By Steve Newton
Eric Clapton freaks who think the legendary guitarist did his best work in the seventies–on vinyl!–will be happy to know that a six-piece vinyl-only box set, The Live Album Collection 1970-1980, will hit stores March 25.
Universal Music Canada announced the package today, describing it as a companion piece to the nine-piece vinyl-only box set The Studio Album Collection 1970-1981, which was released in January.
The Live Album Collection includes 1973’s Derek & the Dominos in Concert, Eric Clapton’s Rainbow Concert (also from ’73), 1975’s E.C. Was Here, and 1980’s Just One Night.
The biggest treat in the collection, in my books, is Derek & the Dominos in Concert, which was recorded at New York’s Fillmore East in 1970, and features Clapton in the company of keyboardist Bobby Whitlock, bassist Carl Radle, and drummer Jim Gordon. (Yeah I know, it would’ve been wicked to have one-time Domino Duane Allman sitting in, but them’s the breaks.)
The album boasts such gems as “Blues Power”, “Let It Rain”, and my personal fave, “Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad?”
In other Slowhand news, he’s got a new studio album, I Still Do, due out on May 20. It’s his 23rd studio album, the followup to 2014’s Eric Clapton & Friends: The Breeze, An Appreciation of JJ Cale, which made my Top 10 album list that year.
