"Disraeli Gears," by Cream (November, 1967)

Dad's Take:

This is one of those heavy sixties rock albums that every collection should include. You know any album that begins with the one-two punch of "Strange Brew" and "Sunshine of Your Love" is going to rock. Throw in songs like "Swalbr" and "Tales of Brave Ulysses" and you have a bona fide classic. Although it's still full of those sixties sounds, I have a feeling Brad will like this better than some of the other recent albums, especially the bluesier songs like "Outside Woman" and "Take It Back."

Being drenched with psychedelic sounds doesn't stop this album from rocking. It's full of great Clapton guitar work and classic riffs. "Sunshine Of Your Love" is the obvious killer track here, but there's plenty more where that came from. The epic "Tales of Brave Ulysses" is one of the great album-oriented rock tunes of the period, one I don't listen to enough. How can anyone resist a song with lyrics like "Tiny purple fishes run laughing through your fingers"?

It seems kind of fitting that I'm listening to this one in San Francisco, even though Cream was not a San Francisco band. You know this was played heavily in the Haight as the summer of love faded into the winter of...well, whatever.

"World of Pain" has cool psychedelic sounds as the singer contemplates a tree outside his window. "Dance The Night Away" also seems to be interested in what's outside the window, only with some heavier riffs mixed into the mellowed-out contemplation. I also like the Cockney stoner tune, "Blue Condition." It makes me laugh. But that's nothing compared to the album's closer, "Mother's Lament." That song doesn't quite fit the rest of the album, but what a fun little encore.

Classic albums attain that status for many reasons. Some are just so packed with hits that they can't be ignored. Others are just plain great music that transcends time and place and remains popular for decades. Others, like Disraeli Gears, are a time capsule of their time. Is it dated? Sure. Nobody makes music like this anymore unless they are paying tribute to that time. But "dated" isn't necessarily bad, especially when the record serves almost as a historical document of the time, and features one of the world's great guitarists and one of the great bass players.

Brad's Take:


"Strange Brew" kicks off the record with a fun little groove that you can't help but bob your head to immediately. This might be my favorite track off the album. And then it kicks right into the massively popular jam "Sunshine Of Your Love," which is undeniably one of the most recognizable rock guitar riffs. We can thank the great Eric Clapton for that one.

Eric Clapton definitely is the star on this album, and that goes without saying really. The dude shreds on the guitar and that's all there really is to it. 

It's got a little bit of filler, but this album is pretty great for the most part. The awesome songs help you look over the filler tracks. This isn't one of my favorite albums we've listened to, by any means, but it's definitely not one of the worst either. It's in the middle range somewhere.

"John Mayall Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton" by John Mayall and the Blues Breakers, July 1966

Dad's Take:

Classic blues, mid-sixties style. As the sixties moved into its second half, blues music began to mix with psychedelia, permeating the airwaves with a sound both familiar and new. To help usher in this new sound, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers would, in its early years, include not only Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce, who are featured on this record, but future Fleetwood Mac members Peter Green and John McVie, future Rolling Stone Mick Taylor, three members of Canned Heat, Aynsley Dunbar, and several other well-known names.

The lineup for this record, nicknamed "The Beano Album," featured Mayall, Clapton, and McVie, plus Hughie Flint on drums. The result is one of the legendary blues records of the sixties, a groundbreaking effort that also started the trend of playing a Gibson Les Paul guitar through an overdriven Marshall Bluesbreaker amp, helping to define the heavy rock sound of the late sixties and seventies.

Clapton's guitar work is all over this album, which is as much a showcase for his playing as anything else. But it also features his first recorded solo vocal, on Robert Johnson's classic "Ramblin on My Mind."

If you enjoy sixties style blues rockers, you need to have this album. The playing is solid, crunch without sounding overly shiny or corporate. This is the sound that paved the way for Hendrix, MC5, Led Zeppelin, and other blues-based rock with a hard edge. Made up mostly of blues standards with a few originals mixed in, this is a fine example of the trend to create album-oriented music that was not about collecting hit singles. There are not really any songs that stand out on their own, but the sound of the entire album is what makes it so great. It hit number six on the UK album charts but was not immediately well-known in the U.S. It is most important now for the influence it had on people like Hendrix, Jimmy Page, and Brian May, and on the future sound of rock.

Brad's Take:


I enjoy when we get to listen to these records that I've never heard of before. I, of course, knew of Eric Clapton, but everything about this particular album was new to me.

First off, Clapton's guitar playing is awesome. But can you really expect anything less than that from him? The dude rules at guitar. There's no doubt about that. Song after song, the guitar solos are fantastic.

The album isn't much different than previous blues records from the 60s, but, like my dad mentioned, it was a little bit heavier in the rock genre than just straight up bluesy. I can really hear where Jimmy Page got some of his influence from. The song "What'd I Say" has a really long (but totally awesome) drum solo by Hughie Flint that John Bonham probably approved of, too.

Overall, this is just a great blues rock record. The opening track, "All Your Love," was probably my favorite song from the album. It's a lot heavier than most blues songs you hear, and I thought it was really good. It's definitely one I will go back to and put on my next mix CD for my car.