While I appreciate the ability, what the drummer is doing is upstaging the guitar player who's playing the lead and doing the vocals. He needs to understand the goal is a solid performance of the song and understand exactly what his role is in order to achieve that goal. I've worked with guys like this who, during somebody else's solo, is doing anything and everything to draw attention to himself and away from what is being featured.
We only see the one song, of course so, to us, it is, understandably, novel and clever. But,
IF he is doing this through the entire performance, I'm looking for a new drummer. Imagine how effective it would be if he behaved like a normal drummer though the entire performance, and then had a drum solo and he does his stuff with the spotlight on him. It would bring the house down. Save it for the drum solo, Mac.
If, you enjoy James Taylor and you don't mind wasting about 4.5 minutes of your time, I can give you an example of what I'm talking about.
Watch this video. If you can feed the audio through your Axioms, it will be more impressive.
About 3:15 into the vid, a backup performer is featured. To this point in the concert, he's competently and professionally fulfilled his backing role and has been relatively unnoticed. Whether or not the music, or what the backup performer does, is your cup of tea, stay with the vid until the song ends (approximately 4:30 in to the video) to see both the audience and James Taylor's reaction.
Had this performer been doing, during the entire concert, what he did just this once, it would have been initially impressive, then a bit redundant, then boring, then offensive. One of the golden rules of performance - ALWAYS LEAVE THEM WANTING MORE.
Apologies for the rant, but stuff like this gets to me.
