Very cool compilation.....thanks!!!
No to defend my boy, Nick Mason!!! I think the first half of the first song (Astronomy Domine) on the first Pink Floyd album is more than enough to prove wrong that he is a bad drummer.....let alone the worst drummer ever! Sure, he doesn't have anything on Keith Moon, John Bonham, Ginger Baker etc., but his classic tom fills (dat, boom, dat, boom, boom-boom, boom-boom....you know the ones!) are great. He is much more concerned with playing trance like (and at times borderline tribal....like on Set The Controls For the Heart of the Sun) rhythmns on the skins than filling up space with a bunch of cymbals....which I love. Much of the time Nick is just keeping the light "dream like" pulse of their songs....it's not like Pink Floyd (as a whole) really rock. He did his job! His fills which might come off as "repetitive" (like on the first track of Atom Heart) work well with creating the overall ambiance/pulse of the song.....plus said fills are actually not bad at all. Finally, their music is a bit different to most "rock bands" that would warrant a more blatantly awesome drummer.
It's funny how Blatherskite mentioned how Live at Pompeii as a reference to Nick's crappy playing......I was going to suggest watching it to check out his awesomeness
. Maybe give it another try.....I might be a bit partial though as a drummer and by how much his playing has influenced me over the years. Also, Atom Heart is prob. the worst album to look at Nick's drumming on....it's mostly just weird sound collages or slow quite dreamy songs where an abundance of drums would really fuck up the song. Quite a few Floyd songs don't have much drums on it or the rythmns are very quiet/dream like, but that's because they are what fit the song. I don't think that should take away from his drumming on other songs (with more obvious skillfull playing)which are actually really great. It's not like he just played the same 1-2-1-2-1-2 Chuck Berry beat (which rules and is the foundation of not only rock drumming, but the pulse of rock music really) on those Floyd songs.
.....which leads us nicely to RINGO!!! Again, sure he didn't really do anything to really blow anybody away, but how he played fit The Beatles music perfectly. Having a Keith Moon type (or any like drummer that displays more "technical/difficult" skills) drummer in The Beatles just wouldn't work......especially post-Help era Beatles. I mean, would we say that Charlie Watts was a bad drummer? Hell no!!! We also need to remember that drummers like Ringo and Charlie Watts were some of the o.g.'s of what we consider to be modern rock drumming. Their styles (which were quite a bit more heavier and "erratic" on the floor toms and cymbals than the drumming on "Chuck Berry era rock n' roll") were really expanded by the next influx of drummers/bands.....the music got heavier and the drums got more complex.
That said, I'm pretty sure that John said, "Pete Best was a better drummer, but Ringo was a better Beatle."