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.