Picture

The Music of Cream, at left, perform the music of Cream, at right, at the Sweetwater Music Hall in Mill Valley on March 6, 2020. Courtesy images.
The recent passing of legendary rock and jazz drummer Ginger Baker reminded music fans young and old of his incredible canon, which included an acclaimed, albeit brief, stint as the percussionist for Cream, the British rock band that formed in London in 1966, cranked out some of the most blisteringly raucous tock music of the era and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.

But while guitar god Eric Clapton is the lone remaining member of the trio – bassist Jack Bruce died in 2014 – Cream’s sonic pedigree lives on, and is set to perform at the Sweetwater Music Hall on March 6, 2020. The group, dubbed The Music of Cream, features Kofi Baker (Ginger Baker’s son) on drums, Malcolm Bruce (Jack Bruce’s son) on bass and Will Johns (Eric Clapton’s nephew) on guitar and vocals.

For their, 40-date 2020 tour in North America, the band is performing Cream’s landmark album Disraeli Gears in its entirety followed by a set of additional hits and rarities from Cream, Clapton, Blind Faith and more.

“With primal riffs, soaring operatic choruses, poetry, fashion and theatre rolled into one, Disraeli Gears defined the era in which it was written,” the band wrote in announcing the tour,” noting that the album features the singles ”Sunshine of Your Love” and “Strange Brew.” 

Rolling Stone included Disraeli Gears in their list of the Top 500 Greatest Albums of All Time saying, “Cream’s sharpest, most linear album focused its instrumental explorations into colorful pop songs.”

“Why Disraeli Gears? Well, that’s easy for me,” says Johns. “It was the birth of the wah-wah pedal and you gotta love the wah-wah! That we can interpret such groundbreaking music and continue to tell Cream’s story is as exciting for us as we know it was for the band when they recorded it all those years ago. Like my Uncle, I am a blues man through and through and on this record, there’s some fantastic interpretations of this genre, the likes of ‘Lawdy Mama’ and ‘Outside Woman Blues,’ so it doesn’t get better than that!”

See below for clips of The Music of Cream and the original: