Cream followed up their 1967 masterpiece with this double album, which featured a disc of live recordings, and, strangely, zero Clapton compositions. But what it lacks in Clapton, it makes up for in scope.

If you aren’t already familiar with it, opener White Room is a psychedelic masterpiece, with its baroque intro coda, roar-to-falsetto lead vocals, and Clapton’s perma-solo. It’s followed by the mega-blues of Sitting on the Top of the World, which is in turn followed by Passing the Time, which is Ginger Baker’s psych-absurdism in its opus. His warbling Cockney is accompanied by glockenspiel and cello, until the song turns and the three headed monster called Cream transforms the song with a proto-punk fury far ahead of psych-blues’ time. As You Said is an acoustic and strings affair free of pounding drums or fuzzed guitar or bass-as-rhythm-guitar that Cream did so well. But surprisingly, As You Said ends up being one of the shining stars in Cream’s catalogue. Side two isn’t as impressive, but it’s not terrible. Although some might have trouble listening through the storybook spoken word of Pressed Rat and Warthog. Clapton contributes the blues standard Born Under a Bad Sign (which I passed over, as it was skipping too much), but the final track, Deserted Cities of the Heart, is another gem of Jack Bruce psychedelia.

The live disc shows Cream in their element–only one of the four songs is under five minutes long, and two are over sixteen. Words are few, solos are long, and blues influence is predominant–especially the harmonica led Traintime. Toad is the only exception, with its thirteen minute drum solo bordering on free jazz. Nothing here rivals the studio recordings (though Toad comes closest), but it does show a group of wildly talented individuals who brought out the best in one another.