Dear Nathaniel,
Hello again my angel, we're working to fix when we're sleeping so I've just gotten up, and of course I need to do this for technically yesterday since it's past midnight, it will all be back to normal again soon, at least I'm doing it every time I wake even if it's not on a strict schedule. With hindsight I realise making it a strict time was probably not the best idea when I've been having sleeping problems.
We went down home yesterday and sorted some stuff out and then we went to visit you, we had to take some of the old flowers away but I hope that's okay, we're keeping a bit of them to press in a book, that will be nice my love. It's really hot here at the moment and it's making it even more difficult to sleep, especially since that ends up being the middle of the day where it's hottest rather than during the colder night.
Tonight we're listening to the last Clapton studio album of the 60's, he's now gone full circle and come straight back to a more British blues oriented sound. It was recorded very quickly and in a way it shows, but it's really captured the energy of the band and that's exemplified on side 2, we'll get to that later. The album starts out with an 8 minute guitar piece, there's a bit of vocals spread throughout but it's basically just a really long and well structured guitar solo.
Along with Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker from cream the band is made up of Steve Winwood who joined after Traffic briefly disbanded and Ric Grech, the bassist from Family. The best part of the history of this album is that the members who recorded it dislike it. Critics and band members were disappointed by the quality of the music and the band disbanded shortly afterwards.
In a way it was just really poorly managed, the band started touring without much new material since it was in essence a "supergroup" the band didn't have that back catalogue of unreleased songs that a lot of organic bands have before making it big, this meant that they played a lot of old material from Cream and Traffic to fill time and please crowds. This led to the downfall of the band from within, there had been too much pressure to record quickly and tour rather than playing together and creating new material before releasing an album and touring.
Clapton wanted to separate himself from Cream and this wasn't the way to do it. Either way it's disappointing that this lineup didn't manage themselves properly since Clapton was on the top of his game when it came to playing the guitar and Winwood is a talented guitarist himself. Music was finally moving towards the true golden age however, and Blind Faith was just not quite there. Especially if you compare them to their direct contemporaries and Yardbirds spin off Led Zeppelin.
By the time Blind Faith was released Led Zeppelin had already released their debut album and were busy recording their second. This had set the bar for rock albums with Jimmy Page's vision for how albums should be structured and produced in hard rock. Led Zeppelin were incredibly tight with their performances and recordings and it's hard to compare it to anything. Progressive Rock was doing it's own thing independent of rock and that set a different precedent with equally pleasing results.
Blind Faith was stuck in the 60's while Led Zeppelin were a decade ahead already, however since it still was the 60's this is an absolutely great album on it's own. And it sounds great after spending days listening to only 60's albums but I know if I listened to Led Zeppelin or King Crimson's debut right now this wouldn't sound all that great in comparison.
The 15 minute jam to end off the album shows a lot of promise from a rock perspective and I love jams, but comparisons between this and prog are just completely unfounded. I have always liked the idea of jams like this with solos from various bands members are times, and it's fun to listen to. However it's more of a live thing to do. Generally bands record shorter riffs, and themes to expand on live during live improvisation. This is a great way to increase the length of a back catalogue without alienating fans. Led Zeppelin were great at this recording shorter songs around a main riff such as with Dazed and Confused or Moby Dick to allow for improvisation when the song is played live.
This makes this jam feel more like a live recording which is very enjoyable in it's own right, however it highlights the problems that the band was having in being unable to create enough material for them to perform live. It has a great energy though, especially during the great drum solo, it just feels like a cheap solution to a big problem the band had, and it's a shame because they had such great potential.
I hope you liked the album today my love, it's the last Clapton album of the 60's, we might follow his career a little later, but I want to focus on other late 60's acts before finally ending on the high that is Led Zeppelin's two great 60's albums. I love you my son. Goodnight my angel Nathaniel.
Love from Dad.
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