NEAR THE BEGINNING

Actually I give it 3.5 stars as the first side is up to par with Renaissance but the second is a long jam session going nowhere and fast witu overlong solo from each musician. Velvet Mornings is flabergasting and Shotgun sounds like a wild Cream number .

Nowadays the USA band Vanila Fudge is a bit forgotten and unknown within the world of progressive rock. It seems that their captivating progressive blend of rock, soul and psychedelia doesn't appeal to most of the (younger) progheads. But in the second half of the sixties Vanilla Fudge was a highly acclaimed band, both by public and the press. Famous progrock acts with their heydays in the seventies like Deep Purple, Uriah Heep and even Yes pointed at Vanilla Fudge as an important source of inspiration. The story of Vanilla Fudge started in the New York-area when Mark Stein (organ and lead vocals) and Tim Bogert (bass guitar) played in a band called Rick Martin & The Showmen. When Mark and Tim listened to the popular band The Rascals they were so impressed by the hot R&B covers with floods of Hammond B3 organ that they decided to form their own band named The Pigeons. Together with Rick Martin's drummer Joey Brennan and new guitarist Vinnie Martell they started rehearsing and playing but Brennan was replaced by Carmine Appice who played one night at the same place as The Pigeons and he was simply asked to join The Pigeons. At about the same time The Pigeons decided to change their name into Vanilla Fudge (after the nickname of the female singer of The Unspoken Word, she liked ice cream very much). And also a bidding war started to contract them because the band was very promising. Eventually Vanilla Fudge signed (in july '67) with Atco Records, a division of the famous Atlantic label. They became darlings of the underground radio and so their first album went to #6 in the charts! To stop the posible desmise of the band Atco re-released the first single You Keep Me Hangin' On and hoped for the best. The single climbed to #6, a real surprise for Vanilla Fudge and Atco. Vanilla Fudge became the headliner at the end of the sixties in the USA, bands like Led Zeppelin, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Deep Purple and Canned Heat opened for them! Vanilla Fudgge played also together with Cream and Jimi Hendrix. My favorite Vanilla Fudge album is their fourth entitled "Near the beginning": everything between soul, rock, blues, classic, symphonic and gospel is in their compositions, loaded with excellent, very Hendrix inspired guitarplay (lots of wah-wah), powerful floods of Hammond organ, strong vocals and a splendid, very dynamic rhythm- section. Side one contains 2 covers (Junior Walker & The All-Stars hit "Shotgun" and "Some Velvet Morning" of Nancy Sinatra/Lee Hazlewood) and side two contains the 20 minute live track" Break Song", the alternating highlight featuring lots of great soli. THIS IS ABSOLUTELY ONE OF THE BEST PROGROCK ALBUMS BUT DON'T EXPECT PROG IN THE VEIN OF ELP, GENESIS OR YES!!! By the way, the DVD "Rockin' The Sixties (Ed Sullivan's R&R Classics) features an amazing powerful rendition of their hit "You keep me hanging on", RECOMMENDED!!

This album falls shy when compared to their brilliant "Renaissance" work. The band was very productive in those days (four albums in two years' time) but IMHHO it was at the cost of quality. Each even album they have produced can't hold the comparison to its uneven counterpart. Just meaning that for each good to very good album they have produced so far "Vanilla Fudge", their debut one and "Renaissance", there will be "The Beat Goes On" and this one.

The extraordinary ("Some Velvet Morning") and the worse ("Break Song") are featured on the fourth album of the Fudge.

The former is a magnificent psyche and soft jewel with brilliant vocals from our dear friend Vince. It is by far my favourite song form this offering. All the psyche magic is working pretty good during this melodic and beautiful track.

As usual, one gets a fantastic instrumental intro and the vocals are so delicate and beautiful. Another one of their great cover work. A style in which they really excel. A great psychedelic anthem.

On the contrary, the latter is just a useless and loooooooooong jam session starting bluesy and ending nowhere. It is very difficult to go through these twenty-three minutes+ (and I 've done it several times.) to try and find what was all the fuss about it.

At times, the super wild guitar and the incredible rhythmic section is producing some explosive parts but this live track is rather self-indulgent. Of course, lots of live albums from the era (and this fact will last for several years, just listen to "Made In Japan") features such solo. And you'll get them all here.

While not displaying these instrumental solo, the "song" reverts to this bluesy mood I just dislike (but you might know that I am not at all into blues).

These musicians are of course excellent but the bass solo is pretty boring actually. This number is only worth for its wild guitar break and the drum solo. Otherwise, it is pretty boring. Press next. Ooooops, it is the last "song" of the album.

In between, "Where Is Hapiness" written by Carmin Appice is on the plus side as well. Heavy rock at its best. This track would benefit from a good remastering work when (or if) available. Wild beat and instrumental parts combined with aerial vocals are very close to the very good "Renaissance" album.

On the contrary, the soul oriented opening track "Shotgun" is not my cup of tea. But again, this musical genre is not mine at all.

This is my last review of the year on PA. It was great fun to post all these reviews on this site in 2007. Just a bit sad that it doesn't end on a higher note.

Three stars thanks to "Where Is Happiness" and of course the brilliant "Some Velvet Morning".

Despite harbouring almost mythical status amongst classic rock fans, the fact remains that Vanilla Fudge never truly fulfilled their exciting potential after the release of their incendiary 1967 debut. Maybe the hint was in the fact that 'Vanilla Fudge' was made up entirely of cover versions, but what cover versions they were, the foursome applying a stretched-out, doom-heavy, proto-psych coating to classic pop-and-soul tracks such as The Beatles 'Day Tripper' and Curtis Mayfield's 'People Get Ready'. However, alarm bells were soon ringing following the release of the abominable 'experimental' follow-up 'The Beat Goes On', whilst 'Renaissance', a 1968 album made-up of both covers and, for once, original material(and rather uninspired original material it has to be said) also failed to set the pulse racing. For some, 1969's 'Near The Beginning' was proof that Vanilla Fudge could write their own tunes - the twenty-three minute closing epic 'Break Song' certainly showed ambition - yet this writer(who, by the way, adores the group's debut) simply isn't convinced. Also containing a pair of cover versions that make up approximately half the album's tracks(Lee Hazlewood's 'Some Velvet Morning' and the Audrey DeWalt-penned 'Shotgun' feature here) 'Near The Beginning' is a definite improvement on both 'The Beat Goes On' and 'Renaissance', yet that in itself is nothing to shout about. Whilst the covers feature the usual amped-up rock veneer, the drony 'Where Is Happiness?' and the chundering, dirge-like 'Break Song'(which was recorded live) simply add to the suspicion that Vanilla Fudge ran out of actual inspiration sometime during late 1967. Quickly overtaken by the likes of Hendrix, Iron Butterfly and The Doors, Vanilla Fudge's canon as heard by 21st century ears seems distinctly limited. Their awesome debut aside, there is precious little to get excited about amongst the subsequent quartet of albums, their bland, organ-doused rock 'n' roll sound seeming ever more slow and cumbersome with each additional listen. Thoroughly uninspired stuff then yet by the same token by no means awful, 'Near The Beginning' is an album strictly for Vanilla Fudge completionists. STEFAN TURNER, STOKE NEWINGTON, 2O12

I remember that I listened to this album for the first time maybe 40 years ago (when I was 8 years old!). I remember that I liked a lot this album then, but I didn`t remember anything about it in the present despite having some very vague good memories about it. Well. I listened to it again today...and the impression that this album gave me has changed a lot 40 years later! Vanilla Fudge was/is a psychedelic rock band and this album is a very good representation of that music style, I think. I found now this album a bit chaotic and without direction sometimes. Very heavy in parts. Very noisy in parts. But not very interesting. With some influences by Iron Butterfly but with a lot of improvisation. Carmine Appice is a very good drummer, and his drums playing is the best part of this album: heavy, energetic, precise. The other members of the band are also very good musicians, and the lead vocals by organist Mark Stein are good. The best song in this album is the long "Break Song" (recorded live) which has some parts played like a heavy blues but with a lot of improvisation, which includes solos by every member of the band, including a powerful drums solo by Appice. But apart from this, the other songs are not very interesting, So I give a three star rating to this album, an album which now sounds very much related to the time it was recorded and released, and a bit dated for my taste. The band`s sound and style maybe inlfuenced other bands in their early stages (Deep Purple, Uriah Heep, Led Zeppelin). But ithis album has some excess in some parts. Carmine Appice, in a very curious part of his history, went to play and record albums with Rod Stewart in the seventies-eighties and he even had some songwriting credits with Stewart for songs like "Do Ya Think I`m Sexy" and "Young Turks".

Vanilla Fudge hit on something special with Renaissance, especially with their haunting take on Donovan's Season of the Witch which closed out the album and could almost be seen as a precursor of Black Sabbath's early doom style.

Unfortunately, with this album they lost all the character and atmosphere and presented a rather generic psychedelic rock record crammed to the gills with somewhat aimless noodling. Break Song, in particular, is a side-length live jam that just consists of wanky solos of a type we've all heard before dozens of times (including an absurdly overlong drum solo) which more or less encapsulates all the worst aspects of that particular performance format.

This is an album which time has not treated well; it's dated extremely badly, particularly now that if you wanted you could get similar live jams from better performers in massive quantities at a very reasonable price. Thanks, guys, but no thanks.

Vanilla Fudge must have been one of the wildest and loudest group of the sixties. And when it comes to groups like Deep Purple, Uriah Heep, Atomic Rooster, Birth Control (and many more) the Fudge must have been very influential with its brand of symphonic heavy psych. The recording of this record is so intense that its sound heavy even today, but also very chaotic, compressed and hard to listen to. 'Some Velvet Morning' sounds exemplary for how progressive (hard)rock bands would sound at the start of the seventies; heavy riffs, majestic organ theme and soulful verses. On all other tracks the band sounds quite directionless and heavy for the sake of it. The second side is recorded live and sounds like a heavy jam with solo's of the individual members. The organ solo's sound particularly like those of Purple's John Lord. The fuzz guitar by Vince Martel is particularly ear-piercing. If you should fancy owning this record I would do so mostly because of its crazed out sound and some moments of actual prog musicality, but for most others I would recommend skipping this one. I myself am glad I found a vinyl copy to just have heard this record once, because Vanilla Fudge is simply a phenomenon to behold.

VANILLA FUDGE only existed for a mere four years but in that short time developed an extraordinary wide range of expressing itself through its five album run that began with its psych-soaked renditions of classic pop songs and then followed by a leap of faith into the world of the avant-garde. After regaining traction, the band sallied forth delivered a solid masterpiece of 60s acid rock before going off the deep end and sputtering quickly into irrelevance as the sounds it nurtured into creation had been adopted and improved upon by an explosion of fertile talent that really took off in 1969.

NEAR THE BEGINNING was the band's fourth album but in retrospect would've suitably been titled "Near The End" as the band's momentum which peaked on "Renaissance" was clearly derailed leaving the band a victim of its own whims and shortcomings. One of the biggest developments in VANILLA FUDGE's career was the fact that after three albums, the band decided to self-produce and take full creative control into its own hands. While on one side NEAR THE BEGINNING showcases the band's developing taste for harder and heavier rock as showcased on the feisty opening cover of Jr. Walkter & The All Stars top 10 hit "Shotgun" however without a producer who served as an intervening force to keep the band focused, this fourth album emerged as an interesting but highly disheveled collection of tracks.

Clearly restless and ready to jump headfirst into the world of hard rock, NEAR THE BEGINNING opens with an adrenalized hard rock version of "Shotgun," the 1965 hit single that peaked at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and led the way for similar Motown artists to capture the soul market in the 1960s. An unlikely opening track to say the least, "Shotgun" succeeded in showing that VANILLA FUDGE was indeed a multi-faceted band that refused to be pigeonholed into any particular style of music but also displayed a complete disregard for the organ-fueled psychedelic magic that had come to full fruition on "Renaissance." The six-minute track sounds woefully out of place as a VANILLA FUDGE remaking and basically sounds like one of those tracks you throw in as a bonus cut when finding extra tidbits for a re-issue of some sort.

The band surprisingly features two covers as the first tracks, the second being the hit "Some Velvet Morning" recorded by Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra. The band returns to its expected stylistic approach that featured a slowed down build up fortified with trippy organ runs and the accompanying guitar, bass and drum combo effect. Unlike the traditional symphonic pop style of the original, VANILLA FUDGE transmogrifies this classic song into a veritable slice of psychedelic acid rock which to be honest wouldn't have sounded out of place on the the debut album as it takes the exact same approach topped off with the exquisitely divine vocal harmonies contrasted by the bombast of the crushing organ, guitar, bass and drum rock heftiness. In this process it leaves the song almost unrecognizable in comparison to the original, a knack VANILLA FUDGE was wise to continue since it appears that it was its greatest strength.

After eking out 7 1/2 minutes of a the classic Hazlewood / Sinatra pop hit, the track is followed by the Appice original "Where Is Happiness" which opens with some trippy avant-garde freakery with strange organ noises frenetically conjured from an unseen realm and slowly develops into a melodic musical score that sounds very much like a continuation of the previous track with the same lackadaisical build up, Mark Stein's emotive and emphatically emphasized lyrical delivery and a slow build up as the guitar, bass and drum chomp at the bit to get on with the heavier action to come. That very action emerges as an energetic display of beefed up bass, sporadic jazzy drumming and a sizzling guitar soloing sequence with a tinge of Middle Eastern influences to exude an exoticism unheard of in the band's usual repertoire. Probably one of the best songs of the band's career actually.

The album's second side is another head-scratcher curveball delivers by the band. It consists entire of the live recording "Break Song" which was performed at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. The track pretty much just showcases the band's ability to jam, improvise and engage in extended solos. Everyone gets a crack with some nice moments of guitar, others of bass and a rather droll drumming sequence that outstays its welcome. This track really seems pointless and drags down the entire album's momentum, well what there was of it. Also the band jettisoned its trademark build up techniques as well as its vocal harmonizing. In fact this track exudes a sense of the generic and pretty much comes across as one of those type of "milk it for all its worth" performances of a typical 60s blues rock band that didn't have the talent to inject anything innovative. This track unfortunately doesn't highlight the VANILLA FUDGE sound but rather detracts considerably. A studio version was recorded but nixed in favor of this for some reason but personally i like the studio version better. It is featured on the remastered editions of the following album "Rock & Roll."

Basically NEAR THE BEGINNING was a followup album that had just been thrown together without much care for an album experience. There are really only two interesting songs here and a decent if not outstanding Motown cover. The live track is listenable but not amazing or even remotely successful in delivering what you would expect from VANILLA FUDGE. It seems like the point of this album is to announce the band's freedom from any controllers and that it just wants to do what it wants. Unfortunately that didn't translate into a compelling album. In retrospect A NEW BEGINNING signified a transfer of the band's innovation on the first three albums into a quick downfall that would give the baton to a new breed of rock musicians who would take the band's unique approaches and gestate them into some of the most exiting and dynamic sounds of the 1970s. While seemingly the end, VANILLA FUDGE had one more album in them. While highly influential for so many VANILLA FUDGE was indeed "Near The End."