Song of the Day 1/19: Three Dog Night, “Shambala”
Three Dog Night is a band I appreciate a lot more now than back when they were popular, because when they were popular they were also deeply uncool. Listening to them these days it’s hard to understand why. Granted, they didn’t write their own music at a time when singers weren’t considered “artists” unless they did. They were also deeply show-biz in a Hollywood-Las Vegas way at a time when the counterculture had rejected all that.
That hardly explains their lack of respect since. Despite chalking up 21 Billboard Top 40 hits, including three No. 1s, between 1969 and 1975, they’ve never even been nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. “Shambala” made it to No. 3 in 1973.
Like most of the band’s hits, “Shambala” came from a relatively unknown songwriter. Daniel Moore came up with the song after his brother related his experience with a spiritualist whom he had consulted to ask about his past lives. After she told him, she concluded, “My messenger tells me to tell you, ‘Let your light shine in the halls of Shambala.'” His brother had no idea what it meant, but Moore did some research and learned that Tibetan Buddhists considered Shambhala a mythical land that lay beyond the Himalayas.
Moore explained, “In Alice Bailey’s Treatise On White Magic. It basically said that there was a gigantic cavern under the Gobi Desert that has a replica of every evolving human being. And when that replica begins to light up or glow (meaning you are cleaning up your act and becoming more spiritual minded or raising your consciousness to a higher level), there is point where your replica gets bright enough to warrant a spiritual teacher being sent to you.”
Moore released his own version of the tune on his 1998 album “Riding a Horse & Holding Up the World.” Moore used the demo tape he made when he first wrote the tune, adding only an overdubbed electric guitar for the album version. Perhaps because he only read the word without ever hearing it, Moore pronounced it with the first syllable rhyming with “ham” rather than “mom.”
Three Dog Night’s was actually the second cover of the song released in 1973. Two weeks before their single dropped, country singer B.W. Stevenson released his own version, which also charted, though it stalled out at No. 66. He responded by recording another of Moore’s tunes, “My Maria,” which sounds quite similar. It reached No. 9 on the Hot 100.
Curiously, considering that both of those covers made the charts, virtually nobody has covered it since. The notable exception: A cappella group Rockapella has recorded it twice.
Rush of nostalgia for these songs I associate with the summer of 1973 when I brought a table radio to summer camp. Shambala, My Maria, Give Me Love… Shambala is still on my playlist today.
Mine too.
Being eleven years old, I didn’t know they were uncool.
I thought they were uncool b/c 11 year-olds liked them.
Actually, their takes on Laura Nyro and Randy Newman were, to put it mildly, not to my liking. Nilsson, OTOH…
It’s as if covering Laura Nyro automatically made you uncool, because Blood, Sweat and Tears did a pretty good job with “And When I Die” but they were considered uncool. The Fifth Dimension made “Stoned Soul Picnic” a hit; they were uncool. Do you see where this is going?
Also, are there really ANY good Randy Newman covers? Nina Simone doing “Baltimore” is the only one I can think of.
BST w/Al Kooper: Cool
BST w/David Clayton-Thomas: Uncool.
The Fifth Dimension was uncool too? Oh man. Next I suppose you will tell me The Association wasn’t cool either.
No. The Fifth Dimension succeeded in demonstrating what a great songwriter Laura Nyro was. I LOVED their versions of her songs.
Plus, any band with Marilyn McCoo…
I’ve been trying to pin down exactly when everything shifted and bands like the Association suddenly became unviable as anything but an oldies act. It’s usually attributed to the 1967 Summer of Love, after which everyone dressed like hippie, but it wasn’t a hard line of demarcation — bands were still appearing on “square” talk shows for a couple or three years after that.
Sorry to have to break it to you, Steve, but the Fifth Dimension was not cool. Successful, yes. Good music, yes. Cool, no.
BST with Al Kooper was cool and basically ignored. Becoming commercial made them uncool.
See, this is what I was alluding to — coolness has nothing to do with quality, or the Doors would never have been considered cool. They were a hot mess, and their output sucks unless you have a thing for cheap organs and dreadful poetry. The band’s poor quality is more widely recognized today, yet they’re still considered cool.
It’s not just music, either. Jack Kerouac was a crappy writer — I agree with Truman Capote, who said, “That’s not writing, that’s typing” — yet he’s still considered cool.
“Go listen to that punk music. It holds up pretty badly.”
Never got into punk. But the critics swooned over its “raw energy.”
So I was in a bit of a fog from ’67- ’84 I listened to My father’s son and WMMR , bought records, 8 tracks then cassettes mostly from Burt when he ran then owned his shop. I never gave cool and uncool much thought. Retrospectively I was uncool:)
The Doors are at or near the top of my music Pantheon. The Doors were always cool BECAUSE of their music, not in spite of it.
When I lived in NYC in the 80s, I would sometimes go to dive bars on the Lower East Side frequented by actual punks. Not middle-class kids dressing as punks, but white kids living the punk lifestyle because they were poor. Those dive bar jukeboxes didn’t play punk rock – they played The Doors.
Singer-songwriter lyrics never hold up as poetry on the written page, not even Nobel laureate Bob Dylan’s. Song lyrics shouldn’t be judged as poetry; music and words are bound together in the presentation.
It’s bad music and bad poetry, and I’m not judging the poetry by what it reads like written down. Also, too, punks were not exactly widely respected for their taste. They liked ugly shit in the mistaken belief that it made them cool.
Go listen to that punk music. It holds up pretty badly.
On the subject of Randy Newman covers, Ray Charles did a fairly decent cover of “Sail Away,” and Three Dog Night, who started out this whole thread, did a complete reworking of “Mama Told Me Not to Come.” I still prefer Newman’s version of “MTMNTC.”
I think that’s the one El Som was dissing.
I prefer Etta James’ “Sail Away,” but I don’t think either one — Nilsson’s, either — is as good as the original, though obviously the song gains an extra dimension when a Black artist sings it.
Yep, that’s the one I was dissing.
And I STILL have no idea what BS&T, featuring the belching barfly David Clayton-Thomas, was trying to do with ‘And When I Die’.
As to Blood, Sweat & Tears, their Album ‘Child Is Father To The Man’ was the first sorta ‘underground’ album I’d ever bought. Raved about it to my high school friends.
Then, the second album, sans Al Kooper, came out. I immediately hated it. My friends?: ‘Boy, you were really RIGHT about Blood Sweat & Tears’. My response?: ‘Noooooo!!’
Was DCT a barfly? I never knew that. He sure could bellow, though.
As for what they were trying to do, that’s easy: Sell records.
And they succeeded. The album you hated was No. 1 for seven weeks, included three singles that each reached No. 2 and won the Grammy for Album of the Year on the way to triple-platinum. And if you listen to the album versions of those songs, you’ll find that their success as singles was predicated on chopping out the solos.
Why David Clayton-Thomas? Because the rest of the band broke the news to Al Kooper that he was no lead singer so he quit in a huff, and Judy Collins saw DCT perform and recommended him to Steve Katz.
As for why they were uncool, it wasn’t just the turn towards pop. They were widely criticized for touring Eastern Europe in 1970 sponsored by the US State Department (apparently part of a deal to clear up the Canadian DCT’s immigration status) and then by playing Las Vegas. Their popularity plummeted after that and never recovered.
Joy to the World! Valley Garden Park, Joints, cops and Acid:)