Cream – Disraeli Gears

This is probably the best known of Cream’s albums — released in November 1967, Cash Box listed it as the No. 1 album of 1968, a year with some incredible musical competition. This is the one with “Strange Brew” and “Sunshine of Your Love” and “SWLABR” and “Tales of Brave Ulysses.” (It’s also the one with “Mother’s Lament,” one of the more unfortunate examples of ‘60s bands’ ongoing love of skiffle and old-times nonsense.) My roommate Danny got a copy of this sometime around 1980 — and I did not. Many of the songs went onto my mixtapes from that era, but when he moved away, I was left without a copy. At some point I got it digitally, and that was apparently satisfactory until last year when I ran across a new 180 gram pressing at Deep Groove Records here in Phoenixville and decided I’d been deprived of this masterpiece in vinyl long enough. But that’s the whole story of my copy of Disraeli Gears.