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Rating: The new millennium welcomes Three Dog Night still on the scene, though for a quarter of a century now they have been reduced to an impromptu and unstable group, good for revival tours in which they dust off their well-stocked catalog of hits assembled in the seventies. The classic “dinosaurs”, then, reluctant to extinction.
Of the three frontmen from their golden era—a rather unique characteristic in the world of rock bands—one had long since been lost along the way, that Chuck Negron who still goes around with his personal band, revisiting the part of the TDN repertoire that interests him. The two remaining ex-colleagues have managed without him for many years, dividing up both their own solo parts and those of their former companion, involving some instrumentalists around them to preserve that wealth of vocal harmonies which is at the core of their music.
Someone who still believed in Three Dog Night financed this present album/Frankestein, which involves the prestigious London orchestra, though not in a direct way: TDN stayed at home in the United States, where they were recorded live, while the orchestra, for its part, stayed at home in London. An arranger and a conductor took the ensemble to Abbey Road, having them play over those recent live recordings, with added symphonic prologues composed and arranged for the occasion.
The whole thing is immortalized by this record, which can therefore be considered a semi-live greatest hits with orchestra, a stratagem still in vogue for “stretching the sauce” and recycling one’s catalog of hits by presenting them in a pompous and lyrical dress. Same as with unplugged albums, really, but in that case you distill, you strip down the offering; in this one, you inflate and aggrandize it.
The album is therefore far from essential, but it serves its purpose in still spreading the good name of Three Dog Night in years quite distant from those glorious youthful days. The orchestral prologues, of course, are pure filler… A mishmash of borrowings from many classical standards made immortal by the geniuses of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. When the prologue ends and the actual TDN song begins, the “break” is not always effective, more often than not it’s gratuitous.
But so it goes; the fact remains that for some time after this experience and its release, Three Dog Night managed to tour American concert halls accompanied, this time live and fully legitimate, by a classical orchestra. Certainly not the distinguished but far-off London Symphony, but instead some more…local, younger, and less expensive orchestra.
The hits performed live in a mix with the full orchestra are as follows:
_“One” from the 1968 album “Three Dog Night”
_“Easy to Be Hard” and “Celebrate” from the 1969 album “Suitable for Framing”
_“Out in the Country” and “Mama Told Me” from the 1970 album “It Ain’t Easy”
_“Liar” and “Joy to the World” from the 1970 album “Naturally”
_“Never Been to Spain” and “An Old Fashioned Love Song” from the 1971 album “Harmony”
_“Black&White” from the 1972 album “Seven Separate Fools”
_“Shambala” from the 1973 album “Cyan”
_“Sault St.Marie” and “Overground”– unreleased(!)
The orchestra, moreover, reserves for itself three additional tracks: an apt “Ouverture” at the beginning, in which some well-known themes from the coming songs are hinted at, plus two elaborate “Prelude” pieces introducing the tracks “Liar” and “One.”
After this 2002 exploit, little or nothing new came from TDN. But they still go around giving concerts to a handful of faithful and grateful fans, with what remains (just one member, the unsinkable Danny Hutton, the founder) of the original lineup. Of the historic septet, the first to depart this world—the very year this album was released—was bassist Joe Schermie. In 2015, both singer Cory Wells and keyboardist Jimmy Greenspoon passed away, while the brawny drummer Floyd Sneed left us in 2023.
On the other hand, both singer Chuck Negron, as already mentioned, and guitarist Michael Allsup are still alive and well, but outside TDN: the former for many years now; the latter, after various comings and goings over the years, has been out of the group since 2021.
End of TDN broadcasts, and happy listening to the most loyal and hopeful among the fans of the fabulous Three Dog Night, themselves among the protagonists of a golden era in music.
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