Cream — The Goodbye Tour — Live At The Forum

The dangers of having a friend who owns a record store, particularly a record store that is in walking distance, and is in fact between my house and nearly everywhere else I go in town, are that I’m gonna stop in to chat, and something shiny is going to catch my eye. At the end of August, this was out on his front “impact” shelf, and I gave it a glance and figured it was just a fancy re-release of “Goodbye.” Nope! Same tour, entirely different and, I think, much better show. So of course, I didn’t come home empty-handed.

Just released last year! Other than including an introduction by Buddy Miles (for reasons?) this collection is free of extras – no gatefold, no history of the Goodbye tour, just two discs of stomping Cream-style blues-rock. I’m not a Clapton fan, but I am definitely a Cream fan, and this is a welcome addition to the collection. And the 17:27 version of “Spoonful” is way better than the “Wheels of Fire” version, even if it has the audacity to take up an entire side.