The vinyl version of Fireworks by Jose Feliciano comes in an elegant brown cardboard album cover that feels like leather, his name and the title embossed in gold.
An instrumental, "Fireworks," from Handel's "Fireworks Suite" transcribed for guitar by Feliciano, opens the album, followed by the pretty original "Destiny." Horns augment Feliciano's precise vocals on a very well-produced album that comes with no credit information. "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" could be Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66, the acoustic guitar again finding horns to answer the folksy accompaniment. RCA could have (and should have) released a Beatles tribute album by Feliciano, some earlier albums of Feliciano's containing a minimum of three Lennon/McCartney titles each on them and Fireworks giving the listener a whopping five songs made famous by the Fab Four. He follows the interesting Rolling Stones cover with a very beautiful instrumental version of "Norwegian Wood," stylish flamenco guitar giving a different flavor to Lennon's warped fantasy.
Without the storyline, "Norwegian Wood" is exposed as the stunning melody it is. "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window" again has the folk guitar meeting understated orchestration that swells up at the end, the singer's rendition a far cry from Joe Cocker's sandpaper vocal Top 30 tour de force released this same year. Feliciano comes up with jazz-flavored folk that is as far removed from the Beatles' original sound as Cocker's bluesy howl was.
The original "Pegao" opens side two with more instrumental magic, setting the stage for a beautiful pop ballad, "Once There Was a Love," different from the feel of the rest of the disc but fitting in perfectly. "Once There Was a Love" is in the style of his future minor hit, "Angela," and a couple more songs along these lines would have given the album a bit of balance.
Much of what is here has that "Light My Fire"-style arrangement that worked so well for Feliciano, his version of the Hawkins/Lewis/Broadwater classic "Susie-Q" just one example of that. The disc concludes with three more Beatles numbers, a boss and uptempo "Blackbird," an instrumental "Yesterday," and a beautiful arrangement of "Let It Be" that shows the singer to be in great voice.
As a showcase of Jose Feliciano's talents, Fireworks is very well put together, and wouldn't be a bad place to start for people who want to get to know his work. |