Neil Peart is?

Hmm...maybe the circles you moved in were not much interested in heavy rock or the technical metal wave of late 80s.  It's amazing that even Moving Pictures would have passed you by, or at least the song Tom Sawyer.  Tom Sawyer even makes it to rock compilation tapes/CDs, that's where I heard my first Rush song and thought then that the female singer was pretty good. 

That's the point, Gong and Magma are hardly much popular outside some European pockets.  Even leaving aside Peart, people are more likely to name drummers like Bruford, Collins, Palmer, Barrie Barlow rather than Vander from prog drummers.   

Oops, something happened to my post; it was put into a wrong place in the thread.

Edited by BaldFriede - November 07 2010 at 01:28

rogerthat wrote: That's the point, Gong and Magma are hardly much popular outside some European pockets.  Even leaving aside Peart, people are more likely to name drummers like Bruford, Collins, Palmer, Barrie Barlow rather than Vander from prog drummers.

As I said, in the circles I moved in bands like Gong, Magma, Hawkwind, the whole Canterbury scene, RIO-Avant and Krautrock were all the rage. Actually it was not my circle really, it was my brother's circle. He is ten years older than I am, and I was just seven when he discovered all this music. We were three kids, but the flat we lived in had two children's rooms only. Actually my parents used one of those as their bedroom, and my brother and I shared what was meant to be the bedroom.  So I came in touch with all these strange sounds at a very young age; I must have been six or seven. There was always some sweet smoke in the air too. I have no idea why neither my brother nor any of his friends listened to Rush; the most probable explanation is that Rush published their albums a few years later than the other bands, but at the time I am speaking of (1975-1977) they had already published albums too. But they definitely were not well-known here at that time

Must be the resetting of daylight saving time. I will have to wait an hour so that what I actually want to post appears at the proper positionin this threadf. Interesting bug though.

Catcher10 wrote: And not that my comment means much but yes Neil is 56 or so, plays drums for Rush, 2.5 hour concerts.....about 80% of the time he rides his BMW motorcycle to the venues, he does not travel by air or bus to the shows, as long as he has the time in between shows to make it. The Time Machine tour was 44 shows and he rode his bike over 23,000 miles. He rode recently in S.America from south Brazil to Buenos Aires and then onto Chile....that trip alone was 5,000 km. Most of the roads he is on are horrible...for a car, I can't imagine doing that on a motorbike for 500 km per day.......and still he is able to play at the level he does.   I'd like to change my vote to Option #1 please

That's a bit like saying Bruce Dickinson is the best vocalist ever because he can fence and drive airplanes. I know a lot of people think like that too, but, sorry, I disagree. Of course, it's commendable that Peart is so active and energetic at his age but that does not sway my opinion of his drummer, which is quite favourable, by the way, while probably not as high as your own.

He is probably the most overrated drummer in the archives. By that I don't want to belittle his abilities, I just want to put the abilites of other drummers into perspective. Peart is not a drummer with sensational skills. He has an excellent technique with a style which I consider to be boring, but that's my personal taste, and if anyone else likes his style that is fine with me. But it is not as some members of the archives appear to think, that his skills surpass those of any other drummer. They don't; there are lots of others who are just as equally skilled. And that's what I mean by "Peart is overrated".

Interestingly there is at least one country in the world in which Mani Neumeier is more popular than Neil Peart. Can you guess which country that is? And no, it is not Germany.

rushfan4 wrote: Luxembourg?

No, a much bigger country. Population 127 million people. That's one-and-a-half as many as in Germany.

Zargus wrote: BaldFriede wrote: rushfan4 wrote: Luxembourg? No, a much bigger country. Population 127 million people. That's one-and-a-half as many as in Germany. Japan!

Indeed. Mani Neumeier is extremely popular in Japan. His wife is Japanese too, by the way, and is a performance artist; they often do performances together. For the Japanese Mani is "one of us". This does of course not express in record sales, simply because of the availibility of Guru Guru albums in Japan. Guru Guru are not with a major label or record company and sell their albumns through their homepage mostly. And they don't produce them by the millions.
Neverthekles Mani Neumeier is extremely popular in Japan. You can buy keyring pendanrts of Mani in Japan, there is an effigy of him in the Tokyo equivalent of madame Tussaud, he tours Japan regularly, always having to give unpkanned extra colnceerts when doing so and so on.