Blues-rock legends Jack Bruce, bassist for the ground-breaking 1960s-era band Cream, and guitarist Robin Trower, a long-ago member of British rockers Procol Harum and a successful solo artist, have teamed up once again to release their first live CD and DVD together. Drummer Gary Husband, a veteran of Gary Moore's band, rounds out the power trio.
Seven Moons Live was recorded in February 2009 in front of a raucous, enthusiastic audience in Nijmegen, Holland. The twelve-track album features eight songs from the pair's 2008 studio album, the song "Carmen" from the 1981 B.L.T. disc, and new versions of three classic Cream songs - "Sunshine of Your Love," "White Room," and "Politician" - all originally written by Bruce back during the late-1960s. Music Video Distributors will also be releasing a DVD of the performance.
Jack Bruce & Robin Trower
Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Jack Bruce (with Cream) has over four decades of experience playing nearly every style of music imaginable, from earthy British blues with John Mayall and Alexis Korner to blues-rock with Cream and West, Bruce & Laing; from jazz and jazz-fusion with Tony Williams Lifetime and John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra; to pop with Manfred Mann and Donovan.
The blues-rock guitar legend Robin Trower needs no introduction. A former member of the acclaimed British band Procol Harum, during the 1970s Trower recorded ground-breaking and acclaimed psychedelic blues-rock albums like Bridge of Sighs and Long Misty Days. During the 1980s, Trower largely dropped the Hendrix-inspired psychedelic edge to his music and turned his skills towards even more of a bluesy sound, and in the decades since has become one of the blues-rock genre's favorite instrumentalists.
Seven Moons Live
Jack Bruce and Robin Trower first joined forces in 1980, recording a pair of critically-acclaimed albums, including 1981's B.L.T. which would scrape the bottom of the Billboard Top 40 album chart. The two would get back together in 2008 to record Seven Moons, a well-received collection of original blues-rock tunes penned by the pair, featuring Bruce's mournful vocals and fluid bass lines, and Trower's shimmering fretwork.
"Carmen," from the first Bruce/Trower collaboration B.L.T., opens with a brilliant Trower intro. The slow-paced ballad is part romantic opera and part bluesy dirge, with Trower's rich guitar tone, Bruce's mournful vocals and sparse bass play, and Husband's shimmering cymbals and subtle drumbeats. Trower's song-closing solo is appropriately tearful - considered, deliberate, and highly emotional.
So Far To Yesterday
From the Seven Moons album, "So Far To Yesterday" sounds like a throwback to the early-1960s, the song approximating the blues-infused British pop of Eric Burdon and the Animals. Bruce mimics Chas Chandler's inventive bass rhythm, the song's melody is a complicated mix of unvarnished garage-pop and swaggering early period British blooze-rock. If the Animals lacked a guitarist of Trower's status, no matter, because his solos here are short, shocking, and quite hypnotizing.
When Bruce and Trower do take a trip back in time some forty years to revisit the Cream catalog, the results are predictably impressive. Beneath Bruce's familiar bass riff, Trower embroiders a raw, tough-as-nails solo on "Sunshine Of Your Love." The guitarist's instrument screams like a bird of prey descending on the unsuspecting audience and the song's big finish, with an extended instrumental crescendo, leaves the crowd speechless.
Entering the White Room
If the Bruce/Trower take on "Sunshine Of Your Love" was stunning, the band's cover of Cream's "White Room" is beyond adjectives. Bruce's well-worn bass riff and familiar vocals are complimented by the song's majestic soundtrack. Although Trower plays by the Clapton blueprint for much of the song, when he cuts loose with his cosmic solo, he takes ol' Slowhand's original outline into the stratosphere, bending strings and tearing off notes effortlessly, as if he's experiencing a dervish-like trance. Backed by Bruce's raging four strings and Husband's sledgehammer drumbeats, the guitarist transcends the song's classic rock roots and transforms it into something truly magical.
The band encores with the lesser-known Bruce composition "Politician," the song nearly hidden on Cream's classic Wheels of Fire album. Its circular bass riff and foreboding lyrics are a fine example of the sort of mid-decade musical experimentation that used to be commonplace during the late 1960s. Trower rides his axe hard, delivering a scorched solo with plenty of blues heart and electric soul while Husband bangs the cans like the family business is at risk. "Get into my big black car," indeed....
The Reverend's Bottom Line
Make no mistake about it, the songs on Seven Moons Live are an instrumental showcase for these three musician's incredible skills. Jack Bruce and Robin Trower have both long passed by a respectable retirement age, but both men retain fierce chops and display a remarkable joy in the simple act of pure music-making. There's nothing left to prove for either of them, no commercial expectations or exercises in career-building...just music.
The songs documented by Seven Moons Live are a brilliant fusion of electric blues and hard rock, delivering a breathtaking showcase of instrumental virtuosity that will entertain and enthrall any listener that enjoys guitar-driven blues-rock performances. (Ruf Records, released October 13, 2009)
Seven Moons Live Track Listing
1. Seven Moons
2. Lives of Clay
3. Distant Places of the Heart
4. Sunshine of Your Love
5. Carmen
6. So Far to Yesterday
7. Perfect Place
8. Bad Case of Celebrity
9. The Last Door
10. Come to Me
11. White Room
12. Politician
