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The Cream of Eric Clapton

The Cream of Eric Clapton

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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Essential Clapton
Review: An excellent compilation. The quality of a couple of segments is weak (e.g. "Knocking on Heaven's Door") but on the whole a great video. Easily worth the price.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Quite good
Review: As Clapton videos go this one is pretty good -- not as great as Unplugged but better than some of the others from the 70s/80s. Overall a good video for fans, with a nice mix of old and new(er) footage.

Good Points:
- E.C.: Layla, Cocaine, Wonderful Tonight, etc.
- Cream: Strange Brew, Sunshine of My Love, I feel Freee
- Rare Yardbirds footage
- for guitarists, the footage shows his playing (e.g fretting hand) better than many videos.

Interesting:
- Duet with Tina Turner

Not so good points:
- No Blues Breakers footage :(
- Too early for of the 90s blues, Change the World & Nor Tears in heaven
- a few non-descript songs from the 70s/80s(?)

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Quite good
Review: As Clapton videos go this one is pretty good -- not as great as Unplugged but better than some of the others from the 70s/80s. Overall a good video for fans, with a nice mix of old and new(er) footage.

Good Points:
- E.C.: Layla, Cocaine, Wonderful Tonight, etc.
- Cream: Strange Brew, Sunshine of My Love, I feel Freee
- Rare Yardbirds footage
- for guitarists, the footage shows his playing (e.g fretting hand) better than many videos.

Interesting:
- Duet with Tina Turner

Not so good points:
- No Blues Breakers footage :(
- Too early for of the 90s blues, Change the World & Nor Tears in heaven
- a few non-descript songs from the 70s/80s(?)

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Excellent compilation of songs and footage
Review: I am not a particularly big Eric Clapton fan. But a person would have to be crazy to pass up this great assembly of Clapton at his absolute best. Plus it contains footage from his early days with the Yardbirds, Cream, and various solo concerts. I want to mention that I didn't get the DVD to work correctly until I ordered it from Amazon, I bought two copies previously from Media Play and they constantly skipped. ??? Anyone else? Either way, Amazon's copy worked fine. Bad batch I guess.

SONGS INCLUDED: Louise/ Crossroads/ I Feel Free/ Sunshine of Your Love/ Strange Brew/ White Room/ Badge/ Worried Life Blues/ Layla/ Knockin' On Heaven's Door/ Cocaine/ I Shot the Sheriff/ Wonderful Tonight/ Forever Man/ Tearing Us Apart/ Behind the Mask/ Holy Mother

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Adequate summary of his career up to the "Unplugged" years
Review: Not being a huge fan of Eric Clapton during his late '80s phase, I usually rewind this about midpoint, YMMV. The tape kicks off with a Yardbirds lip-sync from early '60s TV. There is no Bluesbreakers material, oddly, seeing as how that's where Clapton got his "God" reputation. Maybe it's because John Mayall, with his purist insistence on making everything as "authentic" (i.e. primitive) as possible, forbade any decent filming.

The Cream clips are the heart of the show, easily torching the surrounding material. Some songs are rather silly lip-synchs taken from TV shows--Jack Bruce even sticks his tongue out at the camera on "I Feel Free". The others are live cuts, and even in their edited-down form, they are not silly at all. "Sunshine of Your Love" is so hot that Clapton's fretboard nearly ignites. These clips seem to be taken from Cream's Farewell Concert, and the camera work is the same hippy-dip mess as on that production. "Badge", performed by Clapton's mid-80s band from the deleted _Eric Clapton Live Now_ video, wraps up the Cream material, and it is very fine (though second guitarist Tim Renwick runs out of ideas halfway through his solo).

Then there's the rest of Clapton's career. Though he never got hotter than he was in Cream, he did get bigger and more soulful. He plays a duet with Buddy Guy, miking himself up so loud that exactly one note from Guy is audible. (This bad habit is repeated on the _24 Nights_ video, where Robert Cray and Buddy Guy are so faintly mixed that even the cameraman can't tell which one is playing.) He indulges his "less-is-more" philosophy to the hilt on a barely-there cover of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door". And then there's "Franken-Layla"--bits of at least three versions of this great song edited together. One bit is from his triumphant comeback at Live Aid.

The rest of the film is not very interesting. Skip to _Unplugged_ instead.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Adequate summary of his career up to the "Unplugged" years
Review: Not being a huge fan of Eric Clapton during his late '80s phase, I usually rewind this about midpoint, YMMV. The tape kicks off with a Yardbirds lip-sync from early '60s TV. There is no Bluesbreakers material, oddly, seeing as how that's where Clapton got his "God" reputation. Maybe it's because John Mayall, with his purist insistence on making everything as "authentic" (i.e. primitive) as possible, forbade any decent filming.

The Cream clips are the heart of the show, easily torching the surrounding material. Some songs are rather silly lip-synchs taken from TV shows--Jack Bruce even sticks his tongue out at the camera on "I Feel Free". The others are live cuts, and even in their edited-down form, they are not silly at all. "Sunshine of Your Love" is so hot that Clapton's fretboard nearly ignites. These clips seem to be taken from Cream's Farewell Concert, and the camera work is the same hippy-dip mess as on that production. "Badge", performed by Clapton's mid-80s band from the deleted _Eric Clapton Live Now_ video, wraps up the Cream material, and it is very fine (though second guitarist Tim Renwick runs out of ideas halfway through his solo).

Then there's the rest of Clapton's career. Though he never got hotter than he was in Cream, he did get bigger and more soulful. He plays a duet with Buddy Guy, miking himself up so loud that exactly one note from Guy is audible. (This bad habit is repeated on the _24 Nights_ video, where Robert Cray and Buddy Guy are so faintly mixed that even the cameraman can't tell which one is playing.) He indulges his "less-is-more" philosophy to the hilt on a barely-there cover of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door". And then there's "Franken-Layla"--bits of at least three versions of this great song edited together. One bit is from his triumphant comeback at Live Aid.

The rest of the film is not very interesting. Skip to _Unplugged_ instead.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: it stinks out loud!
Review: Nothing great, poor filming and sound. Don't bother to watch this one. Get rod stewarts storyteller if you want a good one.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: it stinks out loud!
Review: Nothing great, poor filming and sound. Don't bother to watch this one. Get rod stewarts storyteller if you want a good one.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: creameriffic
Review: Starting with the Yardbirds, and going through Cream and into the solo career, this is a beautiful encapsulation of Eric' live performance ability. The early years are raw and rough, and even though a couple of tracks are "Millie Vanillied", the power of those concerts before 1969 are stunning. The video skips over the forgetable 1970's for the most part, and then picks up with some blues versions of old Cream favorites. Badge is sensational, and Layla uses two or three different concerts to pull a montage of music together. You do not have to look very hard to see Mark Knoffler and Phil Collins showing up over the last 8 or 9 tracks, to great effect. Tina Turner provides duet material on one song, and session players provide the backup. The best thing about this video is the complete lack of talking and non music related interludes. It is 100% music and Eric at his best. Do not over look this one.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The best music video ever made; no preamble, just raw music
Review: Starting with the Yardbirds, and going through Cream and into the solo career, this is a beautiful encapsulation of Eric' live performance ability. The early years are raw and rough, and even though a couple of tracks are "Millie Vanillied", the power of those concerts before 1969 are stunning. The video skips over the forgetable 1970's for the most part, and then picks up with some blues versions of old Cream favorites. Badge is sensational, and Layla uses two or three different concerts to pull a montage of music together. You do not have to look very hard to see Mark Knoffler and Phil Collins showing up over the last 8 or 9 tracks, to great effect. Tina Turner provides duet material on one song, and session players provide the backup. The best thing about this video is the complete lack of talking and non music related interludes. It is 100% music and Eric at his best. Do not over look this one.


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