NEAR THE BEGINNING

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".