Selling atonal apples, amplified heat

Continuing my trip back through the 1968 album charts.

06/10/68 : Wheels Of Fire - Cream

This is our second visit with Cream - I didn't think I liked the last one, but checking out the review, it tells me it wasn't bad at all.  But I can't say my expectations were all that high going in to this though...

But it opens with "White Room" which is a track I like (without really knowing how I know it), so my mood immediately improved.  The rest of the album is somewhat varied - for starters, it's billed as a double album, but it's really two completely different single albums.  The first one is a studio album featuring some reasonable length tracks and the second one is a live one which includes some not so reasonable length tracks.  

On both of them, some bits are interesting, but a lot of it is a bit too noodley or clever-clever for my liking.  There is definitely some fine guitar playing on both albums though, both rock and blues - however (with the exception of "White Room") it's an appreciate rather than a like for me, but it wasn't nearly as annoying as I was expecting.  I actually found myself intrigued by "Pressed Rat And Warthog" just because it was so damn weird (maybe I was just in the mood for it).  I also have to say it's nice to listening to a) a proper album and b) one that hasn't dated horrendously but I didn't need the two minute harmonica solo on "Traintime" - and I REALLY didn't need the five minute drum solo on "Toad".  That's quite some album cover though, isn't it?  Apparently it also came in versions of black on silver, silver on black and black on gold - wow!

We're at #4 in the charts this week on its ninth week of a 26 week run, with it having peaked at #3 in its fifth week.  It's also worth pointing out that this refers to the double album version - the single album version (without the live stuff) is quite obviously at #14 this week, on its ninth week of a fourteen week run, having peaked at #7 in its second week.  I don't think we've seen that before!  The rest of the top five this week were The Hollies, The Seekers, Simon & Garfunkel and Tom Jones and the highest new entry is an Otis Redding best-of (#24).

Wikipedia has more than I was expecting on this, but most of it is a ridiculously low-level breakdown of all the personnel on each track on every version of the album.  It also explains why their were two versions of the album in the chart (and it makes a surprising amount of sense) - it was released as both a double album and two single albums, so you could actively choose to avoid Jack's harmonica solo and Ginger's drum solo (but you would also miss Eric's guitar solos).  The album was very successful commercially, getting to #1 in the US (and Australia and Canada) and becoming the first ever platinum-selling double album.

"Customers also listened to" Jimi Hendrix, Derek & The Dominos, The Who and Steppenwolf - I've yet to experience any Steppenwolf in my life.  Which was also true for Cream before I started this exercise and I really wasn't expecting to like them, but both albums have been interesting, if not always my cup of tea.

29/09/68 - A well done not-my-sort-of-thing
13/10/68 - A far too short album