Track Listing

1. Prelude
2. Sure As I'm Sittin' Here
3. Anytime Babe
4. Interlude I
5. Put out the Light
6. Sitting in Limbo
7. I'd Be So Happy
8. Interlude II
9. Play Something Sweet (Brickyard Blues)
10. On the Way Back Home
11. Show Must Go On

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #196953 in Music
• Released on: 1990-01-11
• Number of discs: 1

Customer Reviews

Let's Add On The Way Back Home
I'll agree with the other reviewers that the album is too short. I've always loved On The Way Back Home. The song is on my iPod and songs don't get on my iPod lightly. I'd Be So Happy is also on my iPod. So, along with the three hits and these additional two songs, Hard Labor has five great tunes. That's better than most albums. So in my book the math adds up to justify 4 stars.

The sound on CD could be better. The album always had a flat sound and the CD isn't much better.

Hard Labor does have the full length "The Show Must Go On" which clocks in over a minute longer than the 45 version on all other Three Dog Night CD's. The only other place that I know of where the full length version of The Show Must Go On appears was on the 8-track tape of 3 Dog Night's Greatest Hits.

A good album
I thought this was a strong album for Three Dog Night. It produced 3 hit singles: The Show Must Go On, Sure As I'm Sittin' Here, and Play Something Sweet. I also thought Put Out The Light and Sittin In Limbo were very good. Though it was kind of lite on the number of songs for an album, it really only has 8 songs when most albums at the time included 10 or more.

DOG's LAST GASP
Indeed, the last Gold album for the group, "Hard Labor" comes forth like a project that was not easily delivered. Changing producers to Jimmy Ienner was supposed to regroom the dog but "Teeth" bit too hard on his bubblegum and the once respected band sounds very wimpy on most of these songs. Clocking in at a paltry 36 minutes, this collection is short on both length and top drawer material. <>
First of all, 3 of the cuts are simply mindless preludes or interludes that go nowhere. That leaves you with just 8 songs, and 4 of those are stretched redundantly beyond tolerence for a normal closure - fleshing out for a minute or two past the pleasure point.
<> The hit songs were catchy 3 DOG NIGHT choices, although the biggest one --Leo Sayer's "The Show Must Go On" was more of a too-much-fun novelty and hasn't aged well. The other two hits, John Hiatt's "Sure As I'm Sitting Here", and Allen Toussaint's "Play Something Sweet" (Brickyard Blues) are engaging and memorable and still sound great some 30 years hence. There is one other song that should have been a hit. "I'd Be So Happy" has the earmarks of classic 3 Dog Night and it's a mystery why this was never singled. < >
The others are the throwaway Daniel Moore songs which an earlier Dog would have passed on, and a forgetable Larry Weiss number.
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3 or 4 songs do not a good release make and 3 DOG NIGHT never recovered from Hard Labor. All of us who plopped down our hard earned felt very ripped when we took this one home and we never really gave the band another chance. And they never deserved one.
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Note: The 4 essentials from this release are on the excellent "Celebrate -The Three Dog Night Story" double CD. No need to bother with what remains.