Biography
Hailing from Leicester, England, the neo-psychedelic quartet the Creams coalesced from the remains of Ruth's Refrigerator, a fleeting side project linking Alan Jenkins—the guitarist and songwriter earlier active in the Deep Freeze Mice and the Chrysanthemums—with the indie pop band Po!, distinct from both the singer-songwriter Poe and the American alt-rock group P'o. Across their eight-year span, the Creams underwent such frequent personnel and stylistic shifts that charting their trajectory proves disorienting, yet the unchanging nucleus of Jenkins and his keyboardist spouse Robin, who records as Blodwyn P. Teabag, anchored the project around his surreal and frequently comic psych-pop material.
The band's opening pair of albums appeared under the name Jody and the Creams. Their 1991 debut A Big Dog.n featured Jenkins, Teabag, guitarist Ariadne Metal-Cream Pie, drummer Jonathan Lemon (previously known as Jonathan Staines on guitar and keyboards in the Chrysanthemums' final lineup), and vocalist Ruth Miller. The follow-up, 1992's Lords of the Grommet Canning Factory, comprised two twenty-minute suites and first surfaced in a run of only twenty-five copies before a broader reissue added seventeen untitled bonus tracks; by then Miller had rejoined Po! and Sherree Lawrence, a former Deep Freeze Mice colleague of Jenkins, had taken her place.
The 1993 double album ie appeared under the billing Alan Jenkins and the Creams once the Jody device was abandoned, a designation abandoned after that release. The name stabilized definitively with 1994's The Creams and Nico, though the lineup had become chaotic: Lawrence, Lemon, and Metal-Cream Pie had departed, and while only four members are pictured on the Picasso-derived collage cover, six receive credit, among them drummer Robyn Gibson—who would occupy the stool for the remainder of the band's history—plus newcomers bassist Martin Howells (ex-Chrysanthemums), singer-violinist Alison Mackinder, and additional keyboardist Peter Pengwyn. Further complicating matters, the vinyl and CD versions share only a handful of tracks; the LP includes remakes of two earlier Chrysanthemums songs plus a twenty-two-minute piece filling side two, whereas the CD runs to twenty-five tracks, a dozen of them written by Howells, Pengwyn, or Gibson, marking the sole occasion Jenkins relinquished substantial compositional control.
Although 1995's Pluto incorporated several contributions from Howells and Gibson, the album maintains greater coherence and stands as the group's creative peak. That configuration dissolved soon after its release, yet Jenkins, Teabag, and Gibson pressed onward and never quite recaptured the same level. Enlisting bassist Howard Fairey, the reconfigured Creams issued the 1996 double-mini-CD Malcolm, containing several strong songs alongside evident filler, then promptly delivered the live set Are You Real or Just Some Sort of Disgusting Fridge Magnet?, a robust anthology drawing from every prior Creams lineup as well as select Ruth's Refrigerator and Chrysanthemums numbers.
This final lineup persisted through the remainder of the band's existence. Beyond two further live albums—1997's Net Yangers for the Pizza Froy and 1998's Fuck My Ass, both initially pressed in quantities even smaller than the first pressing of Lords of the Grommet Canning Factory—the Creams produced only one additional studio release, the 1999 forty-two-track double CD The All-Night Bookman. A wildly eclectic assortment of trippy psych-pop songs and warped noise interludes featuring input from nearly every past member, The All-Night Bookman conveys the sense of a career retrospective. The Creams disbanded shortly thereafter, prompting Jenkins and Teabag to form the Thurston Lava Tube; Jenkins later issued the solo album Free Surf Music #1 in 2000.
The band's opening pair of albums appeared under the name Jody and the Creams. Their 1991 debut A Big Dog.n featured Jenkins, Teabag, guitarist Ariadne Metal-Cream Pie, drummer Jonathan Lemon (previously known as Jonathan Staines on guitar and keyboards in the Chrysanthemums' final lineup), and vocalist Ruth Miller. The follow-up, 1992's Lords of the Grommet Canning Factory, comprised two twenty-minute suites and first surfaced in a run of only twenty-five copies before a broader reissue added seventeen untitled bonus tracks; by then Miller had rejoined Po! and Sherree Lawrence, a former Deep Freeze Mice colleague of Jenkins, had taken her place.
The 1993 double album ie appeared under the billing Alan Jenkins and the Creams once the Jody device was abandoned, a designation abandoned after that release. The name stabilized definitively with 1994's The Creams and Nico, though the lineup had become chaotic: Lawrence, Lemon, and Metal-Cream Pie had departed, and while only four members are pictured on the Picasso-derived collage cover, six receive credit, among them drummer Robyn Gibson—who would occupy the stool for the remainder of the band's history—plus newcomers bassist Martin Howells (ex-Chrysanthemums), singer-violinist Alison Mackinder, and additional keyboardist Peter Pengwyn. Further complicating matters, the vinyl and CD versions share only a handful of tracks; the LP includes remakes of two earlier Chrysanthemums songs plus a twenty-two-minute piece filling side two, whereas the CD runs to twenty-five tracks, a dozen of them written by Howells, Pengwyn, or Gibson, marking the sole occasion Jenkins relinquished substantial compositional control.
Although 1995's Pluto incorporated several contributions from Howells and Gibson, the album maintains greater coherence and stands as the group's creative peak. That configuration dissolved soon after its release, yet Jenkins, Teabag, and Gibson pressed onward and never quite recaptured the same level. Enlisting bassist Howard Fairey, the reconfigured Creams issued the 1996 double-mini-CD Malcolm, containing several strong songs alongside evident filler, then promptly delivered the live set Are You Real or Just Some Sort of Disgusting Fridge Magnet?, a robust anthology drawing from every prior Creams lineup as well as select Ruth's Refrigerator and Chrysanthemums numbers.
This final lineup persisted through the remainder of the band's existence. Beyond two further live albums—1997's Net Yangers for the Pizza Froy and 1998's Fuck My Ass, both initially pressed in quantities even smaller than the first pressing of Lords of the Grommet Canning Factory—the Creams produced only one additional studio release, the 1999 forty-two-track double CD The All-Night Bookman. A wildly eclectic assortment of trippy psych-pop songs and warped noise interludes featuring input from nearly every past member, The All-Night Bookman conveys the sense of a career retrospective. The Creams disbanded shortly thereafter, prompting Jenkins and Teabag to form the Thurston Lava Tube; Jenkins later issued the solo album Free Surf Music #1 in 2000.
Albums
