Cheap Cream: Farewell Concert (DVD) (Cream, Baker.G Eric Clapton) Price

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Customer Reviews of Cream: Farewell Concert

All the other reviewers missed the point
All of you other reviewers totally missed out on the this one. I read all the reviews and decided not to purchase this. My friend pulled out a VHS copy and said don't believe everything you read. He could not have been more correct. Yes the close up camera work, lack of long shots, cheesey special effects, and the campy documentary style are a little annoying and yet somewhat amusing. Remember though, this was 1968. What you'll miss if you don't see this is an performance by three geniuses Ginger Baker's drum solo alone is enough to own this. You will have to think out of the box a little to get through the "ancient special effects" but, if it really annoys you that much just close your eyes and listen to perhaps the best jam band ever.

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Better than nothing
Much of what I could contribute has already been said about this DVD. The editors even had Clapton change from a 335 to a Firebird in the middle of a solo. I knew he was good, but seriously folks!! In spite of all the drawbacks, it is the most complete record we have of a Cream concert in a large venue. However, there is room for hope! PLEASE, if anyone out there with the wherewithall will listen. Please record all nights of the upcoming Albert Hall series of concerts and release a box DVD set including every performance, plus rehearsal footage in a pristine, unaltered form using state of the art recording equipment!! This is the one and only way out of this disaster. What do you say? we're listening.........and waiting...and listening.

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The only good document of Cream there is.
First , I have to agree with the crfiticisms of this production on face value. Yes I ,too , hate the no value added film and echo effects that the Brit twits of docu-cinematograhpy of the time simply *had* to include to make it oh so much more *psychedelic*. ELP's performance of " Pictures at an Exhibition" was forever defaced to a far ,far, worse and probably *irrepairable* degree since what remians are the master cuts. ( The only true shining example from the time on how it *could* be done *right* remains " Yessongs" .) <
> That said one still can *not* forget *when* this BBC documentary was made ( and yes, it is a documentary done in the clinical style that Monty Python often mercilessly lampooned to within an inch of its life ) and filmmaking itself was becoming a kind of perfromance art all until itself. <
> Now, with all of this very deserved criticism , I still must offer a protest to make the case that ,even with the short comings of the cinema-documnetarian's bad choices of the time , it is still *the* best surviving document of Cream LIVE. It more than captures the sheer energy of improvization and never-before seen levels of musician mastery arising from the Brit Rock era that grew out of the post Brit Pop invasion ( the Beatles & the Stones who were *NEVER* the level of musicians that this 2nd wave of Brit virtuosos produced ). Not much else survives. <
> Please remmeber to blame the Pop Celebrity Culture , that we oh so suffer with to this very day , for all of the over-indulgent tight close-ups on the faces of Cream. This was before " Woodstock" challenegd the Pop Rock music marketing machinery whose rabid uber-spawn is "still braindead-after-all-these-year-MTV today"( " Unplugged" was still MTV's *only* good idea and look where it's gone ). <
> Meanwhile this is Cream at their most totally *plugged-in* LIVE and one should tke pause that even this meager document exists at all. The sheer musicanship & on-the-spot creative white heat fever ( unfortunately heroin-fed ) is all there writ large. It's a glimpse of just what virtuoso musicinaship "was" ; something that hasn't existed in what passes for music for atleast 20 years. <
> Suffice it to say that when someone really young who shows some genuine appreciation for musicianship , and admits that their utter starvation for it led them off the seemingly endless Post-punk/Grunge/Tharsh-Rap dead-end reservation , is a guest at our house I pull out just 4 DVD's and " Cream's Farfewell Concert" is usually the first that I play on our 61" hitachi HD screen. It gives me the greatest thrill to see how DVD-crystalized performances such as this never fails to fire their imagination and satiate that hunger for something resembling quality done by truly master musicians. ( The other choices are Steve Howe's solo accoustic performance from " Yessongs" , Kieth Emerson's solo piano performance of " Creole dance" and then perhaps " Lucky Man " from "Live at Albert Hall" , and then sometimes I throw in some Live concert footage of Pat Metheny Group ; usually " Song for Bilbao".) <
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>So criticize the obvious if you must , but a flawed gem is still a one-of-a-kind rare gem of rare beauty nonetheless and " Cream's Farewell Concert" is just such a gem ;like captured lightening in bottle that's a crytaline time capsule of when a truly new era of rock electric virtuosity shook the world like never before. <
> Considering the absoute braindead and sloppy insipidness of 99% of what passes for musicianship today one veiwing of this makes one continue to wonder out loud where all of this inspired fire went when it was first begun to be snuffed out by London Punk. ( Yeah , that's right UK. You all killed you're own brilliant era .Thanks all round ). <
>One can only hope that Generation Y is sick of the music of the Gen Xer's and is hungry enough for something that includes the mastery of musicianship again....and this time without the damn drugs.