I-tunes roulette!

I’m not feeling particularily inspired for posting, since last night I was at a friend’s house who was playing an Eric Clapton live album that basically consisted of a bunch of Cream songs and that’s all I want to listen to right now. I haven’t listened to this stuff since, I don’t know, maybe the first year of college. There’s just something really awesome about having so much music old albums can feel all new again. Anyway, because of that, I have to post at least one Cream song and one random one to make up for it.

Cream – Tales of Brave Ulysses [get Disraeli Gears, with the cover painted by Martin Sharp, who helped write this song]

I went to college for classical languages (greek and latin), so naturally this song appealed to me. It’s about Homeric hero Ulysses (latin name) or more commonly Odysseus (greek) from the Oddysey. The song really only refers to the Oddysseus story, but Eric Clapton wrote it after a trip to Greece and presumably under the influence of something as indicated by the lyrics. It’s just rambly and full of pretty phrases. The guitar work is very distorted and the heavy drumming seem a little at odds with the “prettiness”, but that’s Cream. Because it’s a three member dealie, there’s a bit of heaviness everywhere puntuated with empty sound that really shows off their blues/jazz influence more than the lush productions of other rock groups at the time. Anybody can do a wailing bluesy solo, not everyone can get the mood right.

Random song time! I played a bit of I-tunes roulette and came up with

Steve Martin – I’ve got a special purpose/Thermos song (from the movie “The Jerk”) [get the movie]

Ah, good stuff. I love this song so very, very much. I’ve got a version of it done my favorite local band, Jump Little Children, that I’ll post next time. But behold the original in all it’s glory!