Cream

There has been no shortage of Cream compilations over the years – as a matter of fact, they far outnumber the group's actual albums, of which there were merely four (true, they were recorded during an insanely productive two-year lifespan) – but 2005's Gold is arguably the best of the lot. Released as part of Universal's ongoing Gold series, Cream's installment spans 29 tracks over the course of two discs, with the first CD being devoted to their studio work (it weighs in at 21 tracks) and the second devoted to live recordings (it runs only eight songs, which illustrates how much they improvised in concert).

Cream were a 1960s British rock supergroup power trio consisting of bassist/singer Jack Bruce, drummer Ginger Baker, and guitarist/singer Eric Clapton. The band is widely regarded as the world's first successful supergroup. In their career, they sold more than 15 million copies of their albums worldwide. The band made a significant impact on the popular music of the time, and, along with Jimi Hendrix and other notable guitarists and bands, popularised the use of the wah-wah pedal. They provided a heavy yet technically proficient musical theme that foreshadowed and influenced the emergence of British bands such as Led Zeppelin, The Jeff Beck Group, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath in the late 1960s and the early 1970s.

Fresh Cream represents so many different firsts, it's difficult to keep count. Cream, of course, was the first supergroup, but their first album not only gave birth to the power trio, it also was instrumental in the birth of heavy metal and the birth of jam rock…

German rockers Pink Cream 69 caught the tail-end of the '80s party-metal boom before adopting a more traditional European hard rock/power metal approach that they would cultivate into the next century. Founded in 1987 by vocalist Andi Deris, guitarist Alfred Koffler, drummer Kosta Zafiriou, and bassist Dennis Ward, the band released their eponymous debut long-player in 1989 via Epic. Deris left the group in 1994 to join Helloween, and was replaced by British vocalist David Readman, who made his first appearance on the group's fourth LP, Change. The band became a five-piece in 2003 with the arrival of second guitarist Uwe Reitenauer, who was hired to help out Alfred Koffler, who was struggling with Focal Dystonia, a neurological condition that made playing difficult - Reitenauer made his debut on 2007's In10sity…

Fresh Cream represents so many different firsts, it's difficult to keep count. Cream, of course, was the first supergroup, but their first album not only gave birth to the power trio, it also was instrumental in the birth of heavy metal and the birth of jam rock. That's a lot of weight for one record and, like a lot of pioneering records, Fresh Cream doesn't seem quite as mighty as what would come later, both from the group and its acolytes. In retrospect, the moments on the LP that are a bit unformed – in particular, the halting waltz of "Dreaming" never achieves the sweet ethereal atmosphere it aspires to – stand out more than the innovations, which have been so thoroughly assimilated into the vocabulary of rock & roll, but Fresh Cream was a remarkable shift forward in rock upon its 1966 release and it remains quite potent.