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Vanilla Fudge - Vanilla Fudge (US Mono)

Track listing:
  1. Ticket to Ride 6:11
  2. People Get Ready 6:31
  3. She's Not There 4:58
  4. Bang Bang 6:25
  5. Illusions of My Childhood (Part One) 0:29
  6. You Keep Me Hanging On 6:42
  7. Illusions of My Childhood (Part Two) 0:15
  8. Take Me For a Little While 4:46
  9. Illusions of My Childhood (Part Three) 1:31
  10. Eleanor Rigby 5:51

Notes


In a debut consisting of covers, nobody could accuse Vanilla Fudge of bad taste in their repertoire; with stoned-out, slowed-down versions of such then-recent classics as "Ticket to Ride," "Eleanor Rigby," and "People Get Ready," they were setting the bar rather high for themselves. Even the one suspect choice — Sonny Bono's "Bang Bang" — turns out to be rivaled only by Mott the Hoople's version of "Laugh at Me" in putting Bono's songwriting in the kindest possible light. Most of the tracks here share a common structure of a disjointed warm-up jam, a Hammond-heavy dirge of harmonized vocals at the center, and a final flat-out jam. Still, some succeed better than others: "You Keep Me Hanging On" has a wonderfully hammered-out drum part, and "She's Not There" boasts some truly groovy organ jams. While the pattern can sound repetitive today, each song still works as a time capsule of American psychedelia.