CLASSIC ROCK TRACKS POLL voting thread -- deadline July 15 -- VOTING CLOSED

Eye in the Sky made my top ten because it was the first song that ever BLEW MY MIND.

The story behind the first Boston album, wow! Sneaking around the record company's back to re-create your demo tape instead of recording in a "pro" studio. someone should do a 33 1/3 book on it.

i looooove eye in the sky
so creepy

yeah the Boston album is such an odd phenomenon for its era. a nerd at MIT makes an incredible bedroom pop record with songs like "Rock And Roll Band" that create a false bar band mythology, it sells bazillions and become synonymous with corporate rock.

Everybody remember to write in
Junior's Farm
#9 Dream
Amie
Photograph (Ringo Starr)
Shambala (3 Dog Night)
Mr. Blue Sky (ELO)
!!!!!!!

Your ballot is a thumb in The Man's eye!

Take that, The Man!!!

Voted. My Worst Songs list is a thumb in everyone's eye.

Is "American Pie" on it?

nope

Eye in the sky is like the most politely sung song in history. Only if Kermit's nephew robin sang it could it be more polite. This of course enhances its creepiness.

Shit. Shit. Okay. If "Shambala" write-in campaign is happening I might need to make room for it. I mean in the last year it has become one of my favorite songs period. But...but...am I being true to my life experience, in that I don't think I ever heard it at all before two years ago, and certainly not on the radio? Augh.

Buhhhh. Just dunno. Is it "classic rock"? It sure should have been.

My experience with "Shambala" is hearing it a lot on classic rock radio in the 90s when I lived in N. Alabama, and then later when I moved to Nashville. Maybe its appeal really is confined to a specific region, but I have no qualms writing it in based on real world experience with it.

never heard this song in my life. can only think of three dog night as a novelty band though once again there's a Russ Ballard/Argent connection

Three Dog Night are great. They picked really good material and performed it enthusiastically, if not always with great subtlety. Having three lead vocalists came in handy sometimes. They also tended to go for a soft-verse, loud-chorus thing which has probably orphaned them on radio more than their megahit status (twenty-one top forty songs! hardly a novelty act!) would have anticipated: the loud parts are considerably throatier and more raucous than the easy AM gold verses. In 1971 that all kinda fit together in the woolly rock landscape but I feel like those things diverged a lot more later on. The choruses of Shambala, Never Been To Spain, Joy to the World, Eli's Coming, Liar and Mama Told Me Not To Come are all in that kinda scratchy, textured, yellowing-photos campfire Woodstock mode that I think is a key part of the Classic Rock matrix. Admittedly some other stuff hasn't dated as well and there is something about them that doesn't really suggest they are actually a 'rock and roll band' in any way, but ehh, I'll take my groovy positive-vibed singalongs where I can find them.

it felt so good to put billy squier & eric clapton's names on my most hated list

NAME & SHAME

just for that i'm moving "lonely is the night" up 10 spots

but billy squier is awesome

yes but Stroke is a turd

oh. yeah. if it's "the stroke" we're talking about here do what you gotta do.

i hate that song with the force pf a thousand suns

you disgust me

re: Three Dog Night, not crazy about them, but voted Mama Told Me Not To Come in my top 100, because it gave me a back door way to vote for Randy Newman, and also TDN gave us one of the BEST Behind The Music's ever.

i wrote about "Mama Told Me (Not To Come)" this week for the boomer paper of record!
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/pictures/20-biggest-songs-of-the-summer-the-1970s-20140709

that list a good example of how different the pop charts were in the '70s from what became the classic rock canon, though.

I think Clapton will feature pretty heavily on most hated lists. And his least favorite song of mine is not even eligible for this poll

though i am not much of a clapton fan, and though i thought the film "august osage county" was about as bad a film as has ever been made, the usage of "lay down sally" in the film got me to like it quite a bit. it's a realy nice laid-back groove.

no boomer's rep has dropped more drastically than Clapton's. VH1 did two 'greatest artists of all time' lists a decade a part, and Clapton went from #15 to not mentioned at all: artists that were on VH1's 1998 "Greatest Artists of All Time" list but not the 2010 list

You're far more likely to hear "Shambala" on an AM oldies station than on an FM classic-rock station. (I voted for it anyway.) I think Q-107 here generally sticks to "Mama Told Me Not to Come," "Easy to Be Hard," or "One"...um, early Dog, before they really became a full-fledged Top 40 band with "Joy to the World." If you've never heard B.W. Stevenson's countryish "Shambala," released a week before Three Dog Night's and not nearly as big a hit, it's excellent too.

youtube.com/watch?v=EyOqUX4eUpo

you guys i have news:i loathe "shambala" and would only write-in for most hated (but only if there were like 50 spots on the most hated ballot, not otherwise because fortunately i never have to hear it)

Shot through the heart, and you're to blame.

Ouch.

I gave it a write-in spot as thanks for the write-in support I'd gotten upthread. Checked my ballot, found a song that I dug less than "Shambala," made the switch. Sorry, Nick Gilder!

2014 is a rough time to be a lover of Three Dog Night, I suppose. And that's what I am. I can't think of any other 20-track compilation besides The Best of 3 Dog Night where I love love love each of the 20 tracks.

i'm sorry
they are just too cheesy for me! i can't take it now any more than i could take it when i was a kid. it's just not how i like things to sound. it hasn't repulsed me + my sensibilities in the way the eagles (or jimmy buffett) have, so it's not like i run around hating it actively. blame my heart of stone.

I've just passed a band of buskers playing Abracadabra. This is taking over my life.

P. sure I've never heard "Shambala". I think I heard "Joy to the World" in a doctor's office once?

I always feel like I'm the biggest Clapton defender on ILM and I'm not even that big of a fan.

I just recently realized how great of a song "Joy to the World" is after being unfairly prejudiced against it as a result of a childhood in which kids sang the opening lines on the schoolbus on what seemed like a fairly regular basis. I didn't know what song they were singing and when I finally heard it I was like "oh, fuck this song forever", but I've since come around and it will be pretty high on my ballot.

"joy to the world" is redeemed because it's cute for kids and esl students who are game for singing

also three dog night is an ok band name

Joy to the World is going on my 10 worst

it's pretty bad

I like Shambala (wordless choruses are the BEST), and appreciate the campaign. I'm not sure if it's classic ROCK enough to vote it ahead of Mama though; I voted Start Me Up over Paint It Black by the same reasoning. I'd probably vote Old Fashioned, Shambala and Mama in a TDN poll.

Joy To The World I'm more conflicted about, the song starts with that great vocal and riff, and I think underrated, then chorus comes on and I think, not so fast. And then there's a key change, which almost always annoys me.

"Eye In The Sky" and "I Can See For Miles" are basically about the same thing, right?

you're gonna lose that smile because
the sun in your eyes makes some of your lies worth believing

?

i like it!

agreed on the similarities with I Can See For Miles, but that points out what I find most distasteful in Eye In The Sky-its MORness.
but that's kind of the great thing about this poll, is multiple songs have a good chance of appearing in both the best and worst top 10.

"Eye In The Sky" is #101 for me. I want to vote for it but I just can't make room.

or maybe...