Then And Now

The Best of the studio recordings and Live with Orchestra by Vanilla Fudge. Vanilla Fudge, tightly bound by shared professional and personal experiences and, like most teenagers and young adults in '67, enticed by experimental drugs and 'free love,' had transformed their sound. Some club owners complained that their slow, moody, stop-start, whisper-then-scream arrangements of songs like 'Ticket to Ride,' 'People Get Ready' and 'Eleanor Rigby' were emptying dancefloors. With the patronage of George Francis 'Shadow' Morton, an extremely talented but somewhat unhinged producer-about-town, the group known as Mark Stein and the Pigeons, who'd impressed Morton with their showmanship and instrumental expertise, was transformed into Vanilla Fudge and signed to Atlantic's ATCO subsidiary. Disc one highlights the 'Best Of' Vanilla Fudge, the ferocity of sound; Disc two ups the ante when the Fudge meets Orchestra!