Starting in the year 2000 Eric Clapton began teaming up or reuniting with musicians left and right. He Recorded albums with B.B. King and J.J. Cale, he did live performances with Jeff Beck, John Mayer and Wyclef Jean. He even reunited with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker for a Cream reunion tour. And so here we have it a reunion of Clapton and Steve Winwood the two major players of the short lived supergroup Blind Faith. The pair reunited after nearly 40 years of separation to do a series of concerts from which this double live album was culled.This is an interesting album because not only is this the closest anyone has come to a Blind Faith Live Album, it also largely abandons the most popular songs by either artist. Clapton's biggest hits like "Layla" and "Wonderful Tonight" are absent as are Winwood's "Higher Love" and "Back in the High Life." This is not a bad thing, it actually allows to pair to show off their musical talent much more. The album features Blind Faith's entire album (minus "Sea of Joy" for some unknown reason) then there are a bunch of Traffic songs and finally there are a lot of covers, which are given fine renditions. This is one of Clapton's better live albums and Winwood's first non-Traffic live recording. As with most Clapton live recordings there is no banter with the audience and aside from the applause you would not know there is an audience. There are no liner notes, which is disappointing, the CD booklet contains a few pictures from the concert. But this no frills approach is probably designed to make you purchase the same name DVD Documentary that explains more about the shows.
Winwood is in Strong voice and he plays the keyboards and acoustic guitar wonderfully. Clapton also sound excited about performing as he pulls out a number of strong guitar solos. Many of the songs here do not appear on Clapton's other live albums so this is the only place to find them. If you are a fan of Blind Faith, Traffic and/or the two artists this is a very good live recording.
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