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.

What happened? After such an important and stunning record the Fudge went rancid. Too much crummy dope? Not enough? Who knows, but here you will find an LP that might be Rock's worst experiment. Imagine mixing ideas stolen from Mozart in with an annoying Sonny and Cher tune. Each member "does their own thing" with disastrous results.

Vanilla Fudge shows itself to be a its own caricature. There is zero creativity evident on this failed piece of vinyl, and The Beat Goes On will make you cringe at every turn. All the power and emotion heard on their debut is gone, and is replaced by some kind of lame- brained attempt at being knowing and relevant. What a mistake!

The Beat Goes On is self-important, and is surely insulting to even the least refined ears. It is a kind of dreck usually reserved for far lesser bands. Fortunately, VF dispelled this mess with their next album, and they left this record behind them as one would an embarrassingly smelly defecate.

The listener may regard this awful offering as a glitch from this great band, and the only enjoyment to be gleaned here is the laughing out loud that its vapid insipidity may elicit.

An album that's so difficult to describe yet so awful. I suppose it's classed as a concept record. It can hardly be described as a rock record. Full of pointless hippy dialogue from the band members and what appears to be samples from possibly world leaders of the time (I may be wrong as my attention was straying). The music is sparse- snippets of cover versions and repeated renditions of Sonny Bono's Beat Goes On - hence the title. It's an album that needs to be heard to be believed. Once you've heard it, you'll just wish you hadn't, a real failed experiment. Such a shame as they were a great influential band.

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.

Oh boy, what did I get myself into?

Around the same time Vanilla Fudge was tinkering with the material that would end up becoming Renaissance, producer George "Shadow" Morton got the bright idea to create an avant-garde album that would detail the history of modern music as well as some other philosophical mumbo jumbo that was all the rage at the time. The Fudge was to provide the musical backdrop, as well as having their name stuck to the project. Not surprising, the band was not too thrilled with the project, but, for whatever reason, be it record company pressure or overall inexperience on the Fudge's part, Mark, Tim, Carmine and Vinnie went along for the ride. The result is widely considered by fans, critics, and even the band members themselves as the worst album of their classic period and, for those who know it exists, one of the most infamous records of 1968.

The bulk of the blame has to go to Morton. This is pure conjecture on my part, but this is probably another case of someone listening to the weirdest of the weird of Frank Zappa's material and thinking they could start a revolution by indulging in the same genre, when in reality, neither Morton nor the Fudge had even a tenth of the familiarity that Zappa had with avant-garde. As a result, instead of creating freaky masterpieces that musically pushed the envelope (e.g., the last third of Freak Out! and the whole of We're Only In It For The Money and Uncle Meat), they ended up with the aural equivalent of an Ed Wood film.

If you hadn't already guessed, the title of the album and the overall concept refers to the Sonny and Cher hit released the previous year, with the song serving as the leitmotif throughout the album. The opening number - which include clips from the title song - is your typical dramatic affair from the Fudge, sounding like something Emerson, Lake & Palmer would eventually do on their first album, before concluding with a clip of Thomas Edison and his famous "Mary had a little lamb" speech from his phonograph demonstration in 1877. We then enter Phase One of the concept, which is the aforementioned musical history lesson. The piece runs through Mozart, parlor music of the 19th and early 20th centuries, rag time, big bands, Elvis and finally the Beatles. On the one hand, the concept is nowhere as deep as it claims to be, being something Disney probably would have done had they managed to get the rights to use the songs. On the other hand, the idea of a musical history lesson presented by a over the top psychedelic band sounds kind of quirky to my ears, with the potential to delight both pop music deconstructionists and kids who want to get into music. Yes, I know it's cheesy, but I like it.

The overall problem with this phase is that the execution kind of leaves a lot to be desired. The popping up of the dramatic "Beat Goes On" theme throughout the suite, played in the exact same way, is too distracting for me. The Moody Blues' "House Of Four Doors" sequence did something similar, but at least that was better integrated, with its theme having a similar vibe as the interludes in that piece. Hearing a dramatic, Hammond organ drenched fanfare right between two ragtime pieces throws me out of the experience. Probably the biggest distraction is when they uses the theme in between "In The Mood" and "Hound Dog" , when they should have played those songs back to back uninterrupted to show the similarities between the songs, which would have fit the theme that "the beat goes on" perfectly. I also wish they added some more songs to the suite in order to flesh out the concept. As it is, I put the suite in the "could have been worse, could have been better" pile; and that's not getting into how The Residents managed to do the concept better when they made Third Reich 'N Roll.

Phase Two involves the Fudge covering Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and Fur Elsie and is the best moment on the album, if only because it's the only phase that isn't based on a really bad idea and it's also the only one where it's fully fleshed out to its potential. It's nothing special, just the boys covering Beethoven in a cheesy, late 1960s fashion, but this type of arrangement was what Fudge did best and they pull it off with aplomb. The tune ends with a chord sequence that sounds a lot like the one near the start of their cover of "Eleanor Rigby" and I wouldn't be surprised if they put the two together in their live shows at the time.

If the first side was a pretentious, yet harmless, affair, then the second half is where the whole concept goes completely off the deep end. Phase Three consists of voice clips of historical figures between the onset of World War Two and John F. Kennedy being inaugurated as president of the United States, with Fudge providing some sparse, average sounding, musical background. I assume this was another piece that protested the Vietnam War, given the war and peace themes, and said cycle of war and peace being another beat that goes on. Some call it art, I call it self-indulgent. This is Vanilla Fudge's equivalent of The Beatles' "Revolution 9", but has nowhere near the amount of unintentional comedy that made it entertaining to listen to. I don't care if it's an anti-war message; there are plenty of (actual) songs out there that make the point better than this mess.

The fourth and final Phase does little to stop this train wreck in progress. The main theme, The Game Is Over, is yet another cover, this time taken from the soundtrack of a 1966 film starring Jane Fonda, IIRC. The music is actually pretty good and quite possibly the saddest sounding piece in the Fudge's output. At least it would be if they hadn't butchered it by a) splitting the piece with some Indian flavored music that would become badly outdated two years later and b) having the band members speak over the music itself, with Vinnie reciting some poetry, Mark quoting Bible verses about the death of Moses, Tim bluntly answering questions in an interview and Carmine just telling the audience to just listen to the music.

And there's your record. I give Morton an A for effort in wanting to tackle a genre he had no experience in as well as dragging Vanilla Fudge, kicking and screaming, into this mess, but I still give it 2/5, and a very, very weak 2/5 at that. The second half is every bit as pointless as its detractors make it out to be and if it wasn't for the novelty and somewhat wasted potential of the first half, it would have gotten a 1/5. If you want to hear what the fuss is all about or have a thing for postmodernism, I suggest either borrowing from a friend or buying the record cheap.

Final rating: 2/5

Personal favorites: "Sketch", the music suite and the Beethoven covers

Personal dislikes: Everything from side two

P.S.: In writing this review, I almost forgot the two bonus tracks attached to some CD versions. Their straightforward cover of The Beatles' " You Can't Do That" isn't too impressive, but it's pleasant when on. The pile driving ballad, "Come By Day, Come By Night", on the other hand, is a nice surprise. It's one of the first songs penned by the Fudge themselves and manages to successfully incorporate their sound in an original setting. The vocals are sublime and I like the cricket chirps Mark gets out of his organ at the beginning. The bonus tracks' presence on this version of the album is enough to make this rating a solid 2/5 instead of a shaky one.

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.

The good, the bad, and the very ugly.

Vanilla Fudge's second album from 1968 may well be their best known for all the wrong reasons. A concept album that was the direct result of the psychedelic movement that exploded after the Beatles released the seminal Sgt. Pepper's album in 1967, it's a collection of faults. By stringing together snippets of songs "through the ages", VF tried to make their own avant garde psychedelic classic. While the song selection may have been inspired, the performances certainly were not. Particularly on a run of mid sixties Beatles covers, as who but the Fab Four could do justice to songs like "Day Tripper" and "I Feel Fine". The singers of VF, Mark Stein and Tim Bogart, are merely passable vocalists to begin with, and musically the songs are boring straight covers. It's only when the band turn on their own organ drenched and heavy bass and guitar sound on Beethoven's Fur Elise/Moonlight Sonata that real proggy musical fireworks erupt. But it's a case of too little too late, after the band takes one on a musical history lesson that is well known, basic and boring.

A tape collage of politician's speeches that's some kind of anti war statement does little to bring the album to any type of climatic close, but "Voices In Time - Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy and others" is probably the most inspired idea on the album.

If Vanilla Fudge had focused solely on working their musical magic on only or mainly classical compositions, the result would have been a very good proto prog album in the vain of the Nice's Ars Longa Vita Brevis. I must say that the album does hold a strange fascination for me, like watching a highspeed car crash, but that's not art, is it? What's left is this failed experiment that shows off the worst excesses of the late sixties' psychedelic movement. No wonder it was short lived. 2 stars.