Dear Nathaniel,
Hello again my angel, I've been missing you a lot today. I've had lots of really weird dreams too, it's strange because every one without you just feels like a nightmare. I'm still not feeling my best unfortunately but I'll be okay my love.
Tonight, as promised we're listening to Cream's Disraeli Gears, I've always liked Cream. They had great potential but in the end it unfortunately didn't last long. Still they left behind 3 great albums, and a few good live albums, and add to that a lot of good performances have been bootlegged. As everyone should know influence in this era came from live performances and not studio recordings and Cream were a driving force in the establishment of long improvised jams live.
I've always seen one of the greatest things about live performance to be the creativity that comes from improvisation of lengthy passages by a member, or members of the band. A lot of that has been lost now as people just want to hear rehashed versions of 3 minute hits and the live experience just isn't as good as it was. Of course there are still bands that do improvise, they're just generally known for it now.
This album is different from the previous one's we've listened to in that it's starting to move more solidly away from blues and is starting to take on a form of it's own. It is of course becoming more psychedelic, but not exactly in the way we've heard before on say S.F. Sorrow. I love the guitar on this album, from fuzzy riffs to the near squeal of the solos, we're getting closer to the true 70's hard rock sound.
It still lacks the energy of later recordings, as well as the energy of their own live performances, there are few studio albums of the time that really have that extra special production that can capture the real energy of a band. It's interesting because production became better as you went into the 70's and took a drastic turn for the worst in the 80's as music became overly polished. This led to the vehicle that was able to capture the real energy of music turning it into lifeless plastic caricatures of what it once was.
Of course that type of overproduction was fixed briefly in the mainstream by grunge, but it didn't last long. Not that there's any life left in modern mainstream music. I've always found it interesting to be able to identify the decade of music by the production and style, of course that's not always possible as there is usually something that is just so innovative it just throws you off. Of course things can always be horrendously derivative and try to sound from an earlier era but it just never works. In the end those types of albums always end up just making a worse version of something old. Of course I do like the idea of being influenced by the sounds of earlier music but it has to be done in a way that doesn't just end up being a straight rip-off.
I always remember this album to be longer than 33 minutes, so I thought I had a lot more time with you tonight, I'll have to dig up a double album soon. Either way we have one more Clapton album from the 60's to enjoy tomorrow. Not sure if it will be time for Led Zeppelin after that, I'm dreading it in a way because once it's done I can't look forward to it anymore, I suppose I could always do a type of retrospective to revisit them again.
Goodnight my sweet angel Nathaniel, I love you and miss you so much.
Love from Dad.
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