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

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...

ballot sent. phew.

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

― clemenza, Friday, July 11, 2014 11:17 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Seems clear that "Mama Told Me Not To Come," "One" and "Joy To The World" have boiled down as their signature songs, kinda funny given how many hits they really did have. "Black and White," one of their #1s, is almost never heard on any format at this point.

re: Stevenson - may be old hat for folks here, but his "My Maria" is incredible. Decades later it was a moderate hit for Brooks & Dunn, but Stevenson's is wild, joyous, transcenddentally jangly, and wow those backing vocals. One of the best country-rock songs I know.

re: Nick Gilder, "Hot Child In The City" is soooo fucking good but IMO not even borderline CR, whereas at least the Dog have a certain hoarse, earnest barnstorming quality that slots them right into the format IMO.

re: "Joy to the World," it's wonderful! Also was sorta biased against it by childhood (more sunday school than school bus) but mannnn. Those guys fucking sell that joyfulness, man! The imagery of bullfrogs and fishes is very vacation-bible-school but it's also very granola-commune, dirt between the toenails hippie stuff. Love the fuzzed-out arrangement too, and the key change around two minutes in, an easy trick but it does raise the joy level and then they just retreat back to normal for the rest, endless trucker key changes for these down-home guys.

The imagery of bullfrogs and fishes is very vacation-bible-school but it's also very granola-commune, dirt between the toenails hippie stuff.

you may have landed on 2 well-defined reasons why I hate it so much

hahaha yeah that's more a "they belong in CR" claim versus a "they are good" claim

My first exposure to The Three Dog Night:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxyu4gGfC6o

Still think "One" is meh, but "Mama Told Me" is pretty great (and used perfectly, if obviously, in Boogie Nights). The drums kicking the chorus into gear is a high point of early 70s session hackery.

One reminds me of Sesame Street.

Prefer both Nilsson and Aimee Mann versions of "One" even though the TGN version is the famous one.

I was in high school in the 70s and Three Dog Night were considered soooooo uncool, like the only people I knew who liked them were backwards girls who still had Bobby Sherman posters in their bedrooms.

I like Eli's Coming, tho.

I saw them at a huge stadium show in Pittsburgh in 1972 or 1973. My cousin and I went only because OPENING ACT LEON RUSSELL. We left after about the second Three Dog Night song, we had reputations to maintain.

Love that commercial calling them "The Three Dog Night." It did remind me of "Out in the Country," another key link back to definitely legitimate forms of late 60s/early 70s rock. I will concede that "The Show Must Go On" is dire.

Leon Russell has been ill-served by classic rock, as I discovered when I got his greatest hits off a friend (see thread). "Tight Rope" is good, and his biggest hit, but definitely not his best. Keep waffling on including it in my 100 as a token representing his whole branch of the CR family tree.

backwards girls who still had Bobby Sherman posters in their bedrooms

^^^ possible future doctor casino display name

I can't think of Bobby Sherman without giggling like Lisa Simpson.

http://i.imgur.com/P4p7p.gif

Doc, vote for Tight Rope if only for the awesome saloon piano solo at the end.

Dan Rydell: Eli's Coming.
Casey McCall: Eli?
Dan Rydell: From the Three Dog Night song.
Casey McCall: Yes?
Dan Rydell: Eli is something bad, a darkness.
Casey McCall: "Eli's coming. Hide your heart, girl." Eli is a inveterate womanizer. I think you're getting the song wrong.
Dan Rydell: I know I'm getting the song wrong. But, when I first heard it, that's what I thought it meant. Things stick with you that way.

Einstein meets Freud.

youtube.com/watch?v=Yb8A9UBXYF0

we should really poll AM Gold soon. God I love that series.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AM_Gold

I would like an AM Gold poll very much.

Also I always sing, "Eli's coming. Hide your hat, girl" because it amuses me.

I'm all for an AM Gold ballot poll sometime down the line, maybe doing like some dude and using the Time-Life series as a basis for further noms?

Also feel very strongly that LimbsKing should do a modern/alternative rock poll but it may be "too soon."

Seems clear that "Mama Told Me Not To Come," "One" and "Joy To The World" have boiled down as their signature songs, kinda funny given how many hits they really did have. "Black and White," one of their #1s, is almost never heard on any format at this point.

And hasn't been for a long time as far as I've heard. The disappearance of "Celebrate" seems more recent.

I remember hearing it a lot in the '80s on oldies radio, maybe into the '90s.

"Shambala" too.

Yeah, I didn't really grow up with "Black or White" even. Maybe it's just one of those things that started to seem really hokey really quickly, and maybe the moms and dads that went for it as a pleasant statement rapidly became an undesirable demographic or something. "Celebrate" I definitely used to hear, and it's missed.

Used to hear "An Old Fashioned Love Song" on oldies radio too.

yesssss

ugh, no!
that song is basically the antithesis of what i want from a love song, old fashioned or otherwise. it's borderline lawrence welk hokey.

aaaaaaannnnnnnd Shambala bumps "Going Mobile"

"Going Mobile" seemed like one of the biggest Who songs when i lived in Delaware but i don't hear it nearly as much elsewhere

Old Fashioned Love Song is a Paul Williams composition, which makes it pure solid gold imo.

"Going Mobile" virtually the only 70s Who song I'd actually turn up on the radio. Love all the bigguns, just fucking burned out as shit on them. Might go back and rejigger things, would be great to get "Eminence Front" in there.

OMG, I finally have this down to 100. It really was impossible until I enforced some hardcore limits on inclusion: with one exception, no act gets more than two entries, even if their other songs are better than half the stuff in the countdown.

Now...the 'worst' list. Yikes.