It's taken close to 20 years into the CD era to get decent remasterings of
Three Dog Night
's catalog, and it says something about
Universal Music
, which owns that catalog, that none of the upgrades have come from them -- rather,
Gottdiscs
and now
Edsel
have brought these improved versions to the public. From a vantage point 30 years after their heyday, these reissues may not seem too important, but those of you old enough should remember that
at one point were achieving the kind of popularity only previously enjoyed by
the Beatles
and a handful of other groups, pulling in listeners from the ranks of teeny-boppers, college kids, and the then "underground" FM radio audience.
Captured Live at the Forum
was so ubiquitous that it turned up with astonishing regularity in the collections of kids who did a lot of acid and suburbanite teens who otherwise listened to
the Carpenters
and
the Partridge Family
. And with good reason: it was the album that proved this band was more than a radio phenomenon; that they could (and did) make as great music on stage as they did on their records, and their reputation was made from it. The remastering and the accompanying boost in clarity and volume makes the live
Forum
material seem all the more impressive, and is a reminder of precisely how great this group was in their early years, a
pop/rock
phenomenon that deserved both ends of their success and a lot of credibility. The
Harmony
material is a little less intense. The band had settled into a formula by then, a little more than a year later, and was more
pop
-focused, but they could still pile on virtuosity to match the versatility, and it's great to hear this material with the kind of presence it deserved in playback, so you can see why even some of the more questionable moments, such as
"Never Dreamed You'd Leave Me in Summer,"
seem more justifiable. ~ Bruce Eder