| Yeah, I knew this post was coming.. and I did purposefully leave Nirvana off. The main reason is the fact that I consider a good 3 man group to be the sum of its parts so to say. Put together the right musicians with the right chemistry and you can get some great music out of even a small selection of instruments. Nirvana, even though I like them tons, doesn't fit this. Nirvana is Kurt Cobain + a rhythm section. Any rhythm section would have done, and Nirvana probably would have been just as successful if 2 other musicians had taken Novoselic and Grohls places during Nirvana's formation phase. IMO, just because the band came out to have 3 members, doesn't make them a true 3 piece band.
In my "purist" definition of 3 piece band, it must gain something speicific from each of its individual members that no other mixture could have produced. I guess Primus doesn't really qualify either, since it is just Les Claypool + 2 others. But, Claypool just blows Cobain out of the water in musicianship... in fact Claypool just plain blows almost every other musician out of the water, I can't say enough good about this guy. |