Vanilla Fudge

Mastered from the Original Master Tapes and Limited to 2,000 Numbered Copies: Sonically Superb Hybrid SACD Presents the Record in True-to-the-Original Mono.

Long considered one of the legendary lost bands of hard rock and a pioneer in (or influence on, depending on who you ask) progressive rock, Vanilla Fudge is probably best known for their complete reworkings of more mainstream songs into progressive rock explosions of killer musicianship and arranging…

Vanilla Fudge took a more basic stance with Rock 'n' Roll, bringing in Aerosmith's first and the Velvet Underground's last producer, Adrian Barber, to replace Shadow Morton. Guitarist Vinnie Martell sings lead on "Need Love," and it is a quagmire of rock sounds, offset by Mark Stein's "Lord in the Country." The band then goes after a good but non-hit Carole King/Gerry Goffin number, "I Can't Make It Alone." It has that vibe that made "Take Me for a Little While" so important and so timeless, but there's just something missing. This is Vanilla Fudge's trademark sound looking for a new personality. The band started in 1967 by releasing an album of seven cover tunes done Vanilla Fudge-style. Along with Cream, Jimi Hendrix, and a handful of other bands, their sound helped shape Top 40 radio in the '60s while heavily influencing Deep Purple and what that group would do for the '70s.

VANILLA FUDGE celebrate their 50th anniversary with another musical rock monument - ''Live At Sweden Rock 2016!'' What began in April 1967 in the Ultrasonic Studios in Hempstead/ N.Y., still possesses the same charisma a good 50 years later in a rather quiet Swedish town of Norje near Sölvesborg in front of more than 35,000 enthusiastic fans. Heavy psychedelic, slightly progressive rock, blended with classic citations and elements. With temporal and musically excessive cover versions which the band left their distinctive mark on (a heavy blues soaked steady rhythm) VANILLA FUDGE not only entered the international charts at that time. Their versions of the Tamla Motown classic ''You Keep Me Hangin' On'' (Supremes) or Junior Walker's ''Shotgun'' as well as the FUDGE's version of McCartney's ''Eleanor Rigby'' electrified a whole generation of musicians and fans alike.

What made Vanilla Fudge so intriguing was how they and producer Shadow Morton mutated hit songs by stretching the tempo to slow motion so exquisite that even an overexposed song by the Supremes sounded new on the radio. The formula worked fine on covers, but despite their collective talent, the material they composed on Renaissance feels more like psychedelic meeting progressive and has less of that commercial magic. Renaissance is a concept album, produced and directed by Shadow Morton, the man who brought you the Shangri-Las and who produced the second album for the New York Dolls.

The mighty Fudge is back with their heaviest album to date, a collection of brilliant reworkings of classic tracks from that pivotal year in music 1967! These classic rock icons are keeping the spirit of real rock music alive with their own versions of The Box Tops The Letter, Procol Harum s Whiter Shade Of Pale, The Who s I Can See For Miles, Spencer Davis Group's Gimme Some Lovin and lots more! Vanilla Fudge was one of the few American links between psychedelia and what soon became heavy metal. While the band did record original material, they were best-known for their loud, heavy, slowed-down arrangements of contemporary pop songs, blowing them up to epic proportions and bathing them in a trippy, distorted haze. Originally, Vanilla Fudge was a blue-eyed soul cover band called the Electric Pigeons, who formed in Long Island, New York, in 1965.

Essential: A masterpiece of psych-rock music collection.
Vanilla Fudge are a pioneering psychedelic band with a superb lineup and are famous for psyching up well known cover versions.