226 responses Add your response
For sure you are right... A drummer is a limited percussionist in a way...For me... Drummer with standard set of drums are recent phenomenon in a limited number of musical style...Jazz and rock/pop... Percusionnist are more musicians on their own free way, soloist in many countries and cultures from millennias or player in a communicating at distance talking community... Correct me if wrong... I prefer percussionists...i associated percussionist with melodic rythm and /or rythmic melody...Drummer play more rythmic explosions with accompanying beat than melody of their own ... I am not a musician ... 😁😊 At all.... But i love music and will be one next life... If i was a baby i will ask your family to adopt me... 😁
|
@mahgister we are all musicians and engineers in my home. Not the Partridge Family we are more dysfunctional like Sly and the Family Stone. |
I will send you my paper for the next life among musicians... Thanks 😁😊 To understand the universe the easiest way is music... Alain Connes and this Dr. Anirban Bandyopadhyay just say that consciousness is related to music and even is music... Then.... i believe them... Cannot wait to be adopted... my deepest respect to you and to your family...
|
@mahgister my wife and I raising biracial children have learned let them be who they are. Do what calls them and they have all done well. Are children are all grown but know we foster children hoping to leave the same impression two of them are now candidates for Music and Academic Scholarships. Teach your children well................ |
@mahgister I hear the big thing now is adult adoption. I can teach you trumpet if the arthritis will not let you work the frets. My neighbor hates when I get my saxophone out not that I am bad I am loud. Tenor rules the alto |
Tre Cool of Green Day - I'm not a fan of the band, but he is a great drummer. Fast and clean with great taste and instincts to drive the music forward and always do just the right thing at just the right time while also surprising the listener sometimes. Gilson Lavis, formerly the drummer for Squeeze for many years. Love the band, and he was the perfect drummer for them. Again, original, never intrusive but full of quirky little ideas that were the perfect accompaniment to their brilliant songs. |
Haha best drummer thread...classic! They all start with Neil Peart or John Bonham with a non-rock tip of the hat to Buddy Ruch. There’s also Keith Moon up there as well. Better to ask professional drummers who they admire most and I guarantee Neil Peart won’t hit the top ten. I have a ’crieria’ which I ’judge’ drummers but I use it to quantify every type of artist: it’s a countdown from ’facility/skill’ to creativity to something a bit rarer...something the best artist strive to have but is something that cannot be taught. It is fearlessness. If it was fearlessness alone, Elvin Jones, Steve Gadd or Keith Moon would be at the top of the list. If it was creativity alone, Max Roach, Steve Gadd, Steve Smith, Vinnie Colaiutta are up there. I’m sure I’m missing a few. If it was musicality alone, Jeff Porcaro, Hal Blaine, John Bonham My criteria: 5. Facility 4.Influential contribution 3.Musicality 2.Creativity 1.Fearlessness
This is why Neil Peart would never crack the top 20 in my list and why I rate John Bonham in the top 5.
I’m a huge Steve Smith fan. His solo on Journey Captured Live is the best recorded rock solo in my book. But he is not fearless like Max Roach or Elvin Jones or Keith Moon. I think Neil Peart is a great drummer and I’m a huge Rush fan. I think the best living drummers are still Steve Gadd and Vinnie Colaiutta.
|
There were no great rock drummers before Ringo Starr, Charlie Watts, and Keith Moon. Everyone, talented though they may be, who came after built on what they created. "If I have seen further than others it is because I stood on the shoulders of Giants." And they learned their craft listening to Art Blakey, Gene Krupa, and Buddy Rich, but that trio weren't rock drummers. |
Here’s Keith doing his adventurous thing with the drums He keeps switching from staying with the lyrical content and motion/forces/timing, and then playing with the beat, staying on it, in front, behind, etc. Like a man trying to play the ENTIRE song all by himself, without dropping any of it, without losing any of it’s macro or micro considerations.. Along with point and counterpoint, dance, flow, all of it. It’s an amazing performance, if you really listen. One could even propose that the entire intent of the song comes out in the drums and the rest is just wafts of flavoring and colors, mood lighting, etc. That is Keith’s drumming......(at least here, in this tune) |
@teo_audio + 1
|
Really now ..... https://drummagazine.com/60-best-rock-drummers-of-all-time/
|
"There were no great Rock drummers before Ringo Starr, Charlie Watts, and Keith Moon". Wow, such unashamed ignorance. So no Earl Palmer (Little Richard)? D.J. Fontana (Elvis Presley)? Fred Below? Below was the house drummer at Chess Records, playing on the recordings of Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, etc. Is was he---as well as Palmer and Fontana---younger Rockers listened to to learn how to play Rock 'n' Roll. I could name a dozen more. |
Keith Moon, John Bonham, Mitch Mitchell. No one could touch Moon…saw all 3’of these guys and so many more. iIn addition to The Who tracks mentioned in this thread, listed to the Underture on the “Tommy” rock opera…best rock drumming I have ever heard on a recording… Had the pleasure to see him with The Who 8 times…unbelievable |
Keith Moon lived such an outrageous life, he would have re-learn how to play the drums before recording the later albums. As good as Bonham is, he was not as fearless as Moon. It is true that Moon would play over things that most session drummers would dare not try. It's something only novices attempt. But he's fearless...he made it work and The Who's style allowed for it. There is more consistent badass style with Bonham from song to song. But Moon gives me goosebumps on just the few songs he's great at. Best Rock Drummer is a really fun...but it's a joke. Everyone has their great moments and made their contributions. They're all great. I think Ringo is fantastic...it took me a long time to realize that he simply deferred to the music. He was also mire influential than Buddy Rich to aspiring drummers.
|
Well, when my brother took lessons from Gene Krupa and Cozy Cole in NYC at their studio in the late 1950's, they said that at 16, he was much better than either of them were at that age. Unfortunately, college and a degree in Theoretical Nuclear Physics called, so he quit. They did carry him out to the 50-yard-line when Queen Elizabeth came to his college (William & Mary) his freshman year so he could play a solo with the marching band at half-time. (Yes, I have photographs for those non-believers out there.)
But I digress. Don Henley plays and SINGS at the same time. If you think THAT is easy, TRY IT. As far as Ringo, well, he was amazing at what he did with the Beatles, but greatest of all time? I have no idea. Playing drums is a skill that takes years of practice. Bashing out slams on skins doesn't make one a drummer/percussionist. Drummers and bass players make rock music rock, so I would say anyone who fits the band and music is pretty darn good. Watts was amazing at "driving" the Stones style and making it special, but so was James Brown's various drummers, so...pick your poison, I guess. |
@mbennes: Oh man, you are too hip for the room ;-) , Buddy Harman is FANTASTIC, in my all-time Top 10. I’ll bet you and I are the only ones here who know his name. Buddy was the "first call" drummer in Nashville for decades, in effect that city’s Hal Blaine (another great) He can be heard on the recordings of hundreds of singers, including Tammy Wynette and George Jones. His playing on "Stand By Your Man" is SO cool. He invented playing the hi-hat part on the snare drum with a brush, with the 2/4 backbeat played "cross-stick". Of course, it can be argued that Buddy was not a Rock drummer. Rock ’n’ Roll, yes. What’s the difference? Rock ’n’ Roll swings, Rock doesn’t. As an illustration, listen to Ringo’s playing when he joins The Band onstage for the last song in The Last Waltz concert segment, Dylan’s "I Shall Be Released". See how slow, plodding, and ponderous is his playing? Now listen to Levon Helm; nimble, light on his feet, like Fred Astaire dancing. Listen to Levon’s drumming on Clapton’s cover of Bobby Blue Bland’s "Further On Up The Road"; he swings SO hard! Like a Jazz drummer, but with a 2/4 backbeat. Rock ’n’ Roll, baby! When I saw Keith Moon live in ’68 and ’69, he was incredibly exciting: explosive, dynamic, maniacal. By the end he was so sluggish, so tired, so boring. "Who Are You"? Terrible! Was it the booze and pills? Or age? John Bonham played his kick drum in the "bury the beater in the head" style. In other words, not letting the bass drum beater rebound off the batter head. The effect that creates is to make each bar in the music feel separate---the music seems to come to a halt at the end of each bar, starting up again for the next. The music has no natural flow, no movement and momentum. Robert Plant would definitely not have Bonham playing on his records with Alison Krauss, nor would she let him ;-) . |
"When I saw Keith Moon live in ’68 and ’69, he was incredibly exciting: explosive, dynamic, maniacal. By the end he was so sluggish, so tired, so boring. "Who Are You"? Terrible! Was it the booze and pills? Or age?" So true bdp24. Someone here attached a studio video the other day of Who are You and thought that his playing on that song was brilliant. I thought that it was terrible and boring. He was great in the beginning, or maybe I should say different and very good, but drumming is very physical as well as mental, and he was depleted in both of those arenas, and it really showed as time went on. Live at Leeds was really good, but by the time Who’s Next was recorded, he was already a shadow of his former self. Same thing happened to Phil Collins long before he reached the sorry state he’s in now. Listen to how predictable he is on the Invisible Touch disc. |
Dallas Taylor is underrated. I saw him with CSN and he was very impressive. That being said, the best depends on what you're trying to achieve. If you need a studio drummer and want a platinum or gold record, Gary Chester is a very good choice. Hal Blaine is of course another. For a very musical drummer with great chops, Jim Gordon though it pains me to mention him. For a live show, I would say Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann. Also, I saw the Buddy Rich Big Band and as fun as Buddy Rich is to watch, an evening of drum solos can be a bit tiresome. |