Sunday, January 19, 2025

Time: 1:30 PM
Song: Eli’s Coming
Artist: Three Dog Night
Mode of Consumption: Listening to vinyl record Around the World with Three Dog Night while finishing book work for church and then packing lunch for work the next day.

Link to song (Note Spotify doesn't have the actual versions I listened to): https://open.spotify.com/track/3jdCnDXRXsjYpJFqVNXZen?si=5c0351ac42634b71

One of the first concerts I remember attending was Three Dog Night at the Rockford Metro Center sometime in the mid-1990s with my parents. The tickets came through some sort of fundraiser for the Firefighters Association. Other bands I saw at the Metro Center were America and Nelson. I can’t remember if all the bands played at one event, or if we went a couple times. Perhaps there is another band in the mix during this era, but that’s lost in the tunnels of my memory. 

Three Dog Night got their start in 1967 with their peak running until 1976. So, by the mid 1990s, they had been on the road for nearly 30 years. In my teenage mind, they were an oldies band, which was fine because I listened to plenty of oldies, but that’s where they were relegated to by me. I doubt if Three Dog Night had released a new album in the 1990s that I would have been clamoring to hear it. Maybe their hardcore fans would have bought a CD of new material, but the idea that they would once again reach the popular charts was unlikely. 

It just didn’t seem like it would have fit alongside the likes of Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Green Day. They were a band from a different time. They were middle aged men, who were excellent performers and generally made it big by singing songs written by other people. For the most part, bands from the 60s didn’t have much of a chance with new material in 90s unless they were the Rolling Stones. 

But times change. 

Earlier today, we were running errands and listening to a radio station that plays current music and still does a countdown of the top songs on the rock charts. 

They ran an interview with Dexter Holland from The Offspring. He talked about working on a new album during COVID since they couldn’t get out and perform, or do much of anything else.

Holland was born in 1965, two years before Three Dog Night formed, and The Offspring formed in 1984 with the height of their popularity being the mid-to-late 1990s. And, now they have an album with songs finding their ways onto the charts. 

We also just saw The Offspring play last summer at music festival in St. Paul, Minnesota, and never once did I think about them being an oldies band, even though their height of popularity was nearly 30 years ago, much like Three Dog Nights was when I saw them in Rockford in the 1990s. 

In fact, they were my favorite act of the two-day event that included other artist from the 1990s (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Alanis Morissette, Gwen Stefani) and newer artists (Gary Clark, The Head and the Heart, The Hold Steady).