traintime" to fully appreciate these masterful heavy acid rock gods and dedicated musicians.