Customer Reviews

Rock & Roll

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This album was my first experience with Vanilla Fudge. When I was younger (in the late 80s) I would check this record out from the public library all the time when visiting my Grandmother. I was attracted not only to the drumming of Appice but also to the soulful/"heavy" sound of the band. This is their final album but it sounds great and definitely does not sound like they "wore out" at the end. In fact, it sounds fresh and hard to me. It's funny how older music sounds more vibrant and original than the new things we are subjected to. I recommend listening to this album if for no other reason than to hear a band who made a mark on music. Rock and Roll will never die but it is fading away. It's hard to believe that at one time you could turn on MTV and see videos of groups like Black Sabbath and Fudge on Closet Classics and the sorely missed Headbangers Ball. The same channel, now mostly directed toward teenage girls, has turned into a repetitive, sloppy mess of so called pop music that suffers from such a lack of variety and originality that it sounds like every artist went to the same producer for their beats. Any way get Vanilla Fudge or something with some stature and introduce it to someone with a brain that hasn't been washed yet by MTV.

ROCK & ROLL was ORIGINALLY a typical Vanilla Fudge album. Their extended length covers ("Windmills Of Your Mind" and "If You Gotta Make A Fool Of Somebody") had representation, as did painful introspection ("I Can't Make It Alone" and "Church Bells Of St. Martin's"). There were also heavy rockers ("Street Walking Woman" and "Need Love") and spirituality ("Lord In The Country").

The original LP of ROCK & ROLL was a fine way for the band to bow out. This CD release however, is quite flawed, due to tampering. The "original mix" of both "Windmills..." and "...Woman" are simply awful-- particularly the latter. The snap and fire of this song is just not there. Sometimes a band has REAL reasons to choose later takes for their albums.

Finally-- the bonus track ("Break Song") really doesn't belong on this set. For these reasons, rate the Vanilla Fudge's farewell album/reconstituted CD 3½ stars, and try to find the original record or cassette tape.

This is Vanilla Fudge's best album, and their last. Fudge was a very important band in heavy rock in the late sixties. They had a sound similer to Grand Funk Railroad with more Hammond organ worked in. Influenced Deep Purple and every heavy group who followed.

If you are a Fudge fan, you should have this in your library. If you're not, skip it. Their version of "Windmills of Your Mind" is quite good. The rest is, well, a hodgepodge. By this point they were putting together a product when they really weren't a unit anymore, by their own admission. They had split into factions, were showing up separately for sessions and were letting the producer run with it. As a result, the dynamic "band" sound that made the "Vanilla Fudge," "Renaissance" and even "Near the Beginning" albums so stellar is missing here. The studio version of "Break Song" which is a ferocious highlight of "Near the Beginning" pales in comparison. The rest of the album has its moments but is spotty at best. I'm a huge Fudge fan and even I found it hard to listen to end-to-end. Buy it used if you can.

As we well know, this was Vanilla Fudge's last studio album. The band was coming apart by this time, and you can kind of tell it on this album. Some of the songs seem edited together from various sessions. On the liner notes, the band members state that most of them were doing their own sessions, and there was little cooperation between the band members. In spite of that, this is still a great album, with special mention going to the songs Need Love and The Windmills Of Your Mind, which exemplify everything the Vanilla Fudge did well. They are excellent, and the rest of the material is very good, too. The 4 albums (I don't count The Beat Goes On, which, by all reports, was an umitigated disaster) that they put out during their heyday are all excellent. The studio version of The Break Song is pretty good, but the live one off of Near the Beginning is the better of the two. The studio version is a bonus track that was never released on the original album. Buy their 1st album, Renaissance, Near the Beginning, and this one. They're all worth it.

This is undoubtably the heaviest of all albums cranked out by this group. It's acutually good for a swan song album for a group. It kicks off with a tough number called "Need Love" which makes me think of ZZ-Top listening to this to get the melody for "Tush". "Lord In The Country" is a good timey song, but it's got some edge to it, "I Can't Make It Alone" is as soulful as it gets, and also "If You Got To Make A Fool Of Somebody". The covers are still therewith "The Windmills Of Your Mind" a show tune from where I don't know, and they have the unissued "Break Song" as it's done in the studio, and have shaved 3 and half minutes off the live version on "Near The Beginning". This unfortunately spelled the end for the Fudge as Carmine Appice would be the most visible of the four, and play with Black Sabbath, and Blue Murder, and Jeff Beck. They would reform in 1984 for the "Mystery" album and tour.

I last listened to this in 1970. We wanted hard rock like Near the Beginning . The audience did not listen and walked. It may be musically good, in retro, but heavies migrated to Beck ,Bogert and Appice.