Eric Clapton – Journey Of Faith (Tricone 067/068)

Journey Of Faith (Tricone 067/068)
Rainbow Hall, Nagoya, Japan – December 10th, 1990

Disc1 (70:47):  Introduction – Pretending – No Alibis – Running On Faith – I Shot The Sheriff – White Room – Can’t Find My Way Home – Bad Love – Before You Accuse Me – Old Love.

Disc2 (60:52):  Badge – Wonderful Tonight – band introduction – Cocaine – A Remark You Made – Layla – Boom Boom – Crossroads – Sunshine Of Your Love.

Tricone treat us to a well known performance but this treatment comes in form of an excellent uncirculated tape which always is a very good news for collectors. Previously released as “By Your Side”, “Journey Of Faith” is definitely an upgrade: the audio quality is excellent and music wise we get the complete show!!

Pretending presages a good show and that is confirmed by the time Clapton plays No Alibis, stealing the song with a couple of energetic guitar solos. Sheriff is followed by White Room and both are brilliant renditions. Clapton sings the latter with a kind of a lazy feel but needless to say it’s the guitar outro on the wah-wah the thing that pays my attention.

At this point Clapton switches to a gut-string guitar and lets Nathan East sing the lead vocals on the enigmatic Can’t Find My Way Home. At the end of the song Clapton acknowledges Nathan East and the tapes fades out right after. We are lucky it fades in just in time for Bad Love. All band members take their turns on an extended version of Before You Accuse Me but guitars are prominent here, with Phil Palmer’s solo being sandwiched between two solid leads by Clapton.

Old Love is the last song from the Journeyman album that is performed tonight. Clapton plays a great first solo which is then followed by some piano work from Greg Phillinganes and a melodic bass solo from Nathan East.

Badge is performed flawlessly. It segues into a ten-minute version of Wonderful Tonight. With a long intro, it takes Clapton more than two minutes to start singing the first verse. Katie Kissoon’s fantastic two-minute vocal improvisation on the outro was a refreshing addition to the song at the time. The guitar solo on Cocaine is handled by Phil Palmer and Clapton also stands back  on the second half of the song, where keyboards reign.

Listening to Layla it might well have been that Clapton was charging batteries during the previous song…. because the solo he plays is fantastic! The encore consists of an in-promptu version of John Lee Hooker’s Boom Boom that is used as a vehicle to Crossroads.

A fantastic version of Sunshine Of Your Love closes the show. The fact that he is not mentioned during the introduction of the band and the fact that Sunshine Of Your Love is a little bit shorter than usual (but still clocking at 10+ minutes!), leads me to think Ray Cooper did not perform that night… but to be honest, I don’t miss him much!! Instead we get some bonus guitar playing from Clapton which is far from being a bad deal!!!

“Journey Of Faith” is packaged in Tricone’s usual double slimline jewel case with nice inserts which on the other hand, do not feature any new picture. Still this is the best tape of this show to have surfaced so far and is of course worth having.