The Beat Goes On – VANILLA FUDGE*

Sketch/Intro:The Beat Goes On/Medley/The Beat Goes On/Fur Elise & Moonlight Sonata/The Beat Goes On/The Beat Goes On/Voices In Time/The Beat Goes On/Merchant: The Game Is Over/The Beat Goes On

Colossal self indulgence such as was found on The Beat Goes On destroyed what little musical credibility Vanilla Fudge might have once possessed. Why do musicians do this kind of thing? (US:17)

"There aren't any real 'songs'. It's a scattershot sound collage featuring anything and everything under the sun that would make it interesting. The voices of world leaders, the band reciting pre-written mantras and reflections, and Beatles and Sonny Bono covers. Not their best, however genuine the intention."

"It has to be the disappointment of the decade. It sucks. It's full of covers, tedious sections, speaking, filler, just a plain dud all around. The few places it sounds like they are going to pick up the pace, they don't. I think these guys might have been on something bad when they recorded this one."

"I don't like writing negative reviews but this album is not listenable. I really don't like all the quotes and speeches included in a collage of sound and ambiance. It may have been very hip back in 1968 but it really does not work for me."

"If you want a truly incoherent album strung together in a twisted way, then this is it. Quite possibly the worst album ever recorded by anyone."

"One of the oddest albums of the 60s rock. it’s divided into four 'phases, without the least sense of cohesiveness. In phase one can be found anything, like in a schizophrenic bazaar: Sonny Bono mixed with the Mozart’s Divertimento No. 13 In F Major, Cole Porter playing domino with Leiber & Stoller; and then, they dispatch a version of In The Mood a la carte, which crashes abruptly against a Lennon & McCartney 'medley'. The phase two insists with Sonny Bono, but now encrusting it into the sacrosanct Beethoven’s Fur Elise: the listener is now considering seriously doing drugs to stand the trance cum laude. Phase three has no music, just spoken word. The voices, mostly taken from old, scratched vinyls, pass by, one by one like phantoms of yesterday. Finally comes phase four, a 13 minutes spaced-out session either asking and answering random and goofy questions of each other, like in a Saturday TV show, with a dumbo psych/rock as background."