Music Monday - Bands

When it comes to the music industry I'm a little confused at the word "Band" nowadays, when I think of a Band it includes people playing musical instruments. Yet we regularly get the name associated with groups of singers (eg Boy Bands or Girl Bands).
Now I'm not going to get into the argument of whether some of these are good, sure they are but on the other hand I find them quite boring to be honest, just too many of them appearing at present. A lot of the newer ones are glorified karaoke groups n my opinion manufactured through TV programmes like the X Factor.
In fact rather than call them "Bands" surely "Choir" would be a better description.

So what is a "Band" well when it comes to the Rock/Pop industry in my opinion its a group of indiduals that form a group, it should contain a singer, guitarist, bassist and drummer in the least. So in theory what I'm saying is a Band line up would contain a least 4 people to get the right sound.

Of course this could be increased and arguably be improved by adding others, maybe a 2nd guitarist, maybe a keyboard man, a saxophone player, etc.

But when I was thinking about this post I remembered that some very good and succesfull Bands/groups have actually only had three members with somebody doubling up their instrument with lead vocals.

So todays song choice is some of my favorite 3 piece Bands/groups I'm sure you can think of many more :-
The Police (Sting, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland) :-


The Stray Cats (Brian Setzer, Lee Rocker & Slim Jim Phantom) :-


Cream (Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce & Ginger Baker)


The Jam (Paul Weller, Bruce Foxton & Rick Buckler)


Double Trouble (Stevie Ray Vaughan, Chris Leyton & Tommy Shannon) :-


Ok I usually leave it at 5 songs and all the above acts are well known but when I think of 3 piece bands my mind goes back to 2005 and a local group I saw in Memphis called "The Dempseys", well if you want live entertainment these were well worth a look, I went back to see them again the following night.