Sunday 9 July 2017

Vanilla Fudge - Near The Beginning (1969)


The fourth album from this US group.

Vanilla Fudge was a quartet on this album with a lineup of guitars, bass, organ, keyboards, drums and vocals.

Vanilla Fudge had created quite a nice niche for themselves with their blend of west-coast psychedelia and hard rock. That combined with some excellent musicianship gave them a name. OK, their second album The Beat Goes On was a truly horrible avant-garde album. But their two other albums was good albums which gave the band a big following.

The four members of the band were excellent musicians and went onto having great careers on their own and in other bands. Bands like Beck, Bogart & Appice, Ozzy Osbourne Band, Cactus, King Kong, Alice Cooper Band and many other constellations. Their judgements and ideas though were sorely lacking. This album is a good example. Not to mention the horrible The Beat Goes On album.

This album forty-five minutes long. The first half is a studio album. The second track Some Velvet Morning is a fairly good album which remains me about a band called...... Vanilla Fudge. Vanilla Fudge as on their previous album Renaissance and their self-titled debut album.

The two other studio tracks are OK too. The twenty-four minutes long studio jam Break Song is a studio jam where each instrumentalist has their own space. That includes a drum solo.... Oh dear.

In short, this is a decent album and a bad follow up to the Renaissance album. Just when I thought the band was back again, this album happens. Oh dear, oh dear.

2 points

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