HISTORY:
A very special copy of Vanilla Fudge on wonderful analog cassette tape. We kept special music such as this on various formats and at least still have the 1/4" R2R release which will stay in my personal music library - this cassette release needs a new caring home to be heard in!
If you are a child of the 60's you will remember these guys ... dang! this was the days of 'mind expanding' substances and exciting new 'sounds' ... Vanilla Fudge provided the exciting new interpretation of well known songs of the day. Love that heavy influence of Stein on the organ (mandatory instrument for bands of this ilk/era) - his organ was the band's 'signature' sound
So who were the original guys in the band?
Mark Stein - Vocals, Organ
Tim Bogert - Vocals, Bass
Vince Martell - Vocals, Guitar
Carmen Appice - Vocals, Drums
With all the intro's over, this is one very special release because it is a nice analog copy, not pumped/pulled/compressed/'remastered'/digitally reprocessed so that all life is sucked out of it - good solid psych rock as it sounded back in the 1960's (and without the clicks and pops of vinyl!)
VANILLA FUDGE - Self Titled
ATCO Records
Cat# 61280-4
Dolby encoded (you may wish to turn down your system treble response due to the Dolby encoding)
Australian release (Reissue of the 1967 original album)
1990
Cassette packaging is in very good condition, just a couple of light handling marks to the clear cassette case. Clean insert and the cassette labelling is directly pad printed onto the clear cassette clamshell. Absolutely no personal writing on the case or the cassette clamshell.
Before playing this cassette once again, I repacked the tape, and visually inspected carefully the clamshell, rollers and head pressure pad - no issues with the shell, pressure pad or the tape at all
This is a clear plastic screw type clamshell so if ever it was required to "get inside" to relube, etc then this is perfectly feasible HOWEVER be extremely careful if you ever undertake that task of opening it up or you may well end up with cassette from one end of the room to the other!.
I have then played this tape entirely ... Wow! crisp clean full range sound and no issues due to "drop outs" at all (on either side). Audio frequency response off the tape is wide and I also listened carefully for "tape hiss" at the start of tape, end of tape and between tracks and the level is very very low, indicating that the tape has seen very low 'play hours' in the past, understandable because we much preferred listening on our R2R copy. Very very good psych rock, at times bordering on freaky but extremely enlightening none-the-less!
So ... sit down, load up your Naka Dragon or Studer A721 and surround yourself with incredible psych rock music from the late 1960's! In my personal opinion, Side 2 just takes the listener to a totally different level than Side 1
SPECIAL NOTE (not documented elsewhere it seems)
Side 1 has an "opening intro" and "closing outro" - spoken word of a technical nature e.g Intro (American accent - engineer?) Tone sequence ... "400 cycles per second reference tape, 71867 set ultrasonic operating level, set pleasance control" ... music begins
Side 2 has no spoken word intro or outro, just the standard tone bursts.
TRACKS: Ticket To Ride, People Get Ready, She's Not There, Bang Bang, Stra (Illustrations Of My Childhood Part One) - You Keep Me Hanging On - Wber (Illustrations Of My Childhood Part Two), Take Me For A Little While - RYFI (Illustrations Of My Childhood Part Three), Eleanor Rigby - ELDS
