Well what goes around comes around! Start the week with a classic anti-war song from our Joe

 Country Joe & the Fish - Viet Nam Song - Live Woodstock 1969

curiously enough one of the first songs I learned by rote and sang in the local fields with legendary drummer and school friend Johny Marter we played this til our fingers bled! 

( wonder if he remembers!? You out there Johnny!) ☮️ ✌🏼

GINGER BAKER

GINGER BAKER R.I.P. 1939 - 2019

“If he’d been born earlier, he’d have been a pirate.” 

– Jay Bulger (director of ‘Beware of Mr. Baker’) whose nose Ginger broke during the filming

Ginger Baker, one of the most innovative and influential drummers in rock music, has died on October 6, 2019 at the age of 80. In September 2019, the family of Ginger Baker announced that he was critically ill and asked to keep him in their prayers. A co-founder of Cream, he also played with Blind Faith, Hawkwind and Fela Kuti in a long and varied career. His style combined the lyricism of jazz with the crude power of rock. One critic said watching him was like witnessing “a human combine harvester”. Nicknamed Ginger for his flaming red hair, he was also a temperamental and argumentative figure, whose behaviour frequently led to on-stage punch-ups.

One of rock’s first “supergroups”, Cream (together with Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton) fused blues and psychedelia to dazzling effect on songs like Strange Brew, Sunshine of Your Love, Badge and I Feel Free. They sold more than 35 million albums and were awarded the world’s first ever platinum disc for their LP Wheels of Fire. Along with the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the band expanded the vocabulary of heavy rock, especially during their incendiary live shows, where the three musicians would stretch simple riffs into long, exploratory improvisations. - BBC

It has always struck me that it was Ginger's humour that produced this Victorian Music Hall joke song . . . . . .I knew it word perfect and sang it in dedication to Ginger throughout my teenage years, mostly hanging about with the now legendary drummer himself, Johnny Marter with whom I would wander the village singing and playing guitar til our fingers bled! He became, as well as having been one of my dearest friends, one of the best natural drummers it has ever been my privilege to know. He could follow and match Ginger without difficulty. 

and 37 years later . . . . . . . 

TOAD - Ladies and Gentlemen

MR GINGER BAKER 

GOODNIGHT MR BAKER . . . . 

I was here,  a spit away from the stage . . . . . 

On this day in music history: November 2, 1967 - “Disraeli Gears”, the second album by Cream is released. Produced by Felix Pappalardi, it is recorded at Atlantic Studios in New York City in May 1967. The albums title is inspired by a conversation that drummer Ginger Baker has with Eric Clapton and one of the bands’ roadies about Clapton wanting to buy a racing bicycle. The roadie named Mick Turner comments, “it’s got them Disraeli Gears”, meaning to say “derailleur gears” instead. The title is a pun on the aforementioned “derailleur gears” and 19th century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. Recorded in just three and a half days, it spins off the classics “Sunshine Of Your Love” (#5 Pop), “Strange Brew” and “Tale Of Brave Ulysses”, and today is regarded as one of the best rock albums of the era. Though it is released in late  1967, “Disraeli Gears” is slow to take off. The singles “Strange Brew” b/w “Tale Of Brave Ulysses” and “Spoonful”, both released ahead of the album, only make a minor dent in the charts. Though it enters the Billboard pop album chart in early December of 1967, it literally takes months for it to gain momentum. Atlantic Records releases “Sunshine Of Your Love” the same month (with some early copies listing the band as “The Cream”), but intially stalls at #36 on the Hot 100 on March 2, 1968 before doing an about face and falling off the chart. It is only after the release of Cream’s next album, the epic double LP “Wheels Of Fire” does “Sunshine” come roaring back to life. It re-enters the chart at #52 on July 6, 1968 and begins its final climb into the top five, over eight months after its initial release. The single is belatedly issued in the UK in October of 1968, peaking at #25. The album is remastered and reissued on CD in 1998, followed by a double CD Deluxe Edition in 2004 featuring the original stereo and mono versions of the album with demos and outtakes included as bonus tracks. “Disraeli Gears” peaks at number four on the Billboard Top 200, is certified Platinum in the US by the RIAA, and is also inducted into the Grammy Hall Of Fame in 1999.


and yes here we go again . . . . . . bought when it came out and our gang of friends barely listened to anything else when this came out, numbering amongst those pals the legendary brilliant drummer, Johnny Marter [Mr Big et al] who could match Ginger Baker and Mitch Mitchell [and anyone else for that matter] on the drum kit and we spent many happy hours listening to him drum in his parent's garage. 
We LOVED these guys and this album . . . . . turn it up!


thanks to the most excellent Jeff Harris' blog 'Behind The Grooves 

Well I haven't posted anything from 24hour deja vu for a while but this morning they posted a classic which maybe could do with a push. Cream recordings and bootlegs or ROIO's are notoriously poor quality and the music of the late and mid sixties which is when I started collecting vinyl bootlegs are largely unplayable so I nearly didn't bother with this but boy was I wrong. If you are a Cream fan an Eric Clapton fan a Jack Bruce or Ginger Baker fan please check this out it is literally fantastic. Great quality and appears to be a soundboard. 

I dedicate this to my old school friend Jonny Marter the drummer who introduced me to the art of the drum, is amongst all those who could copy Ginger Baker's patterns by instinct while still at school and went on to play with a wide variety of bands from Mr Big to the stuff he is doing now. A truly lovely guy and one of nature's gentlemen though we have lost touch rather, I have only happy memories of our friendship. Google him he is a master of the percussive art and no mistake!
This one's for you Johnny!

Cream @ 24 Hour DejaVu here . . .