Disraeli Gears (1967.) Cream's second album.

In 1966, after leaving John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Eric Clapton formed Cream with bassist Jack Bruce and percussionist Ginger Baker. The trio released their debut album, Fresh Cream, in 1966. Unfortunately, the debut left a lot to be desired. Many of the songs were good, but many were subpar, and many of them were covers as well (including the best-known songs on the album!) The band followed it up with their sophomore effort - 1967's Disraeli Gears (the story of how they came up with that title is a bit lengthy and awkward, and I'm not going to get into it here.) Read on for my review of this album.

1967 was a great year, as far as classic rock albums go. Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, and The Velvet Underground all released their debuts, and the Beatles released their wildly popular Sgt. Pepper LP. With Disraeli Gears, Cream created their own 1967 "classic for the ages." The band's sound undergoes a radical shift from blues-based rock to a psychedelic heavy sound. Two of their biggest hits, Strange Brew and Sunshine Of Your Love, can be found on this album. The former is, by far, my favorite Cream song. But, as with any album by any band, the underrated masterpieces are one of the true attractions. A great example of this is the masterpiece of a track known as Tales Of Brave Ulysses. Unfortunately, as far as single releases go, it was a B-Side, so it tends to go overlooked. Blue Condition is a Ginger Baker contribution to this album, and it's a damn fine one. Every track on this album is great, with the lone exception of the "joke" song at the end, Mother's Lament (why'd they put this on there?), making this one of the finest psychedelic rock albums of all time. Nothing Eric Clapton would record after this would top this - although some of his later releases came close.

Disraeli Gears finally got deluxe album treatment in September of 2004. Unfortunately, unlike other reissues in this series, this one is very subpar. Much like the deluxe Velvet Underground And Nico reissue, this one has one stereo version disc and one mono disc, with a few bonus tracks. And any Cream die-hard has pretty much all of these bonus tracks already. What the record company SHOULD have done is reissued Fresh Cream and Disraeli Gears together on a SINGLE disc. If you're gonna do these deluxe reissues, do them right! The Who reissues in this series are a beautiful example of how these things SHOULD be done. Take my advice - just get the old single disc version of the album. (The reason I didn't take any stars off of my total rating for the album is because I can't give an album this good anything less than five stars.)

There's really not a whole lot more that I can say. If you're a fan of psychedelic hard rock from the sixties, or an Eric Clapton fan, or maybe you're a little bit of each, I highly recommend this album. No classic rock collection is complete witout this masterpiece!