Tales Of Brave Ulysses.....

Today everything is just a shade brighter in my life. The greatest "band" of all time is getting back together after 35 years apart. I say they are the greatest band, but not the greatest artists. They had so many great songs, and some that are just fluff. But, they are simply the greatest band of musicians to ever get together and rock. They were so good, that they were only together for about 2 years, but their influence was so great that they were simply unforgettable. In their time, they had sold more copies of their albums than the amount of Bibles sold in the previous 25 years. Yet, today they are generally underappreciated. Nevertheless, they remain the greatest band of musicians to ever exist together on a stage. Yes, they were a better "band" than Led Zeppelin. Better than The Rolling Stones, better than The Who, even better than The Beatles. Even better than Men Without Hats.

I am talking about Cream. Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, and Ginger Baker. The original power trio.

My first experience with Cream happened in 8th grade when I got the GOODFELLAS soundtrack for christmas. On there I was shocked that a song I originally attributed to Jimi Hendrix for whatever reasons was actually by some band called Cream. The song was "Sunshine of Your Love", which I obviously knew and loved, but I had never listened to the vocals to realize it was somebody else. So, that's cool, I thought.

Years later, around the time I was getting into such bands as Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd (as all kids usually do), VH1 aired the 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock, and there was a band that just narrowly beat THE RAMONES... and I remembered their name from the GOODFELLAS soundtrack, only to recieve another shock that the dude with the fro was ERIC CLAPTON. The short clips played other songs I was aware of but never knew who it was by... "I Feel Free" and "White Room". Wow, I thought, these guys rock. And I heard snippets of other songs that sounded awesome. So soon after, I bought a cheap greatest hits collection for about 10 dollars, and the instant i put in the cd, it took a long time for it to come out.

EVERY song on the album was amazing. It was just short of a musical rebirth for me. I knew next to nothing about the blues, but I knew this was something extraordinary. It was bluesy, poppy, and all together heavy. Nothing I had heard before matched up to it, and little since. It was because of Cream and Eric Clapton that I finally started figuring out how to play guitar after 5 years of owning one and not knowing how to play. I wanted desperately to recreate what I heard on that record. Eventually, when i got a job, I bought what I consider to be the greatest album of all time.

I had heard some of the tracks off of DISRAELI GEARS before, but that didnt diminish it's power of the first listen. The album starts off with a slow groove, "Strange Brew" and ends with a silly traditional nearly-acapella song "Mother's Lament", and in between is a slew of some of the greatest blues-rock songs ever recorded; such as "Swlabr", "Sunshine of Your Love", "World of Pain", "Outside Woman Blues", and the title of this very blog, "Tales of Brave Ulysses". I stood in awe of the album as it was (to me at the time) the greatest thing I had ever heard. The riffs, the leads, even the lyrics which sometimes made no sense were the only possible way to illustrate these (at least to me) otherworldly songs. They weren't otherworldly in the BIZARRE sense of the word. But as in it was something that sounded alien to me at the time, although I had heard other bands who were similar... nobody sounded exactly like Cream. They were psychedlic, but not overly... they just added a color to their version of the blues. And the cover of the album perfectly sums up the color their sound produced on that record. And it's also one of the coolest covers ever.

Since then, I've picked up the other albums, and while they have a decent amount of lousy filler songs, one cannot deny their power overall. One listen to their live rendition of Robert Johnson's "Crossroads" off of WHEELS OF FIRE and all flaws in their catalogue can easily be dismissed.

And now, that band is getting together for a couple of reunion shows at London's Royal Albert Hall in May. I heard the news while playing Halo 2 last night. And I literally jumped out of my chair in disbelief and started jumping for joy and screaming at 3 in the morning while other people tried to go to sleep. I had a lousy year last year, and an even lousier Winter Vacation... and to me....in light of this... none of that matters now. Why? BECAUSE FUCKING CREAM IS GETTING THE FUCK BACK TOGETHER!!!!! I dont care that they're older in years... the fact that my favorite band of all time will share a stage once again. IF you're like me, you should be shitting your pants.

....I know I almost did.

For MORE about Cream... go