(Power?) Trios Trivia Quiz

Answer: Sleep

If you have not heard Sleep's mammoth 'Dopesmoker' go and do yourself a favor. Highly influential. They formed in 1991 believe it or not, but it was not until 2003 they issued their 'Dopesmoker' epic, a number of years AFTER the band split up. Needless to say they reformed to great acclaim.

Some people have called 'Dopesmoker' the heaviest, sludgiest, most wicked album album ever recorded (leaving Black Sabbath's 'Master Of Reality' release cowering in some forgotten corner.) Do you actually NEED more of a higher recommendation?

Answer: Thin Lizzy

This Lizzy formed as a trio and their first few albums featured them as such. They were very popular in Germany early on and had a huge early hit with their interpretation of a traditional Irish song entitled "Whisky In The Jar". If you are European you KNOW just how big this song was over there. There might exist a GREAT video of a Live TV show they did for German TV of them playing in front of a bunch of third, fourth and fifth graders. If you can find this online somewhere watch it! Eventually they lost their guitar player and replaced him with two guitar players and achieved worldwide fame with their wonderful 'Jailbreak' album in the mid seventies.

Phil Lynott died on January 4, 1985 and recently had a statue erected in Ireland. He also issued a few books of poetry while he was alive.

Horslips were a great mid seventies Irish Band (check out their amazing debut album 'Happy To Meet Sorry To Part', one of the most unique rock albums ever), Nirvana (UK) were a British Progressive Rock trio in the sixties, Jimi Hendrix was some hardcore punker who put out an album in the 80s called something like "Hit on my girl and I'll beat you willy in the moshpit dude". Don't know the first thing about him otherwise.

Answer: Agent Orange

Hugely under rated, Agent Orange are still going strong. Super nice guys, hugely innovative, always listenable. While some might argue that the Simpletones were the first to try and fuse punk and surf (and don't kid yourself: I LOVED the Simpletones beyond reason) Agent Orange did it best. The 1990 film "Pale Blood" featured their music.

Answer: Grand Funk Railroad

Oh did I LOVE these guys as a kid (and I still do). They were HUGE in the first half of the seventies. They came out of a band called The Pack, who split up, reformed as Grand Funk Railroad with The Pack's lead singer now as their manager. They are also, along with Blue Cheer, the godfathers of grunge (this has been confirmed to me by every major player in that genre so don't even try to argue about it with me). I always found it incredibly sad that they recorded a fantastic album with Frank Zappa producing, "Good Singin' Good Playin'", that went nowhere but the cut out bins - and split up.

Interesting anecdote: When Frank was asked WHY he produced them he said (more or less) that when he met them they all jumped on the sofa and farted on each other, and he figured any band that could fart on each other was worthy of his interest.

Answer: Guru Guru

Guru Guru (or if you are German and pronounce their name correctly closer to Gur Gur) were a fabulous acid drenched power trio with members that were much older than your average "rocker" when they formed. Mani Neumeier (drums and inventor of the Manitom) and Uli Trepte (Bass and inventor of the 'Spacebox") came out of the German Free Jazz scene (mostly they are know for playing with the Free Jazz pianist Irene Schweizer).

As far as I know Mani still has some line up of this band still going (he must be around 80 by now!). Start with either UFO or Hinten if you are interested. That's them at their most "acidic".

Answer: Cream

Cream. Internationally famous. To some they could be called the hard rock Beatles. Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker. When I was a kid I wanted to grow up and become Jack Bruce! In 2005 they reformed for a handful of shows at Madison Square Garden in New York and the Royal Albert Hall in the UK. I would have cut off one of my legs to have attended one of these shows!

Mountain: GREAT band. Felix Pappalardi - their bass player - was Cream's producer. But Mountain were also not a trio. Quark only exist in my head. Jimi Hendrix Experience was some trio from the UK fronted by some guy from Seattle who aspired to be a guitar player. I hear they were kinda popular in some places...

Answer: Blue Cheer

LSD. Don't get me started on LSD. Blue Cheer. Don't get me started on Blue Cheer. I LOVED this band and they had GREAT album covers that would have justified you owning them even if the music would have sucked (I HIGHLY recommend you start with "Outsideinside"). Known by many for being "Louder Than God". They actually scored a Top Ten hit in 1968 with their cover of 'Summertime Blues'.

Eventually they became less "Grunge" - yes this is correct: Mark Arm personally told me that one week you could find used Blue Cheer and used Grand Funk Railroad albums in every used record store in Seattle and the next week every store in the greater Seattle area was sold out of both of them - these two bands are the real Godfathers of Grunge. See: you just learned something! - anyway they 'calmed down' on their later albums but they did NOT become 'less good'. No: I refuse to explain my alternate answer choices!

Answer: Taste

Taste. Oh yes: Taste, with the legendary Rory Gallagher. HUGE in Germany (in continental Europe in general). ANY album by them is ungodly great (start with "Live Taste" or "Isle Of White". You can thank me later).

Stud were a pretty swank Taste offshoot after Rory split up the band, Stray Dog were a good band on ELP's Manticore label with Snuffy Walden on Guitar. I'ma go out on a limb here and assume that Snuffy was his real name? Thin Lizzy. Do you REALLY need me to talk at you about Thin Lizzy?

Answer: Motorhead

Lemmy. That's all you need to know. A hell of a nice guy and Rainbow Bar and Grille regular. He was highly approachable if you waited for his video game to complete, and genuinely appreciated his fans. And yes: it is totally true that he used to quip that he was fired from Hawkwind for being into speed (a motorhead) and not into acid like the rest of them were.

By the way: every band I listed as possible answers are totally worth copping an earful of, ESPECIALLY Venom's "Black Metal" and The Pink Fairies' "Kings Of Oblivion "albums. Do yourself a favor...

Answer: Budgie

Budgie put out a load of albums in the 1970s. And they were reasonably popular in the UK, but not so much elsewhere. When the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal happened in 1980 they finally got their long due credit as being highly influential. Once Metallica named them as a big influence their reputation and legacy was sealed. If you like metal you could do a LOT worse than pick up one of their albums and check them out.
Man are Welsh and are GREAT but have zip to do with Metal. Same with the Cardinals. The Lords are a 60s German band and are in here because I'm a smartass.