I mentioned in Concerts Vol. 1 that one of my earliest major influences from a live show was seeing the Paul Butterfield Blues Band at the Cafe Au Go Go in the winter of 1966-67. That remains true but there was a series of concerts that had an even bigger impact for me. I saw Cream play live four times in 13 months between September, 1967 and October, 1968. After the first show, nothing would ever be the same for me musically.

I had just arrived in Boston for freshmen orientation at Boston University in the first week of September, 1967. Back then, freshmen came up to the school for a full week before classes, unlike today when orientation is usually finished up in less than two days by many colleges.

I was having mid-afternoon waffles at a small breakfast/dinner restaurant near Kenmore Square when my buddies, one of whom was a fellow bass player from Connecticut, and I found out that Cream, yes that Cream, would be playing practically across the street at a new club called the Psychedelic Supermarket. I was astonished by my good fortune that Cream, one of my favorite bands would be in town, just a few blocks from my dorm on Commonwealth Avenue, and that they were scheduled to play for two weeks! I intended going more than once.

My first encounter with Cream was in one of the old listening booths at one of the best record shops in Connecticut in the ’60s, Cutler’s, which was on Broadway in New Haven. In the spring of 1967, my friend and fellow band-mate in the Bram Rigg Set, Beau Segal, told me I had to check out this group from England that featured the Cream of the crop among British blues musicians and were aptly named.

I went down to Cutler’s with a friend, Holly Lovig, who if you remember accompanied me on the trip to see that first Butterfield concert in New York. Those listening booths at Cutler’s were great. One of the clerks would spin a record on a turntable in back of the store’s elevated counter and pipe in the music to one of I believe at least two booths, which was wood and glass and had a large glass pane in the door so you could look out at the store while you listened. Precursor to the headphones you find at record stores today.

From the first strains of I Feel Free, I was hooked. I had never heard anything remotely like that. The cool jazz vocal beginning, the unusual harmonies over a minor chord progression, the fury of the basic track and Clapton’s solo, the first note of which on the first few listens always sounded more like a voice to me than a guitar note. I bought the album and it went into very heavy rotation on my portable mono record player.

The first show Cream played at the club in Kenmore Square was on a Sunday night. For years, it was thought Cream only played one or two dates at the Psychedelic Supermarket. I noticed this on several web sites in the ’90s that listed Cream itineraries and somehow connected with a collector in Canada, Bob Elliott, who helped me correct this with various web masters, including Graeme Paddingale, whose site Those Were The Days  is still around. Cream would not stay the full two weeks as originally scheduled but they did play from Sept. 10-16. We went to that first Sunday night show.

The club, well there wasn’t anything psychedelic about it and it had nothing in common with a supermarket. We paid probably something in the vicinity of $3 to get in. It was, in fact, the basement of an old manufacturing building, the type of building in New York that became popular for some of the first lofts in the ’60s and ’70s, which were large open areas converted into living spaces. It was a long room, all  concrete, floor and pillars, with a stage at the far end, behind which was a plaster board wall that separated the club from the dressing room.

There were probably no more than about 200 people in the club. No chairs, we sat cross-legged on the floor not more than 20 feet from the stage slightly on the left hand side of it, opposite Jack Bruce and his Marshall rig. Cream came out dressed in flowered shirts, much like the fare you would find on King’s Road at Granny Takes A Trip in London (there was one in New York a little later on the upper East side), with tight jeans and moccasin-style boots with fringe. Clapton wearing the tallest with his pants tucked in. The photo above is actually from the Fillmore West in the string of dates Cream played prior to coming to Boston. I’m amazed at how small the Fillmore looks in this photo and the setup is actually not too different from the Psychedelic Supermarket, except that there was space between the back of the stage and the back wall and it was not as elevated.

Clapton played his psychedelic painted SG Gibson, commissioned by Dutch artists The Fool who were known for painting the outside of the Beatles’ Apple Boutique, and Bruce a dark cherry red SG bass. Baker, of course, had the expansive double-bass drum setup with accompanying toms that was unusual and quite distinctive for the time, with logos on both bass drum heads.

They opened with N.S.U., a favorite from Fresh Cream that is a prototype for early heavy blues-based rock, with seemingly light lyrics although we would later discover it was named for a strain of the clap. What struck me from that first tune was that the solo section lasted about five or six minutes. I had never heard any rock band play live like that except Butterfield’s blues group. But this was a bit different it being a trio. Clapton’s lead was extended and Bruce and Baker created intense grooves behind him, the trio meshing and in perfect sync at times, and playing against one another contrapuntally at others. The biggest impact for me was, of course, Bruce, who was playing bass like no other I’d heard, leaving the groove continually to play lead-style lines against Clapton’s lead, but at least in this show, never fighting him for control.

We found out later that Cream had really just started experimenting with the extended solos after playing the San Francisco dates at the Fillmore West Aug. 22-27 with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and Aug. 29-Sept. 3 headlining with the Electric Flag and the Gary Burton Quartet. I have first editions of both of those posters. The poster from the first date is at left. Bruce was later to remark that the audience just wanted them to keep playing so they obliged. And it went down extremely well. Can you imagine a bill with Paul Butterfield and Cream in San Francisco, which was used to the likes of Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin. Whether you like those acts or not, Cream had to be quite a shock to the system of the San Francisco community.

Spoonful followed N.S.U. and that confirmed that this band was doing something special. It lasted about 20 minutes and the tightness and creativity of the three musicians was so evident as to completely lose the listener in the magical music they were playing. Spoonful was not on the original American release of Fresh Cream but I had the two-sided single released on ATCO that ran for nearly seven minutes. That was obviously one of their first ventures into extended playing on record, long before the Fillmore concerts.

Then another shock to the system. They ripped into a blues number I’d never heard from Howlin’ Wolf, Sitting On Top Of  The World, which wouldn’t be released as a studio track until late summer 1968. What a fierce slow blues outing. It was perfect from the way in which Clapton and Baker played each verse differently but in perfect union to the flatted-third ending of each verse with the vocal and lead line in unison. The closest to that version I would later hear would be on the Goodbye album that includes a live take. But even that track, which features one of Clapton’s most intense and technically brilliant solos, would never match hearing it that first time.

They closed the first set with Sweet Wine, which again featured a long, improvisation section in the space where the relatively set solo from the record was played.

The opener for the second set was particularly memorable since I had never heard it. Tales Of Brave Ulysses with its descending chord structure, Clapton’s wah-wah and yet another extended solo made quite an impression. This would be released on Disraeli Gears, the group’s second album in late 1967. I knew one was in the offing but had no idea it had already been recorded the previous spring. It was the only song they played from the album. Melodically and lyrically I thought it was a perfect example of what Cream meant to the rock scene.

The set continued with I’m So Glad and then their solo spots, Bruce’s Train Time and Baker’s Toad. Unfortunately, no Steppin’ Out for Clapton.

Walking  back to the dorm, I was on a heady high with music from the concert spinning through my mind. It would stay with me and influence me for a long time. In fact, it still does.

Cream’s engagement would be cut short to one week because of financial issues with the club owner. I planned to see a second show the second week and was deflated when I found out they had left at the end of the week. My fellow bass player friend caught them one more time. Years later in a Bruce interview I found out they absolutely hated Boston. They were virtually trapped in their hotel rooms all day because of the stares and discrimination they had to endure while simply walking on the street in their usual gear. Suffice to say, they must have truly enjoyed the playing because it was probably the only moments of enjoyment they had during a day there. The song Boston Ball Game 1967 from Bruce’s first solo album Songs For A Tailor came from that stay in Beantown.

Instead of completing the second week, they headed to New York to play the Cafe Au Go Go, among other venues, where Beau would catch them, since he was in Connecticut.

This first show in Boston would remain the best of the four shows I saw them play in that span of a little more than a year, although two of the others came close. I thought I would touch on all four shows in this post but it appears there is too much to include. I’ll continue this series with the next concert, a completely lost gem from many web itineraries and books (Clapton bios mostly), in the spring of 1968 at Woolsey Hall, Yale, from which I have one of the only intact tickets I’ve kept from a concert for more than 40 years.