Bands with two drummers

Tortoise is great band with two drummers. It's all about finding a place for it. Saw them live in st Louis. Fantastic live band. The drummers also switch up. Several different musicians. If you never heard them, please do.
 
Tomorrow night I will be in a band w/ another drummer, an Allman Brothers tribute band.
 
Ive never cared for the effect 2 drummers creates.

I like agile sounding drumming far more than the Marianas Trench effect of 2 drummers grooving over the same ground.

I even question most Drummer/Percussionist situations...tends to get to busy...and when its not, why not just have the drummer cover it?
 
Otto I tend to agree, too much percussive stuff wears on the ears after a while. I've had the displeasure of jamming with some pretty bad percussionists. If I could make an analogy....if the song was a turkey dinner, it was like he dumped an entire pail of pepper on it. Then you had to eat it. Ugh. Lead percussion. With the most awful choices of tones. He had this one thing, it was like a metal guiro, played with an afro comb....it made the most god awful grating sound possible. It stressed me out. And the way he played it, it was basically fast and nonstop, forward and back strokes, and fills! My shuffles lost that little "lift" you get with every backbeat because his stuff was all one dynamic level. He totally negated all my hard work. It stepped on and dominated every aspect of the song, because he played it non stop. I really wanted to take that thing and step on it and bend it all to crap and tell him to never ever touch one again. I was really close to it once. He's such a nice guy though.

He used to ask me why no one gave him the time of day at the blues jams. I told him that first of all, blues doesn't have percussion in it, generally speaking. I told him that it detracts from the simplicity. I refrained from telling him what an awful musician he was. He had no sense of what was appropriate, when to lay out, what tones to use, and especially how much percussion a song should get, and how a song should be treated percussively.

It really makes me wonder just what the hell people are(n't) thinking....I mean, can't they hear how awful it sounds?

Off to my very first 2 drummer gig! No rehearsal with a new band! Trial by fire!. Not to worry. The Allman Brothers music is part of my DNA.
 
Listen to "Whipping Post" by the Allman Brothers. I watched them many a time with the original line-up and the combination of Johnny and Butch was unbeatable! It's hard to imagine two musicians fitting together so well. With drummers as good as those two a two drummer lineup is the only way to go. The key is that both drummers have to be musicians not just people who can sit behind a drum set. Listen to "Cold Sweat" too. That'll convert you if nothing else does.
 
I saw Radiohead recently and they played with Phil Selway AND Clive Deamer (Portis Head's drummer). All in all, it was done very tastefully. I approve, when it is done well.
 
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