THE BEAT GOES ON

Third on the list , this is actually their second one and from far their worst. This is a wild experience gone terribly wrong and 35 years later still does not sound good. Avoid this unless you are a die-hard fan . Still quite an audacious bet though.

VANILLA FUDGE's "The Beat Goes On" would have to rank as perhaps the most psychedelic albums in my collection. IMHO this album has been blacklisted for far too long... I think the world has really missed this one... Without a question this album contains some of the wildest combinations of classical, pop, rock and psychedelic you will ever hear. Mark Stein's organ work is killer on this album with some real tasty runs. The foundation of the album is based on 4 distinct phases with Phase 1 paying tribute to the BEATLES, phase 2 touching Beethoven's classic moonlight Sonata, Phase 3 a collage of historical speeches and Phase 4 a collection of shorter whimsical numbers with sitar, tabla and other worldly instruments. Although this is not an album I would listen to every day, it is a very aggressive album full of highly imaginative song writing and clever instrumentation.

Thanks to the Fudge, one can combine the Fab Four, Ludwig van B. and several from the most important political giants from the twentieth century.

But it is not really for the best. There will be some classical influences with the opening number, some good instrumental parts for "The Beat Goes On" (from Sony) and lots of useless (partial) songs.

The band released a good debut cover album but they completely messed up their second one. There are lots of very short, dull and poorly chosen tracks. The track "Variations On A Theme By Mozart" is absolutely disgusting during its seven minutes.

It is really incredible that this album charted in the US (it peaked at the seventeenth spot). Some might say it is heresy, but my preferred number on this album is by far "Für Elise" from van B. Again, Fudge are proposing a great psyche intro, very heavy keys just before the sweetest piano break of "Elise". I have always loved this melody and it is so pleasant to hear a decent song in here.

These partial speeches that can be heard during "Voices In Time" are great historical moments. Chamberlain, Churchill, Roosevelt etc. are just placed one after the other with some background "music". Over eight minutes. I appreciated very much the mix of one of the best known Churchill speeches during the intro for "Fool's Overture" from Supertramp, but to listen to this one is not an experience you would like to face every week (nor every month, nor every year). It is boring to death.

This album holds some of the craziest psychedelia, at times avant-garde."Merchant" has funny dialogues about "trips", "the interest of "The Beatles" for Indian meditation etc. But frankly, what is the need of all of this ? Getting poor ideas with some average (at best ) musical moments ?

My advise would be just to stay from this work. One painful star.

I still hear Mario tune in Variations On A Theme By Mozart, I can't resist that, even good old chap Mario still had years to be conceived and published. However, mastermind Mozart was already dead many years, but his legacy remained untouched, waiting to be turned into Prog songs.

Wait what ? Not at all, this is collection of Beatles covers, little Psychedelic touch and the rest is take on Classical music. Very surprised to hear this combination, but Beatles parts are big letdown. They doesn't offer anything new, so the only thing that is left are classical pieces, this time with feeling of 60s.

But these are too short (these guys are doing some parts of these covers in "original" sound, as beginning of "Fur Elise", so again - nothing new).

1(+), but as collection of nice combination (I like both Classical music and The Beatles), it's quite good. Still offering enough so it's not complete disappointment. Even it's not so good anyway.

However, there is too much of empty, void places of just radio transmission, public statements, things like this. I suppose that back then, it seemed like a very good idea, but it's actually boring.

So, you've produced a hit, epoch-defining album(albeit based entirely on other people's songs) kick-started the sonic lifeline of heavy rock, been name-checked by just about every single up-and-coming English-or-American outfit with dreams of psychedelic stardom and signed a lucrative deal with a major record label. What next? I know, lets make an album based around deliberately unconventional and highly un-commercial forms! We'll throw in some white noise squalls, old FM broadcasts, dissonant sound collages, hissing electronic effects, garbled vocals, split-level sonics, reel-to-reel tape relays, reverse recordings, clanging metallic fills, muffled radio speeches, click tracks, bangs, howls, coughs, screams and whatever else the company has stocked away in those dusty old vaults. We'll stitch the 'recordings' together, splice them through a million-and-one relay effects, add the occasional bass rumble, guitar twang, drum fill and whatever the [%*!#] else takes our fancy and hey! We're artists! The people will love it! It's so new and exciting.....! Oh, but wait a minute, we've forgotten something. We've forgotten to include any SONGS. Oh dear.....

STEFAN TURNER, STOKE NEWINGTON, 2012

Vanilla Fudge's debut may not have moved me a whole lot as a listener, but I certainly understand the album's place as a seminal album in the development of psychedelic and heavy rock music. The success of that album only increases the confusion generated by The Beat Goes On, the American outfit's controversial sophomore observation - this experimental album is a 'head scratcher' for sure, and though some have hailed it as a misunderstood masterpiece, I will join the choir of folks that just don't get it. The Beat Goes On has a few interesting things going on, but the band's total disregard for musical structure and composition makes for a tough pill to swallow, even when looked at from a historical perspective.

Although the music on 1967's Vanilla Fudge was primarily straightforward organ-led psychedelic rock, the same can not be said for The Beat Goes On. There are flirtations with conventional music, like the piano intro "Sketch" and a few Beatles covers in rapid succession, but a majority of the music seems to have very little direction at all - a good portion of side two can hardly be called music, if truth be told. As cool as a sound collage of twentieth century political figures can be if done right, it seems out of place and overly long when it takes up eight minutes on a rock album. The Beat Goes On does have some cool musical ideas from time to time, but they rarely expand beyond interesting fragments; although Vanilla Fudge sticks to cover tracks once again, they never actually recreate any of the tracks they pay homage to. Instead, they briefly touch on numerous compositions, and the result is an incoherent mess.

It's actually a shame that the band never decided to flesh out any of the tunes here, as I think a heavy psychedelic version of "Fur Elise" or "Hound Dog" could have made for an entertaining listen. The Beat Goes On aims to transport the listener through history, musical and otherwise, and although this is a great concept, the execution is baffling. A directionless and confusing album, The Beat Goes On is a failed experiment in my book, and a disappointing followup to Vanilla Fudge's 1967 debut. This is only recommended to the most die-hard of psychedelic collectors - all others should proceed with extreme caution.

This should have been a career suicide for Vanilla Fudge, their much maligned sophomore effort, coming on the heels of their critically acclaimed and commercially successful debut. Yet the label let them continue on. If an album like The Beat Goes On was done any other time, they'd likely get the boot. This is the most ridiculous, over-the-top, pretentious album I own, and that coming from someone who has tons of prog in his collection. But this album really deserves it, moreso than Tales From Topographic Ocean. What on Earth were Mark Stein, Tim Bogert, Carmine Appice, and Vince Martel thinking? OK, so you can easily blame drugs. They must have taken so much drugs to even think of an album this ridiculous. But the real blame was on Shadow Morton, apparently. They take on the Sonny & Cher song by the same name, really, just mainly doing the theme of it done in bewildering different styles (from dirge to acoustic guitar, to even an actual Vanilla Fudge rendition of the song in question). In between all that you get treated with ragtime, swing, political speeches from various political figures, Beatles, Elvis, and references to the band itself. There are actually flashes of brilliance, I won't deny it, I do enjoy their take on Beethoven, but for the most part it sounded like they were simply messing about trying to bring that BIG MESSAGE. That message showing how music and mankind changes as "The Beat Goes On", obviously nothing that you'd hear from the Sonny & Cher original.

Strangely I don't hate the album. I am one of the rare ones to have listened to it more than once and not be totally disgusted at it. In fact, in my perverted ways I sorta enjoy the album. But of course, they really rebounded BIG TIME (a vast understatement) with the wonderful Renaissance in just a few months. I own the original LP, but I didn't spend much. Three stars for me, but I don't blame you if you feel it deserves less than one star.

If there was ever an award for the most head scratching career moves of the entire 1960s, VANILLA FUDGE must would surely win first prize. After a surprise hit debut album of nothing more than cover songs reinterpreted into the world of psychedelic soulful rock laced with heavy organ fuzz and showcasing some of the earliest traces of progressive rock and what would become heavy metal, the band followed with one of the most avant-garde albums to come out in the year 1968. While the debut featured familiar catchy pop songs including the top 10 hit remake of The Supremes' chart topping single "You Keep Me Hangin' On," the band quickly shifted gears into a strange collage album in the form of THE BEAT GOES ON in early 1968.

The year 1967 was the Summer of Love and offered a last air of innocent hippie glee before the calendar year 1968 roared in full force. The idealism of perpetual peace and free love were interrupted by a turbulent world stage where everything seemed to go topsy turvy overnight. The music of the era reflected this by shifting from simpler musical forms that had only just evolved out of the straight forward approach of rock and roll to headier and ever bolder musical experiments. The Beatles' classic "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" deserves the lion's share of credit for upping the ante in the world of simpler rock forms that focused on singles as a means of marketing to a full-fledged concept albums in an art rock style which hit the world with the subtlety of a lightning bolt.

While the world of psychedelic pop and rock would sally forth unscathed with many simpler forms of rock continuing to occupy the hit singles charts, some intrepid acts followed the cue of The Beatles and went for the concept album avant-garde jugular. VANILLA FUDGE was one such band having never even released a single song of their own making and then suddenly delivering a followup album that recklessly abandoned all the rules and engaged in a fearless exploration into the unknown musical possibilities that could result from just simply going for it. THE BEAT GOES ON was basically a meandering sampling of the entire history of music without any regard to how things connected or fit together in any way, shape or form. Based on the smashing success of the debut, the album still sold its share of copies but quickly alienated any fans who were expecting a continuation of the band's soulful psychedelic rock playfulness that put VANILLA FUDGE on the map.

Broken into four phases with various short snippets called tracks, THE BEAT GOES ON meanders through a maze of crossover classical music (Mozart, Beethoven etc), medleys of famous pop hits by Elvis Presley and The Beatles as well spoken word speeches and one of the very first recordings of all time sampled by Thomas Edison. The band retains its psychedelic rock at key moments with the already established fuzzy organ heft and heavier rock combo effect of the guitar, bass and drum but in reality there are no actual songs on THE BEAT GOES ON and merely samplings strewn together into a psychedelic haze of consciousness shifting. Clearly the year 1968 was a traumatic one for the world and the methodologies of finding the proper musical escape hatch were becoming bolder and more ambitious with THE BEAT GOES ON being one of those albums that at first listen may seem completely pointless but also when placed into the context of the time fits in with how the world of musical exploration was panning out.

The album is compared with Frank Zappa's "Lumpy Gravy" however VANILLA FUDGE beat Zappa to the punch by a few months with a nerdy concept album that engaged in the everything and the kitchen sink approach. The major difference of course that being that Frank Zappa was a gifted and brilliant composer of the avant-garde and VANILLA FUDGE being a naive quartet of youngsters who didn't quite have the chops to bring their ambitions to a high level of competency. While many really hate this album including the band itself as they blame this unwise followup as a total career killer, as far as experimental avant-garde albums go it's not that bad. While its hardly any milestone of creative fortitude, as a historical reference point and unorthodox art rock album from 1968 it's a totally listenable experience.

Luckily the band would quickly follow up with a new album of mostly self-penned tracks titled "Renaissance" but momentum had been lost and THE BEAT GOES ON has been ridiculed by many ever since. Personally i admire VANILLA FUDGE's audaciousness as the band clearly had no idea of how to keep an audience enthralled. One of those cases of moving too quickly into an arena where the artistry wasn't up to snuff. It would've made a lot more sense to release "Renaissance" first and establishing the band as a bonafide creator of its own material and sound and only then after retaining its momentum by releasing something like this a year or two later. But when all is said and done, THE BEAT GOES ON exhibits a trend of a musical expedition into completely uncharted territory and that's pretty remarkable for a band that could've simply put out another album of psychedelically tinged cover songs. Despite not crafting the next great art album of all time, VANILLA FUDGE earned its place as a bonafide proto-prog act that helped propel the spirit of the evolution of the rock music paradigm. While results were mixed, the spirit of the creative process excelled.