Ten Scariest Concept Albums of All Time

Spooky Concept: Vanilla Fudge set out to tell two stories--the history of music and the history of time--in four phases! "Phase One" of the band's two-part pop-music lesson starts with reverent versions of "In the Mood," "Don't Fence Me In," right on up to lousy versions of "Hound Dog" and "She Loves You." Interspersed between the miniatures are jazzy, bombastic, classical and loungey versions of Sonny and Cher's "The Beat Goes On."

Bone-Chillingest Moment: "Phase Three"--the hysterically historical "Voices in Time" segment, featuring such bummer sound bites as FDR's and Kennedy's funeral processions plus Truman's announcement that he just dropped the atomic bomb, against a musical bed consisting of, you guessed it, "The Beat Goes On." Can't you just hear the love-ins grinding to a halt?

Grand Finale: "Phase Four"--nine minutes of interview outtakes with members of Vanilla Fudge, speaking their Vanilla minds while sitars play in the background, a little ditty to remind you that this album is indeed called The Beat Goes On. At one point, bassist Tim Bogert says that the music industry is "disheartening," and that no one in the industry could talk the band out of this atrocity is disheartening indeed. Drop the needle anywhere on this record (it mercifully hasn't made it to CD), and you can't believe what you're hearing. I played it for the usually tolerant Peter "It Crawled From the Bins" Gilstrap and he practically threw me out of his house! People, that's scary!