Cream - Fresh Cream

Media:	Audio CD
Record label:	Polydor / Pgd
Release date:	07 April, 1998
List price:	~~$11.98~~
Our price:	$9.99 that is 17% off!

Fresh Cream

Average rating: Stars

A great yet slightly overrated debut album

All of the raw material that would make Cream one of the finest bands of their era is present here on this, their debut release. Fresh Cream contains the band's signature mixture of psychedelic pop songs and blues-rock improvisations. All in all, Fresh Cream is a fine first album, but Baker, Bruce, and Clapton would all go on to bigger and better things, both together with Cream and separately with other projects.

Fresh Cream - Cream

The begining of the original power trio

Cream's 1966 debut album Fresh Cream shows Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker, and Eric Clapton at there most energetic and exciting (not to say that Disraeli Gears, and Wheels of Fire aren't great or exciting). The album is full of bluesy power rock and all 3 musician's playing is fantastic. This album has a live feel to it especially on "Rollin' and Tumblin'", "Spoonful", and "Toad".

"I Feel Free" is a terrific song with all 3 guys locking together perfectly, and the jamming on "N.S.U" is great. "Sleepy Time Time" is a decent bluesy number. "Dreaming" is my least favorite song on the album due to its overt pop sound. It's not bad, but it's not fantastic. Ginger Baker's "Sweet Wine" is great and his drumming is fantastic there. "Spoonful" features great guitar playing from Eric and great singing from Jack. Jack plays terrific harmonica on "Cat's Squirrel", a terrific instrumental. Eric's guitar and Jack's harmonica lock together in that great riff. Eric Clapton gets the vocal spotlight on Robert Johnson's "Four Until Late", a nice little blues number that has a certain, bar-room feel to it. The full throttle "Rollin' and Tumblin'" is incredible. Eric's guitar playing and Ginger's drumming are on banging on all 100 cylanders and Jack just burns on harmonica. Cream's cover of Skip James's "I'm So Glad" is nicely done has well. The album comes to a close with Ginger Baker's drum opus, "Toad". The drum solo is fantastic (the live version from Wheels of Fire is excellent as well). This is a terrific debut album from one of rock's greatest, Cream.

Cream - Fresh Cream

Outstanding, especially the sound

The sound of this recording is the best in Cream's catalog. I think they had a different producer and recording engineer for this first album, Robert Stigwood & John Timperly before Felix Pappalardi & Tom Dowd came into the picture. The other recordings from Disraeli Gears and Wheels of Fire for example seem to have a constant hiss in the background and it seems recording and/or mixing levels were not fully turned up or managed correctly. You can hear this too on Layla, produced by Dowd. Furthermore, it sounded like clapton played many of his solos while being plugged directly into the mixing board - not a great sound. On Fresh Cream, it is all Marshall Stack! Sweet Gibson Les Paul tone with sustain and feedback, big sounding too. It is my understanding Clapton borrowed a '59 or '60 Les Paul Burst for this 1966 recording. It was right after the one he used with John Mayall was stolen during Cream's initial rehearsals in London. By the time studio sessions for Disraeli Gears were underway in 1967, he had already purchased the now famous 1964 Gibson SG Standard which he had painted by the art group known collectively as The Fool. In my opinion, they never sounded better in the studio than on this first album. I still love all three albums of course but I just wanted to make a point about the sound.