BLOG!: Cream - Wheels of Ice [Live at Winterland/Fillmore]

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Cream were a hugely influential power trio that innovated the blues by fusing it with jazz and rock and blazed the trail for all rock bands and guitarists that followed, such as Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix etc. Cream were two bands, a studio band and a live band. And one of those bands was world apart from the other (hint it's the live band!), so it's a shame that only a small handful of their live performances were actually recorded. However, in retrospect this is actually a good thing, as Cream played a lot better when they weren't being officially recorded as they were more willing to take chances and be adventurous with their jams. But what's the point if we don't get to hear it? That's the beauty of the bootleg, now we can all enjoy the fiery performances of Cream playing at their absolute peak (March 1968).

The officially released album 'Wheels of Fire' was a double album, disc 1 contained the studio tracks, and disc 2 contained the live tracks, which were recorded in March 1968 at the Fillmore and Winterland in San Fransisco. This album is a shining example of how Cream were two bands, The studio tracks are great, especially the track 'Sitting on Top of the World', but it's the live side that really shines. Which contains an amazing 17 minute version of 'Spoonful' and the legendary 'Crossroads', which has dropped jaws since its release. Chris Welch in his book 'CREAM: The Legendary Sixties Supergroup' says of the song: "'Crossroads', at a digestible 4:13, remains a high point of Clapton's playing career to date. Within the standard I/IV/V chord sequence in the key of A there are two solos, the first of 24 bars, the second 36 bars long, seperated by a verse of vocal. The solos are outbursts of pure joy, demonstrating not only Clapton's intuitive melodic mastery but also the support, vision and focus of his colleagues Bruce and Baker" (Welch, 2000, p. 66). As a guitarist I can say that Crossroads is a very difficult song to play, and especially to play live while singing, and if you listen to the original version by Robert Johnson, you really can't help but admire what Clapton managed to turn the song into, which is a blues-rock beast. He did the same thing on Freddie King's 'Hideaway', but that's another story!

Ok, now to get to the heart of this post: Wheels of Ice, is a bootleg containing all of the live tracks that Cream punched out during their March 1968 gigs at the Fillmore auditorium and Winterland ballroom, it contains all the live tracks on the Wheels of Fire album, in addition to all the tracks that weren't released on the album for whatever reason, and the tracks that were recorded without Cream's knowledge. This bootleg recording was compiled by me, I don't take credit for any of the tracks, I just gathered all of the tracks from my hard drive that were from these shows. These performances are breathtaking, and any Cream, Clapton or hard rock fan owes it to themselves to have this album in their collection!

Live at the Fillmore - March 1968