Review of Three Dog Night: Live In Concert

Introduction

Three Dog Night were very successful between 1969 and 1975, accumulating eleven top ten singles from 21 hits, and twelve consecutive gold albums. There music included cover versions of hits from other popular acts, but as to be expected with 70`s rock bands, success brought with it arguments and the group split in 1977.

So what we have here is yet another rock band from the 70`s, reunited and cashing in on former glory.

In this guise, the band team up with the Tennessee Symphony Orchestra for an eighty-odd minute show.

Video

The video is presented in full-frame and is standard concert fare - band on stage, lights and numerous camera angles. In order to make things more exciting, the producers have cut in some other footage along the way - for example during "Out In The Country" we are treated to rivers and country etc. This is also combined with some fairly ghastly video effects bordering the picture at times and the whole thing feels a little odd at times.

The picture itself is fine, no grain or dirt and a reasonable amount of detail, but nothing to write home about.

Audio

The audio comes in a choice of Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS 5.1 and PCM Stereo. I tried all three, but watched the disc with the DTS 5.1 soundtrack. I have to say that despite this being a bog-standard music release, the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack is severely lacking in presentation and power compared to the DTS 5.1 version - and this really shouldn`t be the case. The DTS sound is much warmer and has much more depth, in comparison, the Dolby Digital 5.1 sounds feeble. The PCM stereo track actually sounds better than the Dolby Digital track.

Turning to the content, the main feature comprises a combination of tracks from the band, tracks from the orchestra and interviews. Despite the orchestra providing some musical depth to the Three Dog Night numbers, their own offerings are of elevator music standard and quickly become tedious. The interview segments are reasonably interesting, but I would have preferred them to be kept as an extra so that the music was uninterrupted.

Features

The extras consist solely of a gallery, which is desperately uninteresting and not worth the effort of encoding it to the disc.

The menu is simple and easy to navigate.

Conclusion

Overall this disc contains a number of reasonable foot-tapping tunes that many people will recognise, however while they may be fine to listen to on the radio in between other material, 85 minutes of it in one go wasn`t particularly appealing.

The DTS sound is good, but the Dolby Digital sound was surprisingly weak. The visual quality is good, but the visuals aren`t particularly appealing at times. The disc is rounded off by a very dull gallery.

In summary if you must listen to Three Dog Night, get a cheap "Best of" CD instead.

(please note my rating of 7 for the sound covers the DTS soundtrack, the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack would score 5)