Post
by DrummerMan » Tue Oct 28, 2014 2:29 pm
It's really interesting about who gets what kind of notoriety.
As my Cream obsession started to ebb or reach a saturation point, I wanted to move forward. In my middle school mind the obvious thing was to follow Clapton's career forward since he had had the most obvious success post-Cream. I followed that path of albums slowly from the late 60's up to the present (which at that time was the mid 80's). At some point I discovered that I didn't care too much for what he was doing now (then), which made me decide to investigate backwards and discover at what point his music went from things I thought were awesome to things I didn't care for, since I apparently wasn't being very critical on the way up. It took a while, but eventually I discovered that I didn't really find much at all of his very interesting after Cream, forcing me to the conclusion that, especially in terms of songwriting and singing, it was Jack Bruce's influence that had appealed to me so much in the super trio (along with Baker, of course, who's influence was never in question).
This also may the very root of something I was discussing with a bandmate the other day, which is my deep-rooted dislike of the Stratocaster. I feel like Clapton playing an SG or a 335 represented everything I loved about his playing, and the Strat was representative of everything else. I still hold that Strat prejudice (supported by many other musicians' examples) to this day, but thinking about Jack Bruce and my feeling like I followed the wrong Cream-member really brought the origins of that prejudice to the surface...
[/Psych 101]
*I do not wish to incite the wrath of Strat lovers here. It is a fine instrument, I'm sure, and it's sound has some really fine examples in the history of music, it's just not for me and I don't know if it ever will be (though I never thought I'd own a telecaster either, and that did change after some particularly good experiences with them).