Cream - Sitting On Top Of The World live 23 march 1968

Cream
Shapiro Athletic Center
Brandeis University
Waltham, MA
March 23, 1968
Mono Cassette Master/Source Tape Transfer via JEMS
1644 Mastered Edition

JEMS is pleased to present a fresh transfer direct from the original master/source cassettes of another historic Cream performance. Brandeis University is the companion to our recent release from Boston's Back Bay Theatre. It was recorded by the same taper and despite being captured on one of the earliest portable cassette recorders and how loud the band was presumably playing, Brandeis, like Back Bay, delivers remarkably good quality for such an early audie.

This important recording now sounds even that much better, thanks to an azimuth-adjusted transfer made from the original 3M and Mercury Records cassette tapes on which the performance was recorded, the condition of which was remarkable for being more than 53 years old.

JEMS received the Brandeis show about a month ago from a trusted east coast collector we've known for many years. Our anonymous pal told us the actual cassette came into his possession over 30 years ago, handed off to him for "safekeeping and distribution." The Brandeis tape was then copied and traded "numerous times" in the analog era.

The physical tapes themselves have all the hallmarks of circa 1968 blank cassette stock. 3M was one of the first magnetic tape manufacturers in the US, while the Mercury Records brand was an offshoot of Philips, the originator of the cassette format in the mid '60s. The hiss levels on the recording are also commensurate with what one would expect from a master tape.

For recordings that have been widely available on various audio mediums for decades it can be challenging to establish provenance. Given the details above, we believe this to be the Brandeis master tapes and/or the source from which all known copies of the show originate. Prior to our transfer, the tapes were copied to DAT then CD-R sometime in the 1990s, the likely source of the versions currently found on torrent sites and extant bootlegs.

As with Back Bay, this new transfer of Brandeis materially enhances the clarity and fidelity of previous incarnations, as simple as the lows are lower, the highs are higher and the instrument separation in particular is markedly improved. It sounds more musical, too, like a layer of dust has been wiped off. Samples provided.

Given the historic nature of this Cream master recording, we are presenting it in two versions:

2496 Flat Transfer to which no mastering has been applied, only pitch and channel alignment/adjustment.

1644 Mastered Edition, which we believe polishes this gem to sound its best.

The Brandeis performance is the more famous of the two in part because it was reviewed by both Downbeat magazine (a rave) and Rolling Stone (a pan) from none other than Jon Landau, who found Cream's set cliche, boring and repetitive.

The show was originally scheduled to start at 8:30pm but a storm delayed Cream's plane and they didn't start playing until 2:30 am. Nonetheless the crowd waited (approximately 2500 of the 3000 according to Downbeat) and Cream returned their faith with an excellent performance. Wrote Downbeat, "If anything was worth the five-hour wait, [Cream's] set was. [Their] sound is just this side of physically tangible. It assaults, drowns, lifts, transports, and when it stops, one feels alone, insufficient somehow."

The review concluded with the following: "Cream owes its repertoire to a number of sources. It does Skip James, Muddy waters and Robert Johnson songs. Some of its instrumentalism comes from contemporary R&B players like Muddy Waters and BB King. It probably would not have been able to assimilate the blues concept without the pioneer imitative work of the Rolling Stones and Beatles. But the resulting amalgam is all Cream, and it is a moving, powerful and original sound."

JEMS is grateful to our anonymous collector friend for sending us the Brandeis and Back Bay master tapes and placing his trust in us to make final and hopefully definitive transfers of these precious documents of Cream at their peak. Thanks as well to Professor Goody who did his trademark tune-up of the recording including pitch adjustment. Last but not least, JEMS thanks our post-production leader mjk5510 for managing our queue in this busy time of year.

We hope Cream fans appreciate it as much as we do.

BK for JEMS