The Fire's Still There

In the days of vinyl, it was accepted as a truism that when a band released a double album, a fantastic single album could be made from the material. If that was true for LPs, then it ought to apply double in the case of CDs. This is a live double CD, Eric Capton and Steve Winwood Live At Madison Square Garden ( in 2008 / 9 )and in fact it would make a superb one and a half CDs. It is not too much of a hardship to put up with the disposable half a disk of routine run throughs. Clapton and Winwood have known each other for 45 years but have only recently teamed up again for the first time since the short lived Blind Faith debacle. They do in fact complement each other very well. Winwood is the stronger singer in his Ray Charles style and it is a delight to hear the neglected sound of the Hammond organ played so effectively. He occasionally joins Clapton for duelling guitar bouts, most tellingly on Can't Find My Way Home. The material is taken from the back catalogue of Traffic and Blind Faith and Clapton's Derek and the Dominoes period ( thankfully no Layla ) and a couple from more recent solo albums. Perhaps the main reasons for investing in this set though are the two blistering blues workouts, Otis Rush's Double Trouble where Clapton's vocal is to be heard to best advantage and especially an epic version of Hendrix's Voodoo Chile. If there is a suspicion on one or two of the journeyman uptempo numbers that Clapton is going through the motions while playing through the changes, these two tracks remind any doubters what an electrifying and emotional blues guitarist he is. These two long tracks make time stand still, as was once memorably written on the sleeve notes of the Bluesbreakers' Beano album.