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.

Next

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The 4 Seasons - The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette

Image
This might be my longest  album review ever. But i swear a couple times, so it's worth the read ;) How could i possibly mention Jefferson Airplane, The 4 Seasons, and Frank Zappa in the same context? Zappa said "this is rediculous" and a few years later The 4 Seasons said "you know what, Frank is right. This IS ridiculous." To which Jefferson Airplane said, "Oh. Ok. Got it." The real question is: which one is the most transgressive? Zappa said stop fighting, you look like idiots. Jefferson Airplane said i guess if love and community is a bad thing, then sure we're criminals and we'd be happy to move out into the fields and live peaceful lives without your garbage, let us go already. The 4 Seasons said hold my champagne for a moment. In 1969, The 4 Seasons released the single most ironic, acidic, extravagant, and downright befuddling album ever created, The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette. Zappa was accused of writing "shitty doo-w...
Read more

Welcome to my blog, and my record collection.

This is a blog about my love of listening to albums. It started off as a nightly perusal of my dad's record collection (which sadly became mine) on my personal facebook page. Over the last two months it has become quite an enjoyable process of simply ranting about what i think is a real art form, the album. It needs a more permanent home. Some of my reviews are positive, some negative. They might not be what you expect from album reviews, but i hope you at least find them entertaining. For the most part i do very little research, and they tend to be train of thought reactions rather than calculated essays. If nothing else, know that i'm really listening to them and whether they are amazing or abysmal i want you to go listen to them too.  I'll start migrating the 60+ i've written so far over here in the next few days, and hopefully get to the point where i just start writing them here. I'd probably even take suggestions if you're just dying to know my tho...
Read more

J. Geils Band - Freeze Frame

Image
Speaking of New Wave, I just listened to the penultimate J. Geils Band album, Feeze Frame, and it is awesome. You know the title track and Centerfold, but i highly doubt you know the album closer, Piss On The Wall.  It's not even really reviewable, to be honest, it's Freeze Frame, couple songs, Centerfold, couple more songs, and Piss On The Wall. I guess i could rehash what Post-Punk/New Wave New Wave was all about (actual dance club Rock & Roll with quirkily expensive synth leads), but you know The Cars and The Motels and Talking Heads. Believe it or not, the Ramones were considered New Wave rather than Punk in the beginning. Now we'd call them Pop Punk, but the point is that Rock in the late 70s existed on a spectrum from Corporate Cock to Nerdly Neurotic Pocket Protector, and in 1980/81 J. Geils Band said hold my beer, I gotta take a leak, how's this for "radio-friendly, twitchy nerd Rock with huge sing-along choruses?" Freakin' awesome, dude, freak...
Read more