Vanilla Fudge – Vanilla Fudge

I was in my second year at USC and heard this on our local LA underground FM station and I was hooked on 'em...How they took current hits and blended them from track to track was so good and it was nice trip for me to sit back in my blacklight world and groove with the Fudge...Even all these years later it works...So much stuff from that era didn't make the musical trip through time but Vanilla Fudge certainly hopped on that music train and went all the way to today...and for that I am quite pleased...

Such a great album, even listening to this original pressing through the noise of the aged vinyl it sounds great; they really caught lightning in a bottle.

very popular album when I was a young teenager. I think every other teenager in Topanga Canyon and the San Fernando Valley had a copy of Vanilla Fudge. I didn't hate them but was very suspicious of them. For one, it didn't seem that they wrote any of their songs and there is also an icky aspect to them, that I couldn't put my finger on. On the other hand, I did have admiration for the album cover art. It seems like a French cartoon, then an album cover for a NY band. So, very much in my youth, although my friends had this album, I avoided it like it was the plague. It struck me as being too straight, and almost Squaresville. Not until I was in my mid-60s did I purchased a used version of this childhood product.

What drew me to Vanilla Fudge is Shadow Morton. I have always loved his work with the remarkable Shangri-Las and he produced the second New York Dolls album, which I like a lot. So, therefore, and since he produced the Vanilla Fudge, there must be some worth to this album. The way it's packaged it seems to be a statement by Mortan than Vanilla Fudge. For whom by the way, also had the worse name for a band ever in my existence. Still, side-one is like a novella, in that each song or track fits into the next one. The Zombies "She's Not There," merges into Sonny Bono's "Bang Bang," which done by The Fudge seems to be the ultimate Existential moment.

It dawned on me by the time I finished hearing this album, that it is a masterpiece, and somehow through my snobbish youth, I totally missed the drama that is built in this recording. Heavy on the beat and the organ, this is not garage rock, but almost an operatic practice in doing pop music. In my youth I didn't get it (although everyone else around me got it); this is music that truly reflects the San Fernando Valley in 1967.

Don't think the inner sleeve pictures are right here, Deja Vu and Led Zep 3 were released in 1970 3 years after this release