While never setting any ‘loudest concert’ world records, Cream were undoubtedly one of the most deafening rock bands of their day, awing onlookers with Marshall amp stacks at a time when the term ‘heavy metal’ meant, well, literal heavy metal.
During their incredibly brief run – barely two-and-a-half years, from 1966 to late 1968 – Cream essentially invented the concept of the rock power trio, while injecting an improvisational, free-form approach to blues standards that helped invent the ‘blues-rock’ genre as we know and understand it today.
