Eric Clapton & Steve Winwood - "Live From Madison Square Garden"

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.

Eric Clapton - "The Cream of Clapton"

This is the first Eric Clapton CD I ever owned; my grandparents bought it for me at I think a store called something like SunCoast. As I would come to find after purchasing this compilation and then listening to other Clapton albums, he actually was best on individual songs. With the exception of the "Layla" album and arguably his first couple solo albums; Clapton has a mass of excellent songs but a large amount of just average albums. That is why this compilation is nearly perfect, not only does it focus on Clapton's most successful years it also gives the hits from the different groups Clapton performed with not only solo work.

There are five Cream tracks, basically the most famous songs the band recorded in their short career. There is "Presence of the Lord" the only Clapton composition on Blind Faith's only album. Two cuts from the "Layla" album including the classic title track. And finishing off with eleven of Clapton's biggest solo hits including, "Wonderful Tonight," "I Shot the Sheriff" and "After Midnight." Sure there are missing later hits like "Tears in Heaven" and "Change the World," but why carp? If you are a listener who wants more Clapton than is presented here but is unwilling to search through his individual albums the double disc compilation "Complete Clapton" may be more your style.

This one though is pretty hard to beat all his best songs, several pages of liner notes from Clapton biographer Ray Coleman and a number of old pictures from the years. All in all an excellent compilation for an excellent artist