Outstanding Drum Performances

You might want to go to DRUMMERWORLD and check out the video section.As a drummer,I suspect you will be shocked by drummers you have never heard of,(many of which I haven't either.)If you change your emphasis to jazz,I will be happy to chime in.I have,in recent years been buying DVD drumming performances,as they generally are about the same price as CD's.Can't play them in my car,but I get to see the live performances,Several of which I never seem to tire of.
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I'm suprised no one listed Dafos or The Rythem Devils. If you want something to showcase your system Dafos is one that will do it. I've seen more than one set of woofers go when The Beast comes in at high volume. It's not Rocknroll but Mickey Hart,Airto and others take you on a pretty nice ride playing percussion instruments of various designs. Hart spent big money having percussion instruments replicated from different time periods to play on this recording. Some of them now are in the Smithsonian. The Rythem Devils were Hart and friends left alone in a darkened studio with various percussion instruments and were told to come up with music for the movie Apocalaspe Now. It was suppossed to be used for the scenes when Sheen was going up the river in search of Brando. Both of these are Wilson Recordings and Dafos is on CD but I don't know about The Rythem Devils.

Try Simon Phillips on a cd by Mike Oldfeild called Discovery

Some of the recordings recommended above are not really rock which is your preferred music, though most are good. But style of drumming is very different so beware: I love Jack De Johnette but very far from Rock! For Rock, check out the remastered version Physical Graffiti, Led Zepplin. John Bonham is well ROCK. For some fusion jazz stuff which have some rock influence, check out Dennis Chambers's Outbreak and Stanton Moore's All Kooked Out both drummer led efforts which are killer albums.

without question Jeff Porcaro...his riff on Rosanna is just superb, totally makes the song, he is one of my all time favorite drummers, also check out his "Lido shuffle" by Boz Scaggs...can you say grooooove, I being a drummer would give my eye teeth to play like him, so musical,also agree with above about Simon Phillips, just a monster, he has got to have more than two arms, sure sounds like it. He has enough chops to fill the grand canyon yet is always musical