Given recent discussions, I like Bruford at 2, a lot. CRJ's ranking makes the most sense.

Hal Blaine can definitely move up. I can see Baker moving down too, he's really running on Influence and Innovation, but as I said it's really been me and Ariel on these forums, and I can see where Ariel's coming from about Baker's placement. If anyone noticed, I moved Ringo up and will possibly move Blaine and Purdie up more. I'm not changing anything more though, and as much as I want Bruford at 1, I think for now Bohnam at 1 is fine and well deserved.

I love Bruford and I can see the Jeff Beck comparison, so I'm cool with him in the top 3. Loving Bonham to number one!

Bohnam deserved to be number 1 all along regardless of criteria, like Hendrix, surprised he wasn't, even more surprised by how long it took to get him at number 1. And yes, like Jeff Beck at 2, having Bruford at 2 seems right to me. If current top 5 is satisfactory with Peart at 3, I think I'll start figuring out Blaine's placement and possibly move up Purdie. Some names in the 30-50 area need re working, and then above 70 I have no idea what's going on or why half the names are where they are.

EDIT: Actually, all I could see now is having Blaine at 9 and Paice at 10. Both deserve top 10, but I don't think either beats anyone ahead of them. Ringo is rightfully at number 8 IMO, and I he really can't beat anyone in front of him ever, but I think he has Paice and Blaine beat, but that's my opinion. Anyone have a problem with Ringo at 8? He really was that big a deal to the whole world of drumming.

CRJ I'll have to - respectfully - fight you tooth and nail on this one. To clarify I cannot see Peart even potentially below #5 on this list, ever. But it seems a stretch to me to see him above Moon and Baker. I could be wrong.



Moon absolutely wins influence, that's not even a debate imo, he was a 'big bang' a primal force that just showed up out of nowhere and changed drums FOREVER, EVERY drummer in rock of ANY style has to reckon with his innovations one way or another.

Peart cannot win innovation if innovation is linked to how influential/prominent the innovation itself was, or how much it did for drumming as an art form. Roto toms are cool, man. *Perfectly* fusing finesse and power in prog drumming and becoming the most famous/copied drummer stylistically in prog to this day, that's sick as fuck. But Moon basically singlehandedly showed the world literally an entirely new way to approach and envision the drums as an instrument. On his own. Out of nowhere. Peart was heavily rooted in Bruford and the first wave prog drummers in coming up with his style. Moon came up with something completely anew. THAT'S innovation. He basically changed the world of drumming and the ways in which people conceptualized drums as an instrument, overnight. THAT'S innovation.

Moon wins creativity no discussion necessary.

Peart easily wins the other two criteria I reckon.



Baker is probably more influential than Moon actually.

I don't think Peart is at all 'god territory' creativity wise, sorry. Master sure. Not god. God territory to me is Bill Bruford, Carter Beauford, Danny Carey, Dave Lombardo, Keith Moon. That's probably it, at least out of the drummers I know (in rock anyway). I'm not even certain Bonham is god territory, bless his soul.

See I just don't think Peart can take versatility. Baker was one of the preeminent jazz-based popular drummers in Britain with the Graham Bond Organisation prior to Cream...jazz-laced R&B, basically, according to what I'm reading on allmusic and wiki. Then there was Cream where he played African rhythms, one of the best drum solos ever (Toad), and was just generally a badass with an incredibly subtle and intellectually refined style with tons of finesse. THEN there was Ginger Baker's Air Force which you owe it to yourself to read about it's just amazing stuff in its own right: http://allmusic.com/artist/ginger-baker ... /biography

Allmusic on Baker's playing in Cream:
"What happened initially was "Wrapping Paper," a pop-style single released in late 1966 that didn't impress too many people -- although even there, one could hear a swing element to the group's sound, reminiscent of '40s jazz, that showed off one (albeit minor) component of what went into their sound. Baker was barely audible in the mix, though what one could hear of the drumming did have a signature of sorts, a loose, jazzy element that was unusual. Within the next year, the band would become a chart-topping act and then a cultural phenomenon, however, and at its core was Baker. He and Bruce continued to argue without let-up while Clapton mediated and refereed, and on their records everyone got to shine, but Baker's playing was special even in that context -- on "Rollin' & Tumblin'," a Muddy Waters blues standard that the trio took into the stratosphere from the first note, Baker's playing sounded like it was on another planet, matching Clapton's rapid-fire quoting of the main riff and Bruce's frenzied singing and quietly overpowering the listener; his playing on "I'm So Glad," by contrast, had a lyrical, almost melodic quality, like a veiled orchestral accompaniment to the bass and guitar -- he kept a beat, but his drumming also played the kind of role that a harpsichord continuo played in Baroque music. And then there was "Toad," in its original studio version, an offshoot of several pieces dating back to the Graham Bond days that featured Baker in a solo; here, as on "Oh Baby" from the first Graham Bond album, Baker made his drum kit sing. "

Allmusic on Ginger Baker's Air Force:
"The group, which included Baker's mentor Phil Seaman and his old bandmate Graham Bond, was much too eclectic ever to have achieved the kind of popularity that Cream or Blind Faith had enjoyed, embracing jazz, traditional African music, blues, folk, and rock. The ten-piece band lasted less than a year before breaking up, leaving behind a genuinely fascinating and exciting live album and an interesting studio LP (both combined on the Ginger Baker double-CD set Do What You Like."

Dude then worked with Fela Kuti in the 70s. Then there was the drum duel with Elvin Jones in the early 70s. The free-form jazz album 'Unseen Rain' in 1992. Jazz with Charlie Haden and Bill Frisell the 'Ginger Baker Trio' in 1994 on Going Back Home (album).

To be clear (not that this wasn't already clear or anything), I'm getting just about all of this from allmusic and wiki. But I do submit that Ginger's more seriously immersed in jazz playing than probably any other rock drummer I know minus Bruford. And also African playing.

I've heard plenty of Ginger Baker's air force, you underestimate how much Baker I know, and I agree that Baker can beat Peart, but with the way the criteria defines (to me, and before the Jew) innovation, Moon doesn't do well there. If you want, I believe we should make a solid definition for all the criteria. Also, this may be due to my lack of understanding of Lombardo, even in than Fantomas, but I can't see him being more creative than Peart at all. And yeah, Peart takes a lot from Bruford, but does that make a huge difference? Does it matter that Moon adopted styles of his favorite drummers, Blaine and Krupa? And Moon without a doubt wins influence, and I believe is comfortably more influential than Baker, direct and indirect. Indirectly, Moon was one of Peart's biggest influences, much more so than Baker, same with Bohnam, so if I consider Peart that big he just piggy backs Moon as well. Baker laid a foundation and an adaptation, but I believe Moon's influence can be compared more to Bohnam's than either can be compared to Baker. I'm not undermining Baker in anyway, everything he's done got around in rock drumming some how, but at the same time, I can't say it's more than Moon's massive, massive influence that is second only to Bohnam. I said I gave Moon influence comfortably over Peart. After Bohnam and Moon, I'd say Ringo is the next most influential rock drummer, and then Baker and Peart. Oh yeah Ringo was a huge influence on Peart too and any other drummer I can think of including Danny Carrey because they all listened to Beatles growing up. Danny Carrey's biggest influence and favorite drummer is Bill Bruford, in case anyone forgot, it's an interesting snippet of some of Bruford's more direct influence.

Been loving this guy.

The guy is a human metronome and can groove like no other.

Color me impressed, most people have never even (sadly) heard of Air Force. They any good? I'm damn curious judging by what allmusic said and also I have a pretty high opinion on Ginger as a musical entity

On the old bass subforum (i.e. old DDD) there was a post/thread explaining all the criteria. The drum subforum as I've mentioned got their criteria (the drum mod admitted this outright) from the bass subforum AND the explanations of what the criteria meant which were copied word for word. As memory serves the definitions were the following (for bass, extrapolate for drums):

Influence: How many professional bass players you've influenced. Both direct and indirect influence.

Innovation: Your innovations in the context of the history of rock bass. This includes both STYLISTIC INNOVATION and INSTRUMENTAL INNOVATION (on the latter e.g. being the first major rock bassist to play the Stick, to use Tony Levin as an example). Larry Graham on the bass forum got a full 15/15 (when we used to assign scores for criteria on a 15-point scale) in innovation because his innovation, slapping, was so IMPORTANT and BIG in bass history...so in a way it was assumed for the list that 'not all innovations are created equal'

Creativity: How creative your playing is (I've explained this just earlier)

Versatility: How many roles you can play on your instrument -- from 'holding it down' to bass soloing to improvisational in-group playing to aggressive/lead playing in a song to being able to play walking bass parts, etc. If a player can play multiple outright genres/styles, all the better

Technical skill: Technical facility on the instrument

I should mention my memory of all this is pretty crystal clear.

It was also made clear and stated outright on the bass forum that the criteria were loose guidelines for discussion, rather than some golden rule, so like if Entwistle beats Jamerson by the criteria, he still can't surpass him because all that means is the criteria have in this case failed to capture greatness.

As far as I'm concerned all of this is why some of our lists on this site are so uniquely good for musician lists, etc. I'm very proud of all this (which isn't to say I actually came up with the criteria or anything, I'm just proud as a member of this site that our criteria and lists fucking rule)

It's also always been implicitly or explicitly the rule that things like influence and innovation take precedence over say tech skill in the case of a tie in criteria between musicians, though we in the bass forum never had a 'system' like Jew's on mathematically quantifying that

FWIW, I personally would change some of the criteria definitions slightly from what they actually were, for instance I don't think a relative lack of versatility really intuitively hurts a Great player's greatness that much (Les Claypool is one of the greats of bass history no matter what, same with Squire, same with Entwistle, even though some would argue under the criteria they might deserve to drop on the bass list because with versatility counted in they might not stack up to some other players in the criteria who are currently beneath them on the greatest bassists list). Also obviously tech skill isn't *that* important compared to some of the other criteria I think e.g. the Jamerson/Entwistle issue (this explicitly became an issue on the bass thread on the old forum because ClashWho memorably argued Entwistle needs to take Jamerson for #1 because his considerable advantage in skill puts him ahead of Jamerson by the criteria.)

So my argument by the old DDD criteria definitions (which, remember, the drum forum copied and pasted from the bass forum) would be that Moon's stylistic innovation was so unbelievably massive and fortuitous in the history of rock drumming Peart just can't realistically compete when it comes to the innovation criteria.

...

As far as Lombardo goes part of it has to do with context. No other metal drummer before or since came up with such ridiculously dynamic and yes creative parts in the context of relatively standard (*relatively* standard) thrash arrangements as late 80s Slayer Dave did. No one. Listen to Lars in the mid/late 80s then listen to Lombardo on songs like Temptation, Seasons in the Abyss, Ghosts of War. Lars, by the way, was one of the *best* thrash drummers in the 80s, and there's just this massive gulf of genius between the two's playing on similar material. Dave's playing is utterly unique and I've never heard anything like it or that even can be mistaken for it from another metal drummer, even the good ones. *That's* creativity.

...

Intuitively it seems to me only right that indirect influence should if anything count for considerably more than direct influence (and indeed this is how I'm running the bass list). If this isn't the case, Metallica jumps Black Sabbath on the greatest artists list, Scotty Moore falls off the guitarists list entirely, and our own Ginger Baker leaves the top 10, possibly top 20 here. It's too easy to count how many contemporary drummers namedrop someone like Peart or whatever and count more names than those who namedrop Baker. Inferring from that that Peart is more influential than Baker in the history of rock drumming is severely, extremely wrongheaded.

Even if indirect influence didn't count, Baker's direct influence is enough to warrant top 10. I understand the criteria from the bass forum and where we got it from, but I'd say that's all the more reason to change it. Drums are a very different instrument and I think the way we look at the criteria and approach the list differently because of that. For example, I think tech skill for drumming is very important, more so than any other instrument specifically because there is no melody, it's that much harder to be extremely original or creative without varied amounts of tech skill. And according to how we set up the most skilled list in the other thread, Ringo has plenty of skill, which is true in my eyes and I like it's representation (skill isn't all mad speed and rudiments, as we've exemplified with the other categories in the skilled thread). I also don't like the idea that indirect influence should count for more than direct, they're both influences and if anything, they should count the same or direct more. It shouldn't change people's placement that much, Metallica would not pass Sabbath since Sabbath directly influenced every metal band ever by being the first and being the ones who pretty much started the low tunings and distortion. That comes from them. Indirect is more you get it from other artists who got it from other artists who built upon the first guy. I don't know a single metal band who hasn't listened to Sabbath or realizes that the genre wholly owes itself to Sabbath, where as I know plenty of metal bands who were not heavily influenced by Metallica, if not at all. And there were plenty of metal bands before Metallica which almost completely took influence from Sabbath. I really don't like now that everyone think indirect influence for some reason makes the artist more influential. It should be the level of influence, direct and indirect, both worth as much. It's just indirect is harder to measure, but we can try.

It seems to me that 'direct influence' is often taken on these boards to mean 'how many guys after you namedropped you in interviews' and 'indirect influence' to mean everything else.

I've pretty much said, anyways, just about everything I have to say about the top 5. You're the chief, do what you will. I've enjoyed the discussion greatly!

I don't interpret direct influence at all as a name drop, I view it as something that you can direct infer or correlate to their style, as in regardless of if they got it directly from him or know who the drummer is, they are using a style, technique, way of playing, or something else that emulates a certain drummer so clearly influence is nearly undeniable, sometimes it's ended up in name drops. Influence here also incorporates inspiration, which is almost always name drops. Indirect is pretty much something that one drummer wholly originated, and has been churned through so many different people and outlets who have made it their own and overtime, cannot be directly correlated from one drummer to the source, but we know the originator, and even if we can't trace how it got from one drummer to another, the evidence is there, no matter how small, and thus we give the creator influence for reaching so many drummers the roots are not directly traceable.

That's my take on influence, and as such, I think direct is easier to prove, but both are equally important. The extent of one's indirect influence however is either so high we take it for granted or too moderate or low to accurately determine, while all levels of direct influence are much easier to quantify.

Does anyone else think Purdie is too low? The guy is essentially the greatest funk drummer of all time, invented the ghost-note shuffle, has an obscene amount of session material, and has directly or indirectly influenced the playing of virtually all black drummers since his arrival on the scene.

I feel like 12 would be reasonable for him.

I do think he is too low, and was thinking about moving him up. I can definitely agree with that. Right behind Lombardo sounds good. Definitely beats Carrey and Portnoy

Yeah that was what I was thinking. Anyway, my dad saw Blood Sweat & Tears a few months ago and about halfway into the set they brought out Purdie to jam on a few tracks. He hit the snare one time and everyone shut up because of how good it sounded.