Three Dog Night - Hard Labor

When i agreed to be the bus driver for this field trip, i told you there was only 1 rule: listen to the whole album. I didn't tell you the secret second rule, which is always be completely honest (perfectly fine to be wrong, change my mind, skim over details, whatever). I haven't broken either of those rules, and tonight is no exception.

What the crap is THIS? It damned sure isn't 1969 Three Dog Night. For starters, it's not rock. It's the mediocre-est of Blue Eyed Soul. I'm clearly lacking the proper context of the double-digit evolution of their albums, but i certainly don't want to hear it happen in real time.

The prelude is an awful "Entrance of the Gladiators," and the first track (their last charting single) has a toilet flush in it! How apropos. There's a terrible David Clayton Thomas impression called "Put Out the Light" (about as good as Beacon Street Union's Elvis, or Danny Kaye's Louis Armstrong). Yep, that's exactly the organ sound i was trying to emulate for Detective Dog Lawyer, MD. Oh i'd be so happy if we weren't only halfway through. Crap. Crap. Crap. Oh no, Gladiators turned into an actual song about how terrible it is to be famous? Ending with a trumpet impersonating a creaky door closing? 🤦‍♀️

I expected some amount of macho 70's douchebaggery from the giving birth metaphor on the cover (which not coincidentally puts me in mind of Weird Al's "Like a Surgeon" video), but all i'm getting is "making records is hard. Good thing we aren't the ones putting much effort into it, hur hur." Finger Eleven ate all my rat poison, but i still have some drain cleaner left if you guys are thirsty after all that hard labor....

Am i being unfair? Would any of these songs work in a different context?

NO!

I'm not wrong, it's crap. They tried disco after this, then thankfully stopped. It doesn't taint my love of early Three Dog Night, it just makes me not want to hear anything after Live at the Forum. My beloved Spirit made a bad album (Clear), but it's definitely better than this. I get horrible acid reflux when i think about Ten Years After, but somehow this is worse. All three heads of Cerberus vomited on my record player, and i don't have enough paper towels to clean it up.

You are of course more than welcome to like it, but i disrespectfully disagree. This is a great band doing a piss-poor job of being a great band, and i doubt that even a lobotomy with a rusty butter knife could change that opinion.

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