CITIES OF THE HEART

This double CD set was recorded at Jack Bruce's fiftieth birthday concert. It features a host of musicians that he had played with throughout the years, as well as his two sons, Jonas and Malcolm on guitar and keyboards. The recording quality is extremely good, the bass and drums have quite a bit of punch, as they should on a Jack Bruce album. The set list is culled from most periods of Bruce's long career up until then, with the best known Cream songs saved for the end, when Ginger Baker was on stage.

Progressively, the album gets a somewhat low rating, as there is a lot of blues and simple rock songs. The highlights are Bird Alone, a jazzy song, that was written when Bruce requested a song from lyricist Pete Brown in honor of Charlie Mingus, and got one in honor of Charlie Parker instead, Never Tell Your Mother She's Out Of Tune, one of my favorite Bruce songs, with a cool staccato horn section, and Life On Earth.

For a rock album, I would rate this five stars, but as prog, I can only give it four.