Like the cars. A blue Ford Corsair similar to the one used
in the series, used to sit on a neighbouring drive during those long ago
childhood years and most of the other makes and models pressed into ‘Gently’
service would drive up and down our road regularly. Then there are the boxes of Subbuteo left
carelessly in a child’s room and the Airfix planes and…ooh, all sorts of other
bits and pieces that are immediately recognisable. It’s all a bit spooky.
And, of course,
there is the music. 1960s music is so
recognisable. It has an aura all to
itself and it proclaims a time when the UK China
It made me think a
bit about Cream, who as the first supergroup, bestrode the earth in the mid to
late sixties like the most evolved dinosaur of their time and reconsider their
place in the scheme of things. Whilst
their music was undoubtedly rooted in the Blues, there was a strange experimental
side to them. As a band very much of
their time, they took Indian, African and oriental influences and fused them
with the western attributes of harmonic progression and odd melodies.
‘We’re Going Wrong’
is a prime example of this side of their nature – a rather disconcerting
keening vocal from Jack Bruce swoops over an atmospheric backing from Messrs
Baker and Clapton. In fact, you might
almost say that Cream are the band most representative of the second half of
the sixties, more so that the Beatles who tended to have a more scatter gun
approach to musical styles. A fusion of
the past (Blues) and the future (Prog) was at the core of Baker’s primal,
mystical percussion, Clapton’s wah-wah drenched rhythm playing and Bruce’s
melodic bass and experimental writing.
Somehow, when I
listen to them now, and especially if it is the 1968 ‘Wheels of Fire’ album, the music just
screams ‘1960s!’ and you cannot help but be transported to that era. As period pieces go, they were the Cream.
