1968-05-25
Civic Auditorium
San Jose, CA
HQ Audience Recording
320 kbps
01. I’m So Glad
02. Sitting on Top of the World
03. Stepping Out
04. Traintime
05. Toad
06. Tales of Brave Ulysses
07. Sunshine of Your Love
In April 1968 Cream forced a break from their exhausting tour that had crisscrossed the USA and involved almost daily concerts. They returned refreshed but the grind started pretty soon. For this leg of the tour the venues and audiences were usually the biggest available and fees were often $25,000 a show. Jack and Ginger loved playing and the money was great after so many years of scrambling. But for Eric, it was becoming a drag as the role of guitar God thing began to pall. He was preparing for one of his regenerations.
As a stage in his change he had adopted the dark clothes, moustache, pony tail, ray-ban aviators, tough guy image. To further escape the psychedelic image he stoped using the painted SG and reverted to a Les PAul and then increasingly to the Firebird I. For this concert he played the Les Paul
It is interesting that they were once again opening with "Tales Of Brave Ulysses" (MAybe Eric had actually lost his wah-wah and had finally bought another). It is followed by a solid "Sunshine Of Your Love" with JAck in great vocal form, Ginger driving as usual but Eric restrained "I'm So Glad" is next and is tipically excellent but lacking real fire.
"Sitting On Top Of The World" is a surprise being quite atypical - slower tempo but withinthe usual length. Eric is playing in quite a different mode. I always wonder if such "on-the-spur" variations were an attempt by Eric to catch out his fellow band members. It didn't as they respond - JAck slows the vocals and Ginger maintains the beat impeccably.
As was standard on this tour they move into the solo cases. "Stepping Out" is surprisingly strong as Eric seems to have warmed up and was working hard. It's not one of the great ones but the difference in tone/sustain/attack of the Les Paul vs. the SG makes for an interesting listen. "Traintime" remains worn out and really should have been dropped for something better. Baker is in fine form on a long "Toad" which is not quite complete due to tape run out.
This one belongs to JAck and Ginger who are still getting off playing live. Eric plays well but is not pulling the trigger. he is holding back. Thankfully his performance does not suffer from the ennui of the final tour. All-in-all a good show that wouldn't have dissapointed the audience (or bootleg listeners) but is clearly on the downside slope. The California inspired fires that started in August 1967 were now almost extinguished. http://www.filefactory.com/file/5cmuj77vzihx/Crm_05-25-1968.rar
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