by Danny Coleman
originally published on Rock On! This Week’s Sound Bites (NewJerseyStage.com)
“Yes, we have Rob Johnson who is Ginger Baker’s sister’s grandson so it’s kind of Ginger’s great nephew which is really confusing to me so, I always just think of it as Ginger’s sister’s grandson,” laughed Malcolm Bruce as he elaborated on several area shows, the future of The Sons of Cream and his philosophical outlook on today’s culture environment.
Currently on the road with what he says is, “A band paying tribute, we’re not a tribute band,” the son of legendary bassist Jack Bruce, along with the Kofi Baker, son of Ginger Baker and the above described nephew Rob Johnson are continuing the legacy of their bloodline with two area shows. The first is on February 28 in Sellersville, PA at the Sellersville Theater and March 3 in Millville, NJ at the Levoy Theatre and according to Malcolm, things are beginning to change a bit, making these current shows some of their last in this format.
“There is a Cream mode at the moment, we have a couple of Blind Faith songs in the set which is nice; it’s all based on improvising and we’re just stretching the material out but since we last spoke, we signed a record deal with Marshall Records which is part of the Marshall Amp family,” stated Bruce. “They have a record label based in the UK that’s doing some great things and they’ve signed us to a deal and we’re doing a record called, “Half and Half” playing on the Cream concept (Laughs) and it’s six Cream songs and six original songs. So, we’re almost finished with it, we’re mixing it at the moment and so it will be out later this year and then I think that’s when the set will start changing; we’ll start doing original music. So, it’s exciting, we haven’t written songs that sound like Cream, we’re not intentionally going about it that way so that it’s a kind of retro sound or anything like that, we’ve just allowed ourselves to write and see what worked together and yeah, we’re excited about it. I think the next stage of this project will be to get the record out, advance some singles and really build it to the next level so yeah, we’re excited.”
Will deviating from the Cream music and possibly going away from their families’ legacy down the road have a negative impact on ticket sales or alienate an aging fan base? Bruce and the band don’t seem to think so.
“I’m a composer in my own right, I’m a songwriter, I write classical music; I have lots of aspirations and when Kofi approached me shortly after the Cream reunion with this opportunity and said, “I want to do this, let’s go on the road and do it,” initially it was a way for us to honor our legacy but as an artist, I’m always looking for ways to move forward; I don’t want to do my dad’s music forever. I love my dad, I respect him, I admire him and you know, this is a business so it is part of the fabric of tradition. We all come through music by learning from the masters. Whether I’m sitting at the piano practicing Johann Sebastian Bach or listening to Charlie Parker; we’re sharing a language and to learn that language we work with the past but I think we don’t want to get stuck in the past either. The generation that loved Cream are getting older, we’re all getting older (Laughs) so there is only so much leverage; I’ll always love what my dad achieved, not just with Cream, he had a 55 year career and Cream was together for less than three years. He’s best known as a member of Cream and their singer and whatever but he did so much more. So, we’re partly tradition and we’ve been doing this band off and on for a while and apart from Kofi, we’ve had some different lineups; this feels like the best, most organic, strongest and most durable lineup so far. Rob is a great guy, he’s a younger guy who brings a different kind of energy who is not really a blues artist; he comes from a different sort of place and everything just feels right and this opportunity presented itself but we don’t want to contrive it. Everything in this business is so contrived, right? Everyone is reading off a script; it has all gotten out of hand, the actual artistry has disappeared, it’s now just kind of, how do I get the algorithm to push me into people’s ears or into their minds? The whole thing has been insane, the whole world has gone a little bit crazy. So, maybe in our own way, we can bring back a little bit of authenticity to the artistry in the same way Cream did. When Cream was around, they were something different, they were letting it all hang out, they were playing, they were actually playing (Laughs). I think, without sounding arrogant about it either, that’s what this is based on; what can we do that has a bit of authenticity to it rather than being contrived or based on a model that is algorithmic by design? We plotted our album on a graph (Laughs) and the first song should sound like this and the second song should sound like this and the BPM of this song; it’s a bit crazy the whole thing at the moment. So, I don’t know, how do we please everybody? I think people who love Cream have an openness in their heart and people who really generally love that music understand the potentiality with it; they say, “It’s not just a song, it’s actually expressing something” and it’s not necessarily a specific form of expression, it’s kind of an abstract form of expression and if you can go with that, music can change your life, it’s evolution with a spiritual aspect, a sacred aspect to music making. I think the best music will change people for the better and it can open people up to a sense of possibility but it’s abstract so even a great pop song can do that, I’m not saying only Cream music can do that (Laughs). So yeah, I think seeing where this takes us without overthinking it is the best way to go with creativity and not try to contrive something before the fact and the fact that it’s the three of us performing and on the record without trying to write music that sounds like Cream, hopefully there is a kind of thread that runs through it because it’s the three of us in the same way that Jack, Eric and Ginger had that. My favorite record is “Fresh Cream” the mono version and if you listen to that record it’s just unbelievable with all of the different influences on that record. Cream was kind of thought of as a blues rock band but they were so much more; Scottish folk music and classical elements, Ginger playing African polyrhythms and Eric kind of whaling the blues but it was psychedelic blues it wasn’t straight blues, even though he was a purist, kind of, I think that’s been an overused meme as it were about Eric himself whether he was aware of it or not. I think he was so much more, it’s the personality that shines through rather than it being what people expected, they were completely unexpected and again, whether they were conscious of that or not, they were just making music, the three of them together so, I don’t think we’re trying to overthink it too much; maybe the men in suits will do that for us (Laughs).”
When told that there have been social media posts saying things like, “In 100 years, nobody will remember your name” amongst others and that today’s generations don’t realize or remember bands from the 1960s, ’70s or possibly even the ’80s, he laughed and made several great points; especially about an uncertain future.
“1966 was when they released their first album but I think we are already at that point. A few years ago when McCartney was hanging out with Kanye West; it’s Paul McCartney and people were like, “Who is the old guy standing next to Kanye?” C’mon man (Laughs), he’s only the most famous songwriter on the planet of all time! He’s more famous than Shubert, this guy has written hundreds of incredible songs and certainly five or 10 of the most famous songs of all time and they didn’t know who he was. We can blame the education system or we can blame the Rockefellers infiltrating; I don’t want to get into specifics about it but the education system was dumbed down but it’s also awareness, it’s consciousness. How aware are we as individuals in terms of where is our focus? Are we all completely out of our minds on pharmaceuticals that we can’t even think straight? Are we all just watching television so that we get a particular version of reality that’s not very real? Now, more and more we have this kind of AI algorithmic element so that if you don’t like Donald Trump it’ll show you more videos of people not liking Donald Trump to reinforce that and if you like Donald Trump, it’ll show you more videos to reinforce that but of course, at the core of humanity we are spiritual. We are liberated but we’re not necessarily cognatively functioning on that level. So, it’s a very interesting time, if we want to take it to that absolute level, go with only consciousness. So, all of time, space, conceptualization, The Beatles, Rolling Stones or whatever, writing and consciousness doesn’t exist separate from the ways of us. So, we can’t prove that it continues anyway, we are in the mind of God everywhere, this is a good mind experience, there is only the divine and everything rises from that. Then we fell into the intellect to such a degree that we’re not experiencing it in that way anymore. We’re experiencing it in pain, struggle, difficulty, up, down, left, right, good and bad, I’m right, you’re wrong and all of that and these aspects of experience that are false. They’re falsehoods because the truth is that it is exactly as it is, not meant to be or not, not meant to be and then we try to control it or own it and it doesn’t really matter. Yes, in the story of life unfolding, we still talk about Monte Verde but history is very short. The recorded aspect of history, we can only go back a few hundred years, music probably eleventh or twelfth century is where we might have some stuff written down in some rudimentary very different version of notation and now we’re reaching the exponential point where AI may takeover everything, humans become transhumans, technology becomes infiltrated with the human physiology. That’s the psychopathic element that the oligarchy may want for us and we may not want that but we may not have a choice and then, who cares about The Beatles or YES because it’s just actually AI talking to other AI going, “Yeah, we think humans had these other emotions but were not quite sure because we’ve never had them so we don’t really know what that’s all about.”
Small venues such as these are absolutely perfect for an up close and intimate experience such as Sons of Cream and Bruce says to be prepared for several hours of great music.
“It depends on a number of factors; if there is an opening act, we shorten it to maybe an hour-and-a-half, if we have the whole show it’s usually two to two-and-a-half hours, two hours and 15 or something like that. If the venue wants us to take a break and do two sets, it’s usually an hour and an hour and 15 with encores; we can easily play for three hours or more. Our tour manager is a songwriter so he’ll usually do a three or four song opening set, so we’re one big family here in the snow on the east coast of the United States (Laughs).”
To discover more about The Sons of Cream or purchase tickets for the area shows, please visit www.SonsOfCream.com