3…2…1
They could become 2 again if they could mend some fences.
Can’t argue with you there. The first (album) lineup was sensational.
88Kasyo Junrei
I have to agree, and pretty much in that order. The best news is our top pick is still putting out great music!
I do like plenty of others that have been pointed out: Rush, Police, Morphine, ZZ Top, Cream, Femmes, Minutemen, Beasties, and honorable mention to POTUS (5 strings total in that threesome).
Sleater-Kinney, probably. There was a good entire year somewhere in my late 20s where I must have listened to them damned near every day. (I seem to obsess over a band in high-stress periods of my life. For Covid, that band was, apropos to this thread, the Police.)
Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble?
Excellent choice.
Sounds lonely.
Liar!
They apparently considered the 3-piece lineup the baseline, as their box set was released under CSN handle only, even though it contained CSNY tracks.
Even without counting Young, in 1969 CSN toured with a bass player and a drummer. That’s 6 people on stage if you went to see them perform.
The OP can set the parameters of what constitutes a “3 piece band”, of course, but to my way of looking at it, if it takes 6 people to play a song… that’s not a 3 piece band.
I’ll give a shout out to FUN!.
Love the teachers!
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For Christmas one year, I wrote on my list: “Dejà Vu, by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young with Dallas Taylor and Greg Reeves.”
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They might be the funniest trio, as well. My grade-school best friends and I found a college concert album of theirs, while bored at a parents’ luncheon, and got sent outside because we were laughing too much.
I think The Folksmen could give them a run for their money. (Now, before you say they were a fictional band, Harry, Michael and Christopher did tour as a trio, playing songs from both A Mighty Wind and Spinal Tap).
Oh, that’s hilarious, I’ve got to find clips of that (or a show someday). And it fits in with them doing the Spinal Tap commentary on DVD in character… hence, not getting the jokes.
Here is a list I compiled in 2019, with a little help from my friends. Some (many?) of them are already here. Are any of them new? I don’t know.
Bangor Flying Circus (1album wonders from Chicago)
Blue Cheer
Cream
Crosby Stills & Nash (not with Young)
Emerson Lake & Palmer
Genesis (starting with “And Then There Were Three”)
Grand Funk Railroad
Green Day
Jimi Hendrix Experience
John Butler Trio
The Police
Rush
The Youngbloods
Z Z Top
The Replacements were a quartet for most of their existence, but they recorded Pleased to Meet Me, arguably their finest album, as a trio, after they’d fired Bob Stinson from the band. By the time they hit the road to tour the album, they were back up to four, but they were a threesome when recording such classics as “Alex Chilton,” “Valentine” and “Can’t Hardly Wait.”
I’m going with ELP. The vast majority of their output was just the three of them. I’ve seen them live many times and it was never more than the three of them performing (they cancelled the orchestra they tried for what Works tour just before they got to Philly).
Much as I love CSN, I can’t really consider them a 3 person band. The last time I saw them in concert not only did they have Neil, a drummer, and a bassist they had Booker T. James on keyboards.
Seduce. Slipped my mind from a previous post.