I am sitting in a room, or some thoughts on the merciless march of history as embodied by the Vanilla Fudge

Preamble

I am sitting in a room. I am alone. The room is approximately 10 x 12 feet and nearly empty save a small bookcase with a phonograph precariously perched at its edge, two old guitars and a rug. A mirrored closet allows me to observe my reflection as I sit on the floor; I am 35 years old, I have bags under my eyes, a bit of a paunch and I am listening to the Vanilla Fudge's second album, 1968's The Beat Goes On for the first time in fifteen years. I see this clearly and clearly something is wrong.

This is the slow degradation of memory. This is the inexorable refinement of taste. This is the merciless march of time and history.

The Beat Goes On: This is what happens when you take a bunch of young mooks from Jersey and the Bronx, give them a recording contract, a copy of Sergeant Pepper and then neglect to get them high.

Why this should have been a retarded masterpiece

• This is a concept record based on Sonny Bono's philosophy of history ("La dee da dee dee, la dee da dee die!" just about sums it up) as articulated in his title composition, begetting a suite incorporating hundreds of years of musical and world history as refracted through the minds of four young men who refer to themselves collectively, in all seriousness, as the Vanilla Fudge.

• There are four "phases" to the record, totaling eleven songs, but many of the songs feature a half-dozen or so (bowel) movements.

• The cover is written in English as well as various Eastern-looking scribbly languages (Sanskrit? Chinese? Farsi? Esperanto?) because this record is Important and Universal.

• The gatefold for this dark masterpiece features mini biographies of each member of the Vanilla Fudge, all pictured looking suitably hep and psychedelic, detailing their storied past, their promising future, their middling present and concluding with pertinent Teen Beat style factoids such as:

"His pastimes include golf and bowling...he likes good food and jazz...his pet peeve is narrow-minded people" (Mark)

"...he likes Chinese food and dislikes hypocritical 'day' people. He is 6', weighs 150 lbs., has hazel eyes and dark blonde hair" (Tim)

"He fills his spare time with girls, cars (to race and to build), wild interior decorating, rebuilding stereo sets and buying clothes" (Carmine)

• There is a guy named Vinnie in the band.

• It bears repeating: This is a concept album based on a Sonny Bono song. Sonny Bono. The man died skiing face first into a tree. He also married Cher, a death unto itself.

And yet no one thought to get them high. This should have been brilliantly awful. Yet it is unbearably boring. It's inconceivable that this was recorded under the influence of the appropriate substances. Ah, the foolishness of youth.

An Abstract

Side One. After a brief and boring overture aptly entitled Sketch an oracular echoing voice intones "Phase One" and we're off to see the wizard. It's all downhill from here. The first of six (six!) versions of the title track, this time a boring instrumental, then the ten-part musical history lesson of movement three as the Fudge faithfully and boringly belt out garage band nuggets such as Variations on a Theme by Mozart, Divertimento No. 13, Don't Fence Me In, In The Mood, Hound Dog and lazy sub-Herman's Hermits manglings of four Beatles tunes. The title track, again. Beethoven's Fur Elise and Moonlight Sonata are bludgeoned, boringly, and finally another boring instrumental version of the boring title track. Side One (Phases One and Two!) features some of the most boring music I've endured in my life. And I've listened to Wilco.

Side Two. In case you've forgotten what they're getting at here, we're treated to another version of The Beat Goes On. There are, of course, various subtleties and nuances in the different renditions but they are far too boring for me to remember and impart boringly to you. Phase Three, Voices of Time, is a boring eight minute sound-collage of various 20th century blowhards such as Winston Churchill, FDR and JFK intoning ponderously about war and such while the Fudgers are off getting their goatees trimmed and their kaftans ironed. This track tends toward the dull. Boring, even. Another fucking version of you-know-what follows, and then the real dark heart of this album, the nine minute Merchant/The Game is Over, with a final summation in verse ("The beat goes on / the mind goes on") and a distillation of the pure Fudge Filosofy as rendered in Platonic dialog:

Q: What do you see in the future for the Vanilla Fudge?
A: Another album. (Long dramatic pause). I just hope the trip gets lighter.

Q: What about trips?
A: For fifteen cents you can take one on the subway. Now I think it's up to twenty.

Q: What about sex?
A: Sex is a very beautiful thing.

Q: What do you think about black power?
A: Black power is a very wasted use of good imagination and drive.

Q: How about poetry?
A: It says everything that can be.

Q: Ice cream?
A: I like ice cream!

Throw in a reading from scripture ("So Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab..."), some noodling sitars and a final pummeling of the title song complete with lyrics ("Teenybopper's the newborn King uh-huh") and this souffle is done, daddy-o. The void is now before me, naked in its empty black glory.

Summation

I had fond memories of this record, recalling it as a hilariously overwrought piece of pie-in-the-sky 60s conceptual kitsch. But God is this record dull. Dull, dull, dull. Boooooooooring. I have been betrayed. My mind is a cobwebbed attic and it's time to clean house. I grow old, memories mold; a young man's kitsch is an older man's endurance test. I'm going to drink tonight.

About the author

-Bill likes Mexican food and Klingon-industrial-cocktail-jazz. His hobbies include goat wrestling, lint classification and mastering Fate. His pet peeve is the concept of the 'pet peeve'. He's 6', weighs 145 lbs., has coal- black eyes that hint at unspeakable horrors, and dirty-blond hair.