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Eric Clapton

Eric Clapton's rebirth (or should that be Immaculate Reconception -- he was God, after all) in the early '70s remains one of the most potentially damaging knocks any rock legend has ever sustained -- and survived. One moment the man was sinking into a trough of drug-induced oblivion, a hopeless case, a hapless cause, and the biggest Whatever Happened To that you could imagine; the next he was sunning himself in Florida, reinventing his muse, redefining his magic, and rewriting the JJ Cale songbook like there was no tomorrow. Like its similarly named predecessor, Living on Blues Power, Vol. 2 is a 75-minute dip into the flurry of outtakes and oddities produced throughout that sojourn, a relaxed Clapton letting rip on the guitar which the "official" comeback album, 461 Ocean Boulevard, liked to kid us was gathering dust someplace. Bluesier than Clapton's '70s studio fare would ever become, and looser than a bedwetter's bladder, the 15 performances here are neither polished nor perfect. Some don't even have titles. The tapes simply rolled throughout hours of jamming, someone grabbed them and pressed them up -- presto, three takes of an instrumental "Crossroads," of varying lengths and depths of intensity; voila, the full seven-minute "I Shot the Sheriff," again without vocals, but still packing plenty of laid-back punch, Clapton refining with one chord all that he used to take three hours to say. Indeed, one can't help but feel that if the Powers That Be really want to anthologize Clapton, if they really want to get the Crossroads anthology series back on track, they should stop mucking around with the live stuff and the Dominoes sessions, and dig deeper into the Criteria tapes. Given some skilful remastering, and judicious juggling, this could well be the basis for one of the best albums Eric Clapton ever made. It's just a shame he doesn't know it. ~ Dave Thompson, All Music Guide