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Album
Near the Beginning
Vanilla Fudge →3,022 listeners24,755 plays
psychedelicpsychedelic rockhard rock60soldies
about this album
✪ Vanilla Fudge -- Near the Beginning ✪ Allmusic informations: Review by Joe Viglione Near the Beginning is an excellent title for this self-produced Vanilla Fudge recording. The fourth of five albums recorded during 1967, 1968, and 1969, the band themselves worked to get closer to what made them very special. What made them special was their treatment of other people's material. Reworking Junior Walker's 1965 hit is interesting, especially with engineers like Tony Bongiovi and Eddie Kramer to throw ideas at. Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood went Top 30 with Some Velvet Morning, and that is more in line with the Fudge's debut than re-assembling Motown again. The problem with Shotgun is that it is pretty much the same tempo, with their big sound and added intensity being the difference. Some Velvet Morning, on the other hand, is more Black Sabbath than Ozzie and crew covering Crow's Evil Woman. The performance dangles in mid-air, the vocals deliver eeriness, the stuff Deep Purple jumped on a year after Vanilla Fudge made Great Britain stand at attention, and the sound is quintessential Fudge. Some Velvet Morning makes for a very great album track, but as "near" to the beginning as these guys got, without production they just don't get back to the chart action garnered by the sublime Take Me for a Little While and the immortal You Keep Me Hanging On. Carmine Appice's Where Is the Happiness is a band learning how to write in public. There is no doubt how talented all these fel
