Rikk
05-03-2005, 05:18 PM
http://jam.canoe.ca/Music/2005/05/03/e050305A.jpg
Eric Clapton onstage with Cream
LONDON (AP) - Reviewers hailed the reunion of rock supergroup Cream, though they found it hard to resist comments about the advanced age of the performers and the audience.
Eric Clapton, 60, Jack Bruce, 61, and Ginger Baker, 65, pulled a full house at the Royal Albert Hall on Monday night, where the top tickets were officially selling for $236 US and were being offered for resale at up to $3,220 US. The band simply walked on stage unannounced and dug into I'm So Glad. After two more songs, each received with a standing ovation, Clapton said. "Thanks for waiting all those years!"
"We'll probably play everything we know - we'll play as long as we can," he told the crowd.
The cheering continued in Tuesday's review columns.
"They were never less than good, often brilliant, occasionally inspired," David Cheal wrote in The Daily Telegraph. "And they got better as the night went on."
The group played its farewell concert at the Albert Hall on Nov. 26, 1968, and most of the audience dated from that era.
"The atmosphere is less like a rock concert than a corporate hospitality tent at Wimbledon. Paunchy men in sports jackets clink ice in gin and tonics, and mumsy ladies fan themselves with pricey souvenir programs," Alex Petridis wrote in The Guardian.
Petridis found the performance a pale shadow of Cream's brief glory years.
"You get a brief glimpse of what the fuss was about during Rollin' and Tumblin', when Bruce abandons his bass guitar in favour of a harmonica, and Clapton and Baker churn out a frantic, clattering riff," Petridis wrote.
The same tune wowed Cheal.
"Rollin' and Tumblin', with Bruce on harmonica, was sensational, an express train of a song, hurtling along with purpose, power and unstoppable momentum. For the first of many occasions during the evening, I had to sit, blink, look around the stage and remind myself that I was watching Cream at the Albert Hall - and they were very, very good," Cheal wrote.
"Inevitably, they were a diminished version of their former selves. ... They are not young men, and they were not playing, as they once did, as if their lives depended on it," Cheal said.
David Sinclair of The Times also found the group more subdued.
"Instead they played with a newfound economy of effort that worked to best advantage on some of their more out-of-the-way, pop-flavoured songs including Deserted Cities of the Heart and a surprise inclusion of Pressed Rat And Warthog, the lysergic nursery rhyme narrated by Baker in his cockney growl," Sinclair wrote.
Cream scheduled three more Albert Hall dates on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday - all sold out.
Eric Clapton onstage with Cream
LONDON (AP) - Reviewers hailed the reunion of rock supergroup Cream, though they found it hard to resist comments about the advanced age of the performers and the audience.
Eric Clapton, 60, Jack Bruce, 61, and Ginger Baker, 65, pulled a full house at the Royal Albert Hall on Monday night, where the top tickets were officially selling for $236 US and were being offered for resale at up to $3,220 US. The band simply walked on stage unannounced and dug into I'm So Glad. After two more songs, each received with a standing ovation, Clapton said. "Thanks for waiting all those years!"
"We'll probably play everything we know - we'll play as long as we can," he told the crowd.
The cheering continued in Tuesday's review columns.
"They were never less than good, often brilliant, occasionally inspired," David Cheal wrote in The Daily Telegraph. "And they got better as the night went on."
The group played its farewell concert at the Albert Hall on Nov. 26, 1968, and most of the audience dated from that era.
"The atmosphere is less like a rock concert than a corporate hospitality tent at Wimbledon. Paunchy men in sports jackets clink ice in gin and tonics, and mumsy ladies fan themselves with pricey souvenir programs," Alex Petridis wrote in The Guardian.
Petridis found the performance a pale shadow of Cream's brief glory years.
"You get a brief glimpse of what the fuss was about during Rollin' and Tumblin', when Bruce abandons his bass guitar in favour of a harmonica, and Clapton and Baker churn out a frantic, clattering riff," Petridis wrote.
The same tune wowed Cheal.
"Rollin' and Tumblin', with Bruce on harmonica, was sensational, an express train of a song, hurtling along with purpose, power and unstoppable momentum. For the first of many occasions during the evening, I had to sit, blink, look around the stage and remind myself that I was watching Cream at the Albert Hall - and they were very, very good," Cheal wrote.
"Inevitably, they were a diminished version of their former selves. ... They are not young men, and they were not playing, as they once did, as if their lives depended on it," Cheal said.
David Sinclair of The Times also found the group more subdued.
"Instead they played with a newfound economy of effort that worked to best advantage on some of their more out-of-the-way, pop-flavoured songs including Deserted Cities of the Heart and a surprise inclusion of Pressed Rat And Warthog, the lysergic nursery rhyme narrated by Baker in his cockney growl," Sinclair wrote.
Cream scheduled three more Albert Hall dates on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday - all sold out.