Crusty Clip of the Week: Cream - "Sunshine of Your Love"

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by crustcake gerf (NYC)

If one band could be pinpointed as the single most important band to the history and development of the music we so lovingly call 'heavy metal,' I doubt many would argue against the nomination of Black Sabbath. But we ought to remember that Black Sabbath really got their start as a jazz-blues band-- early on, they were covering American blues standards-- loudly-- and they were covering Blue Cheer and Jimi Hendrix and Cream.

In November of 1967, six months after Hendrix released Are You Experienced and just two months before Blue Cheer released their landmark debut, Cream unleashed their second album upon the world.

That album, Disraeli Gears, found the world's first supergroup heading away from their blues roots and in a more psychedelic direction. The most celebrated song from the album is "Sunshine of Your Love," a tune with which crustcake's readers are surely familiar.

Cream - "Sunshine of Your Love":



It is in songs like "Sunshine of Your Love" and Blue Cheer's "Doctor Please" [MP3] that we first hear the precursor to that which truly embodies 'heavy metal'-- there's something in the riffs of these two songs that sounds fundamentally different from the blues-rock which birthed it. Cream and Blue Cheer were on to something, but it wouldn't be until Black Sabbath's early 1970 eponymous debut that heavy metal truly came into its own.

Download: Cream - "Sunshine of Your Love" [MP3]
Buy: Disraeli Gears [Amazon]