Cream - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1966-1967

The vast majority of the Cream BBC performances here have been officially released. Unfortunately, the versions on the band's official BBC album don't sound very good. A blogger named Prof Stoned has found and mixed much better unreleased versions of the same performances. So I've used his versions whenever possible.

I don't like having more than one version of the same song on one album, unless they're very different from each other. In total, there's enough material for three BBC albums. So I took the best versions of each song and used those to make up Volumes 1 and 2. Then all the other versions of songs, sometimes with lower sound quality, were put on a third album called "More BBC Sessions." The end result is that the sound quality for this volume is generally excellent.

All but one of the songs here are from actual BBC sessions. Surprisingly, there's no BBC version of "White Room," one of the band's best known songs. However, I found an unreleased studio version that's quite good, so I've included it. I find it interesting that this version dates from July 1967, which would have given the band plenty of time to include it on their "Disraeli Gears" album released in November 1967. However, they kept tinkering with it and didn't release it until their "Wheels of Fire" album in June 1968.

"Rollin' and Tumblin'" has "[Edit]" in the title due to the usual problem of BBC DJs talking over the music. I was able to fix this using the X-Minus audio editing program. Luckily, that was the only song affected like that on this album (though there's a bunch more on Volume 2).

"Sunshine of Your Love" is edited for a different reason. The version available has excellent sound quality, but it stopped before the proper end point, during the last part of the last chorus. So I patched in a section from earlier in the song to finish off that chorus. Then it fades out using the same chords that followed the first appearance of the chorus earlier in the song. A fade out isn't an ideal way to end the song, since the band finished it differently, but using the ending from a different version would have had its own problems. As it is, this edit only affects about the last 15 seconds of the song.

This album is 51 minutes long. 

01 Sweet Wine (Cream)
02 Wrapping Paper (Cream)
03 Steppin' Out [Instrumental] (Cream)
04 Sleepy Time Time (Cream)
05 Rollin' and Tumblin' [Edit] (Cream)
06 Crossroads (Cream)
07 Cat's Squirrel (Cream)
08 Traintime (Cream)
09 Hey Lawdy Mama (Cream)
10 I'm So Glad (Cream)
11 I Feel Free (Cream)
12 Four until Late (Cream)
13 N. S. U. (Cream)
14 Toad [Instrumental] (Cream)
15 Strange Brew (Cream)
16 Tales of Brave Ulysses (Cream)
17 White Room (Cream)
18 Sunshine of Your Love [Edit] (Cream)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15904628/Crea_1966-1967_BBSessionsVolume1_atse.zip.html

The album cover uses a photo of the band playing on the TV show "Ready Steady Go," in November 1966. Note how unusual it is that the drums were out in front, as if they were the lead instrument.