I go to jam nights a few times a week. It’s a situation where random musicians get up on guitar, bass, drum, keys, or whatever - a trombone if you have one.
About 15% of the jams are awesome - these are the jams where all the musicians are accomplished and can communicate with each other and know how to compliment each other. I.e. - they have jamming skills
Another 50% of the jams are mediocre - these usually have at least a decent rhythm section that can play together, and at least one other person who can keep up.
Another 25% kinda suck - ability aside, it’s usually attributed to people up there who can’t/won’t communicate musically so jamming skills are out the window.
A full 10% of the jams are painful noise that if you have any musical ability and you get stuck in the middle of one you just pray for a quick death to the jam. A drummer all over the place, a bass player who doesn’t know what a groove is, one guitar player who only knows two notes and another who loves feedback and whammy bars and dynamics be damned.
TL;DR - the lowest common denominator is the rhythm section. Without that - yes, a band sucks.
I remember, back in the '70s, a review of a band that was very polished, and the reviewer said “The drumming needs to be more analog.”
(In the days before autotune or digital anything, that was a clever comment.)
I’ve tried to find that review, or any hint of who wrote it, but I can’t…
.
eta: Took my now-wife to see Joan Armatrading, who I’d billed as a soulful folkie… first song started out like that, then the drummer went to town and turned it into Arena Rock. Who the hell was… “And on drums, Richie Hayward!”
(From Little Feat. Certainly elevated the band, and the whole evening.)
I knew someone was gonna come up with that. But there is one beatles tune, where Ringo stomped out before so Paul was on drums- but when they did another recording for the 2nd half- Ringo was back. According to the music expert writing about it- Ringo is noticeably better than Paul.
There’s that Joke- everyone in ZZ Top has a beard.
Another bassist here (tho I currently play upright bluegrass, so rarely w/ a drummer). I’m having a hard time getting my head around the idea of a band sounding good w/ a drummer who isn’t tight. My experience w/ “bad” drummers has mostly been w/ the WRONG drummer for the gig. My preference tends towards straight ahead rock w/ minimalist drumming, so I have been less than thrilled on my share of gigs with jazz drummers who wouldn’t stay off their freaking hi-hat… Plenty fine drummers for music other than the sort I was interested in playing.
The White Stripes. Meg White isn’t an awful drummer, but she’s not a terrific one either. Jack White composed terrific songs around her limited drumming and sounded amazing for it.
That’s a good example of an exception I agree with. Pat Metheny left some room with “almost impossible.”
Also with The Beatles I’m pretty sure Stu Sutcliffe’s main reason for being in the band was he had a van and could pay the petrol money.
So that was one way I could see a band even having a poor drummer - he or she has a van, maybe bought the amps and perhaps some promoter connections. Otherwise pretty hard to get some gigs with half a competent rhythm section no matter who you’ve got out front.
Golly, it almost sounds like Tommy Smothers joke about Keith Moon had a ring of truth to it. Yet The Who never sounded as good after “Who Are You”.
Not sure where I’d put Carl Palmer yet he and Emerson cobbled together a pretty good “rhythm section”
Rush was right not to go on without Neil Peart and Led Zeppelin absolutely could not continue without John Bonham.
Steely Dan stopped touring, became a studio band and thus Denny Dias and Skunk Baxter left. Yet from Pretzel Logic all the way through Fagen’s first solo album he had Jeff Porcaro’s absolutely phenomenal talent.
Of course none of the above is about bad drummers so I’ll cease hijacking a thread where I was the OP. I do reckon that Ginger Baker and Pat Metheny were correct and if Keith Moon was “sloppy” he was the really good kind of sloppy. Still I’m interested in hearing more instances like the White Stripes
I stand corrected. And only Night by Night and Parker’s Band on Pretzel Logic so I guess Katy Lied was his pinnacle with that band. He also played on the song FM (no static at all) and just the title track of Gaucho where Becker & Fagen also began using a drum machine. He’s on much but not all off Nightfly where there is a live drummer listed for each track yet I wonder how much Fagen used a machine there.
