Eric Clapton - "Edge of Darkness"

Happy New Year!

In 1985, Eric Clapton released one album, Behind the Sun, and one EP, Edge of Darkness, which was a soundtrack for a British TV series of the same name.

The recording sessions for Behind the Sun included six tracks that weren't on the album. Since the Edge of Darkness EP also included six tracks, it seemed to me that a complete album could have been released if all of the dozen tracks had been collected together.

SIDE A

1. Edge of Darkness

2. Loving Your Lovin'

3. Shoot Out

4. Heaven Is One Step Away

5. Obituary

6. Too Bad

SIDE B

1. Escape from Northmoor

2. Jailbait

3. Oxford Circus

4. You Don't Know Like I Know

5. Northmoor

6. One Jump Ahead of the Storm

There are a few ways you can go when combining the songs. You can have all the tracks from one project on one side of the album, and the rest on the other side. Or you can intermingle them in some way. The tracks from the soundtrack are all instrumentals, and I liked the idea of intermingling them with the songs with vocals. I think it both breaks up the two groups and manages to tie the whole album together.

I opened the album with the title track "Edge of Darkness." It's a very cool, atmospheric track and I think it acts as a nice beginning that also puts the spotlight on Clapton's guitar playing.

The next track is "Loving Your Lovin'," which was featured on the Wayne's World soundtrack. From there, we alternate as stated between instrumentals and the leftover Behind the Sun songs. I think the instrumentals make for interesting, dark interludes. "Heaven is a Step Away" was originally released on the Back to the Future soundtrack and later on Clapton's Crossroads box set. "Too Bad" was also eventually released on Crossroads.

"Jailbait" was a B-side of the "She's Waiting" single. "You Don't Know Like I Know," a Sam & Dave cover, is a duet with Phil Collins and was released as a non-album single in Australia. "One Jump Ahead of the Storm" was a cover of Kiki Dee's hit. Unfortunately, Clapton's version has never been officially released and is therefore very difficult to find. Alternatively, if you discover that this track is impossible to find, you could use "Wanna Make Love to You," a B-side of the "Behind the Mask" single from the following year, and also available on Crossroads.

The rest of the songs, of course, can be found on the Edge of Darkness EP.

For a cover, "edge of darkness" made me think of a lightning storm, and that image of course goes well with the track "One Jump Ahead of the Storm." I found this dramatic lightning photo online and added words.

Cream - "Goodbye" (double album version)

Hey, it's my birthday! Let's get through this quickly so I can get back to eating cake.

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Note: I had essentially completed this entry for the blog several months ago, and added it to the queue. In the meantime, The Reconstructor created his own version of this album. I only point this out to show that this is a case of "great minds...." rather than me just piggybacking on other people's work. Enjoy.

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Cream sort of stumbled to the finish line. The band's last tour had triumphs and pitfalls, and its last album was completed with live renditions as filler. In fact, the original plan for the band's final album, Goodbye, was to have it be a double album like its predecessor Wheels of Fire -- with one disc of studio tracks and one disc of live tracks. 

However, bassist/vocalist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker often feuded, and guitarist/vocalist Eric Clapton was ready to move on to something else. So, to fulfill the band's contract, Goodbye featured just three studio tracks, and the rest of the album was filled with tracks recorded live in October 1968 at the L.A. Forum.

I decided to take a stab at creating a double album as originally envisioned.

SIDE A

1. The Clearout

2. Presence of the Lord

3. Anyone for Tennis

4. The Coffee Song

5. Lawdy Mama

6. Weird of Hermiston

7. What a Bringdown

SIDE B

1. Badge

2. Doing that Scrapyard Thing

3. Do What You Like

SIDE C

1. I'm So Glad

2. Politician

3. Rollin' and Tumblin'

SIDE D

1. N.S.U.

2. Sleepy Time Time

3. Sitting on Top of the World

Even when gathering the studio tracks from Goodbye, a non-album single track and a couple of outtakes, I found myself still not having enough songs for the studio sides. This is because, despite Cream's live interpretations of songs that could run as long as 20 minutes or more, their studio tracks were often almost comically short. So to fill out Sides A and B, I decided to raid Blind Faith's and Bruce's debut albums.

Since Blind Faith included both Clapton and Baker, as well as Steve Winwood (whom Clapton had earlier tried to bring into Cream to revitalize the band), the inclusion of a couple of their songs is not that far-fetched. The two songs I chose from Blind Faith were Clapton's "Presence of the Lord" and Baker's "Do What You Like." 

From Bruce's Songs of a Sailor solo album, I picked two tracks that had originally been intended for Cream's Disraeli Gears album: "The Clearout" and "Weird of Hermiston."

Besides "Badge," "Doing That Scrapyard Thing" and "What a Bringdown" from Goodbye, I also included "Anyone for Tennis" and "The Coffee Song," from non-album singles, and "Lawdy Mama," the one studio track on Live Cream. Tied together, these tracks make up the "studio sides" of the album.

Although a box set of live tracks recorded at four shows (Oakland, L.A., San Diego and London) during the 1968 tour was recently released, I decided to concentrate on only those tracks that were initially released from this tour. My reasoning is that the band, record company or both considered them the best of the bunch. About a year after Goodbye was released, an album with four live tracks (all recorded in March '68 in San Francisco) and one studio track (recorded in '67) was released called Live Cream.

For Sides C and D (the "live sides") of this album, I took all the live tracks from Goodbye and Live Cream, except one: "Sweet Wine." At 15:16, the song was simply too long to fit in if we were going to work within the time constraints of a vinyl album.

The final result is pretty good, I think. The Bruce and Blind Faith tracks don't jump out as being so completely different from Cream. And considering both albums came out about the same time and so very soon after Goodbye, it's reasonable to assume that they could have been included had the group lasted longer.

I kept the cover the same as the released version of the album.

Derek and The Dominos -- "One More Chance"

After the dissolution of Cream, Eric Clapton formed a supergroup called Blind Faith. But he quickly became wary of the limelight and began backing up Delanie & Bonnie and Friends. Clapton, along with other members of the band Bobby Whitlock, Carl Radle and Jim Gordon, eventually formed Derek and The Dominos. Dave Mason was also a member but quit the band before it recorded Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.

Today, Derek and The Dominos’ Layla album is considered a classic. But at the time of release, the album sold poorly and received mixed reviews. Disappointment apparently led to tension within the group. And the death of Duane Allman, who had played on the album and become a close friend of Clapton, resulted in less enthusiasm for continuing.

In a later interview, Clapton said sessions for the second album "broke down halfway through because of the paranoia and tension. And the band just ... dissolved."

While it's not possible to duplicate Layla, there is enough material to create a modest follow-up album.

A cover of T-Bone Walker’s “Mean Old World” was recorded during Layla, and “Roll It Over” was recorded live. Both were later released on The Layla Sessions.

Five songs from the aborted second album's sessions were released on Clapton’s Crossroads box set.

• One More Chance
• Mean Old Frisco
• Snake Lake Blues
• Evil
• Got to Get Better in A Little While

Another song, alternately titled “Gold Devil’s Roads” and “Devil Road” and featuring Gordon’s wife Renee Armand on vocals, has surfaced on bootlegs. 

Using these eight tracks, I organized them into what I felt sounded coherent and would equal roughly the same amount of time for both sides. 

SIDE A
1. Evil
2. Mean Old World
3. Roll It Over
4. One More Chance
5. Got to Get Better in a Little While

SIDE B
1. Mean Old Frisco
2. Snake Lake Blues
3. Gold Devil's Roads

"Evil" seemed to me to be the obvious opener. The Willie Dixon cover is the most fiery of the tracks. Since "Gold Devil's Roads" is the longest track, and has an outside lead singer, I thought it best for the closer. Overall, this is a pretty good album, I think, but it probably would have been considered a letdown after the debut.

For the cover, I took a photo of the band, "sepia-toned" it, and placed it on a wood background. I titled the album "One More Chance" after one of the tunes, as it seemed appropriate.