Renaissance [Original recording reissued]

Vanilla Fudge | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (December 1, 1998)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording reissued
• Label: Sundazed Music Inc.
• ASIN: B00000GX0C
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #96,724 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Reissue of their 2nd album with the original cover art intact, plus updated liner notes & three bonus tracks added, 'All In Your Mind', 'Where Is My Mind' and a cover of the Bacharach/ David hit 'The Look Of Love'. 10 tracks total. The group featured drummer Carmine Appice & bassist Tim Bogert. 1998 Sundazed release.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great psychedelic rock, June 7, 2002

By 

Marcel Wild (Matieland 7602 South Africa) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Renaissance (Audio CD)

I wouldn't agree with Tony Allen that this is the greatest rock LP ever made (that honour goes to "Every good boy deserves favour" of the Moody Blues), but it likely ranks among my all time top 15 CD's, and it features some of the best psychedelic music I'm aware of! I agree with other reviewers that there is no weak song on this album, my favorites being Thoughts, That's what makes a man, Season of the witch. If you like this type of psychedelic music, check out Jefferson's Airplane's "After bathing at Baxter's", or the 17 minute epic "In held twas in I" from Procol Harum.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Masterpiece!, August 3, 2000

By 

Tony Allen (Lane Cove, N.S.W. Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Renaissance (Audio CD)

To my tastes, this is the greatest rock LP ever recorded!

Renaissance has a dense, intense sound that permeates every track. It is an emotional whirlpool...

...the introspection of "Thoughts", the triumph of "Thats What Makes A Man", the bliss of "Paradise", the desperation of "The Sky Cried When I Was A Boy" to the utter horror of "The Spell That Comes After".

Played a high volume, the overwhelming climax on "The Spell That Comes After" will plaster you to the back wall whilst the poem in the middle of "Season of the Witch" will make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck.

It has a consistency of style throughout from the opening crash to the spooky whistled signature of "the beat goes on" at the end, always intense and often at the point of mental and physical breakdown. Blistering guitar (Vince Martell must surely be the most under-rated guitarist of all time) drenched in Hammond organ pumped through a wall of Leslie speakers backed by one of the best rhythm sections ever, not to mention Mark Stein's powerful emotional vocal.

No other record sounds like this record, it is truely unique.

I am surprised that David Loftus's review said that Tim Bogert suggested that the LP was a contractual toss-off. He was almost certainly refering to "Rock & Roll" (which was recorded whilst the band was breaking up), since I know that Vince Martell considers this LP his career highlight.

The Sundazed edition has the best sound ever for this record since the original masters (complete with splices etc) were dug out of the Atlantic archives for this release. The bonus tracks are fine and useful but don't quite fit into the style of the original LP. Where Is My Mind/The Look of Love was a single from the "Beat Goes On" period and "All In You Mind" was an outtake not released until recently. These three tracks might have been on the second LP if Shadow Morton hadn't convinced them to record his "master-work" ("The Beat Goes On").

If you like intense heavy music buy this!

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An underrated acid rock classic, March 21, 2000

By 

David J. Loftus (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Renaissance (Audio CD)

Vanilla Fudge is known -- if they're known at all -- for turgid, lumbering covers of songs other people made famous, from the Beatles' "Ticket to Ride" and "Eleanor Rigby" to "Windmills of Your Mind" and the Supremes' "You Keep Me Hangin' On," which has become a campy favorite of classic rock stations.

This album is a sorely underrated gem of American psychedelic rock, however. My Dad, whose extensive collection of jazz and classical albums was rarely penetrated by any pop music that post-dated 1960, pricked up his ears when he heard the eerie, spacey cover of Donovan's "Season of the Witch" on FM in 1968 and immediately went out and bought the album. Most of the rest of this fascinating period piece are originals.

Sharing top honors with the Donovan is "The Sky Cried, When I Was a Boy," which opens with a cymbal crash, a foreboding bass line on the synthesizer with higher ruminations behind, then a building crescendo into fierce electric lead guitar. The perhaps laughably dramatic vocals kick in, but when everything drops away to the quiet chorus with thunder rising behind it, your skin can't help but prickle.

Except for the fairly quotidian "That's What Makes a Man," most of the other compositions have rich and interesting emotional content. "Season" closed the original LP; the final three cuts on this CD are add-ons, and I am unfamiliar with them. In the wrong mood (after toking or dropping acid, maybe), this album might sound pretty silly, but it has an emotional intensity and truth that I never got from the Fudge's other efforts.

Brett Milano, a Boston rock critic acquaintance, interviewed one of the boys (Tim Bogert, I think) many years later, and I was thunderstruck that he wrote off this album as a mere contractual obligation toss-off.

A jewel unappreciated even by its makers.