Ball

I'm an audiophile and the quality of a recording is important to me and very audible on my equipment. This CD was a breath of fresh air. It is NOT compressed in the fashion of the "loudness wars". It is NOT "remastered" which today seems to mean additional EQ to the high end and low end making the remastered recording sound far to bright and boomy. It just sounds like my original 1969 vinyl without the surface noise. Perfect.And for those of you who have only listened to their prior album, (you know the one with that famous REALLY long song), this album is a continuation of that sound. Their sound is a mix of poppy sixties top 40 mixed with a lot of Doors sounding keyboards and acid rock distorted fuzz guitar. The guitar btw was a Mosrite. So buy this CD and give it a chance. It's definitely stuck in the 60's but makes no apologies.

I first heard this album (on vinyl) on New Year's Eve 1980/81. At the time, I liked it well enough to have a listen to Iron Butterfly's other albums, of which I became particularly fond of Heavy and Metamorphosis. With the upgrade to CD's in the later '80s and early '90's, I parted company with my vinyl copy of Ball and kind of relegated the album to "2nd class" status in the back of my mind. Well, after listening to a few of the tracks on YouTube recently, I realized I'd made a big mistake.I'm very glad I bought this CD and gave the album a 2nd chance. It's really quite excellent and musically very ambitious. Perhaps more than any other of their albums, Ball makes you realize that Iron Butterfly was a unique collection of excellent and talented musicians, singers and songwriters who were capable of a lot more that simple 3-chord rock/blues (not that there's anything wrong with that! And IB was quite capable in that arena, too).Iron Butterfly was a band perhaps victimized by the "novelty" status of the 17-minute In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, a double-edged sword which both skyrocketed them to fame and all too soon unfairly pushed them off a cliff into the metaphorical valley of has-beens. Iron Butterfly is truly a band worth a look (or listen, as the case may be), and this album should be held up as one of their best.One note: rumor has it that the other version of this CD, which has two bonus tracks, has awful sound quality. Make sure you're buying this version, which has only the original tracks released on the vinyl version. The sound quality is remarkable, a real testament to how good the recording pros were even way back in 1968/9.

Despite Real Gone Music claiming sonic improvements ("Our Expanded Edition features two bonus single sides and much improved sound compared to its previous CD reissue") the sound quality is a quiet ball of mud (no pun intended) just like former CD reissues. I have to agree with Christopher Bingham, who pointed me in the direction of the Japanese mini-sleeve on Victor, which I got on eBay. It was not cheap but it has - BY FAR - the best sound of any existing CD version. Crystal clear and punchy. If money is the issue, you can pick up "Light And Shade - The Best Of Iron Butterfly" on Rhino, which has 6 of the 9 album tracks plus one of the 2 b-sides on this Real Gone CD. Like with most Rhino product, the sound is strong. Not as strong as Victor, but miles ahead of this low rent Real Gone CD. I'd have given it 2 stars for the strong packaging but I'll reduce it to one star for the bulls*** false advertising.

Classic Iron Butterfly. It's very dated and Doug Ingle's vocals are exaggerated but I still love it. It's my 3rd favorite IB album behind Heavy and Inna-Gadda-Da-Vida (splitting hairs).

Sounds better than ever before. I now think of it as a really good album with this new CD, whereas before I always thought it so so.

When it was released, this was one of my favorite lps and I wore out my original vinyl. Today,well, it sounds very very dated, a relic of its time.Great new liner notes by Bill Kopp tell the stor, the bonus tracks are pretty good. Nice addition to my collection,but doubt I'll wear it out.

I was first exposed to the tunes on this album at my very first live concert in 1969 by Iron Butterfly. This was then a newly released album. I immediately went out and bought it (vinyl, of course). And now I am collecting all of my favorites in digital format. Great, great album!

Though this album doesn't have the well-known title track of the previous album, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, as an album in my opinion this is a more developed work. Each song has something to offer and often the music is lush and ornate. The style is somewhat similar to The Doors music from the same timeframe. The cd that I purchased did not have the two bonus tracks, and there is a fair amount of tape hiss, but the music still shines through in my opinion.