drummers eh? have to admit, being a really proficient drummer doesn't do much to help songs most of the time. i like listening to jazz or the like where the drummer is great.as for rock? the ramones had the right idea. ONETWOTHREEFOUR!!!!!!!!!!!!!! the big problem with drummers in bands is that they rarely(in my experience) listen to what the songs are about. they just want an excuse to show off and make noise! less is more etc. i think the trick is to enlist a drummer whose not actually a drummer. trust me.

Dan Peters.

I try to use the tones of the kit to add to a song. Listen to : http://www.gigireland.com/mp3/130_Down_from_underneath.mp3

oops just wondering how you say that? a good drummer brings lots to a song dynamic, groove, swing, pace, power, orchestration etc and any proficient musician is gonna play whats needed at the right times, just look at and james brown song where clyde stubblefeild and jabo starks provide amazing grooves (incidently theyre the two most sampled drummers in the world) some parts are quite technical others just simple fat beats less isnt always more the accents have to be put in the right places and there's so many ways that a drummer can transform a song. yes sometimes less is more but you cant make such a sweeping statment about all drummers how many have you played with and do you feel the same about all intruments and musicians.

I gotta agree with aljones on this. A band without a great drummer simply cannot be great. Led Zeppelin fell apart after John Bonham died. The Who were never the same after Keith Moon departed this world. Springsteen could replace as many guitarists as he liked but Max Weinberg drives the beat in his songs and no matter what the rest of the gang try to do, nothing pulls him off the beat. The drummer is the engine room of band. Just try playing without a great drummer. Hey, if you don't have a great drummer, you probably aren't a great band.

Thats so true, the drummer has the most technical job of using all their dexteriaty!

okay, so i digress i should have made a distinction there. the way I see it, there are good drummers and then there are drummers who try too hard to be "good" and end up interfering with the song. I suppose what i meant is that many drummers i have encountered seem to have a different conception of what good drumming is to the concetion that the rest of the band do. I think you'll find it's a common occurance.i am speaking from the insular world of unprofessional, struggling bands when i say that one is often better off with a non-drummer as a drummer. I was also being humorous! I love good drumming. it's one of the things that i love most in music, but a drummer who is not yet proficient and is trying to be the kind of "good" that drummers tend to want to be, is an awful thing. whereas a drummer who is not proficient and who keeps it simple is a good thing. i made that comment presuming that no one on this message board is in danger of having clyde stubblefield or jabo starks wanting to join their band any time soon. Now that i look at my original posting i can see that i didn't articulate this idea too well.

I think that the drummer out of Listo is amazing, but haven't seen them in a while, are they gigging much?

drummers get to hit stuff alot, you have to be angry to want to do that, sp lets be cautious when dealing with drummers folks, dave grohl by the way, is a good argument for a non drummer to be a good drummer (ow, headache!), did he play guitar first then go hit stuff?, either way, he has a well rounded view of songs, songs for the deaf was just amazing drumming. imagine youd have to lift weights to be able to play some slayer stuff, lombardo is another legend

Yeah you listen to Nirvanas pre Dave Grohl stuff, its ok, but nothing special. Then the minute Grohl came along, bang!