Ginger Baker passed away over the weekend, so I thought it'd be fun to delve into the catalog of his most famous band, Cream with Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce. I remember being steeped in '60s rock when I started to follow new music avidly in the early '90s -- at one point in school we did art projects making sculptures out of sugarcubes, and I actually recreated the wall with the 'Clapton is God' graffiti, which is such an embarrassingly dad rock thing for a kid who was maybe 11 years old to do. But I quickly came to vastly prefer the Jimi Hendrix Experience to Cream and kind of feel some partisanship between these two short-lived blues-based power trios that both took London by storm in late 1966. But I always thought "White Room" kicked ass, so I always suspected there was more Cream stuff I'd dig. Smokey, my friend, you are entering a world of pain!

Cream deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. World Of Pain
2. Deserted Cities Of The Heart
3. SWLABR
4. Cat's Squirrel
5. Politician
6. What A Bringdown
7. Tales Of Brave Ulysses
8. Sleepy Time Time
9. As You Said
10. Blue Condition
11. Doing That Scrapyard Thing
12. Sweet Wine
13. Dance The Night Away
14. Pressed Rat And Warthog
15. N.S.U.
16. Mother's Lament
17. Toad (live)
18. I'm So Glad (live)

Tracks 4, 8, 12 and 15 from Fresh Cream (1966)
Tracks 1, 3, 7, 10, 13 and 16 from Disraeli Gears (1967)
Tracks 2, 5, 9, 14 and 17 from Wheels of Fire (1968)
Tracks 6, 11 and 18 from Goodbye (1969)

I thought about including some stuff from the various Cream live records and BBC sessions that have come out over the years, or even the partial reunions in groups like Blind Faith and Bruce-Baker-Moore. But ultimately it felt right to just draw on the 4 studio albums (2 of them half live tracks) that the band made in their brief time together. In the '60s, there weren't any real expectations yet of longevity for a rock band -- nobody had a clue that the Rolling Stones and The Who would still be touring 50 years later. But Cream's career was remarkably short for as big as they were. Only 2 years and 7 months passed between the first Cream concert and the release of Goodbye, which came out after their farewell gigs. I'd say only Nirvana made a similar impact in as short a period of time (from the release of Nevermind to Cobain's death).

I would say Eric Clapton is one of the rock artists whose stock has dropped the most sharply in my lifetime. When VH1 first did their '100 Greatest Artists of All Time' program in 1998, he placed at #15, and when they polled people again and aired a new list in 2010, he wasn't on it at all, the biggest drop off the list (followed closely by The Eagles). But Cream's records have definitely aged better than most of the other stuff he's done, Clapton as a singer and songwriter has never quite lived up to his reputation, but with a great rhythm section challenging him and Jack Bruce handling a lot of the writing and vocals, Eric Clapton is freed up to just do some incredible, groundbreaking stuff with wah-wah pedals (which Clapton used for the first time on "Tales of Brave Ulysses") and Leslie speakers. "Deserted Cities Of The Heart" in particular is just awesome.

What struck me most about listening to Cream's albums is that Felix Pappalardi, who produced every album except Fresh Cream, is practically the band's 4th member. Pappalardi, who went on to play bass in Mountain, plays viola, keyboards, percussion, horns all over those 3 albums, co-writing "Strange Brew" and contributing memorable textures to songs like "White Room" and "Badge."

Since half of Wheels of Fire and half of Goodbye are live tracks, I decided to end the mix with 25 minutes of a couple of long ones that outshine the studio versions on Fresh Cream. The original "Toad" was one of rock's first extended drum solos, and Ginger Baker just goes nuts on the 16-minute version on Wheels. And the live version of their Skip James cover "I'm So Glad" on Goodbye might be my favorite sounding track in the Cream catalog, the bass sound is just killer.

I was amused to hear silly little novelty songs like "Mother's Lament" and "Pressed Rat and Warthog" on Cream's albums -- The Who and the Beatles albums at the time were full of tracks like that but I didn't expect Cream to have any. But I think my favorite discovery from listening to these albums is "As You Said," a Clapton-free track that seems to invent the sound of Led Zeppelin III with Jack Bruce on acoustic guitar and cello and Ginger Baker playing only a hi-hat cymbal.

One of the reasons I've always really loved "White Room" was that 5/4 intro, which was apparently Ginger Baker's idea, so I was happy to hear another even more 5/4 in the Baker-penned closing track on the band's final album, "What A Bringdown." For my money that's the best Cream song writtern by Baker, although I also included the instrumental "Toad," and "Blue Condition," which he sings, and "Pressed Rat And Warthog," where he performs some spoken word vocals. I remember 10 or 20 years ago seeing a widely forwarded list of jokes about drummers, most of them the usual gags about how drummers are stupid or aren't real musicians, which I try to take with a grain of salt, but there were multiple jokes were the gist was that Ginger Baker sucks and couldn't keep a steady beat, which always left an impression on me that I now realize was pretty unfair, I wouldn't put him at the top of my favorite '60s drummers (Mitch Mitchell and Keith Moon) but he definitely deserves respect.

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