Cream
Wheels Of Fire

1967. "Disraeli Gears" is released, which with its overwhelming electric blues definitively delivers the Cream to the crowd's ovation. The Cream are three: Eric Clapton on guitar, Ginger Baker on drums, and Jack Bruce on bass. The first rock supergroup.
Cream's performances are intense and captivating, with extremely long solos and improvisations at the end, at high volume and energy.

The following year (1968), "Wheels Of Fire" is released, a double album half studio, half live. Repeating success is difficult, yet possible. This time the Cream sound blends its characteristic electric blues with a decidedly pop taste and greater psychedelic influences, with a touch of orchestration, violins, and cellos (studio LP); but live, the Cream maintain their direct and deeply bluesy approach. Lots of energy and unpredictable jams.
Clapton's guitar melts into a slippery wah-wah, it indulges, rages in his virtuosity; Baker shows that jazz technique learned in Blues Incorporated in schizophrenic drum solos; Bruce rides on solid bass lines, writes and interprets the songs.
The masterpiece is "White Room," fluid guitar and choruses, rhythmic drums and never predictable bass; "As You Said" is a psychedelic ballad with voice, guitar, and cello, where the voice is barely a whisper; and the thunderous riff of "Politician"; the energetic "Desert Cities Of The Heart"; the dreamy "Pressed Rat And Warthog."

Live, the performance of "Crossroads" is pulsating and alive, you feel the style of the three instrumentalists; one at a time, Clapton delights in the lengthy "Spoonful," Baker in the baffling "Toad" (17 minutes of drum solo).

If "Disraeli Gears" is a masterpiece, "Wheels Of Fire" is no less. Good ideas, they are there. Perhaps different, but they remain the Cream. In memory.