Customer Reviews

Bottle of Wine / Come On, React!

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I had the vinyl album since it's first release. I just had to buy the CD. This album is a perfect picture of the young and carefree 1960's before the protest songs. My favorite tracks, like "Groovy Motions" and "Hurry Hurry" make me want to get out my Lovin' Spoonful, Monkees, and Mama's and Papa's albums. The Fireballs have a sound that is both polished and homespun at the same time. I like the good "enjoy life" attitude of the music. I could listen to this album again and again.

The Fireballs didn't have many hits in the late '60s, but this CD has two of their best songs: "Bottle of Wine" (early 1968) and "Come On React!" (late 1968). "Come On React!" is an extremely well-written song in typical '60s style, and has a very positive, active sound that is alone worth the price of the album. Another appealing song, if very obscure, is "Mr. Reeves" with its mysterious guitar sound, pretty harmonies, and strange story. "Groovy Motions" has an almost excessively '60s sound (Austin Powers would love it) but it also has a good sound and fast tempo and is still appealing.

It's funny how we all forget details over the course of our lives. But hearing some of the long forgotten minor hits and the unforgettable smash "Bottle Of Wine" made for some "wow, I could have sworn" moments and for some great listening. I'd recommend this collection to anyone who's into late 60's and early 70s flashbacks into time.

The Fireballs did one of the most difficult things a band could when psychedelia and bubblegum and Motown and Bacharach-pop were competing for AM radio space. They refused to pigeonhole themselves.

Bottle Of Wine works as a straight forward but eclectic album. Of course most know the title track, but there are soul numbers, ballads, and garage like rock. That is not particular to the Fireballs. A lot of bands that went no place tried this approach in the late 1960s, but The Fireballs have a strong enough identity to truly make it work. They are good--and WE know it. That said, anything they set their mind to here works.

Come On, React, is a little more focused on straight rock, but once again it works in the perfect center. It is not baroque and not garage and not psych, but is well arranged fleshy pop rock. If you dislike it, you probably dislike mainstream rock of high caliber, and if that's the case, it takes someone far smarter than me to intervene.

I ordered this disk after hearing The Fireballs do "Bottle of Wine" on XM radio during a recent trip. I had never heard of them, and I still don't know much about them (I need to take the time to remedy that), but I do know they put out a rockin' good product.