Peart is not over-rated, his skills and musciality are quite significant. I am a huge Rush fan, but also love Jazz, and I do play the drums for over 25 years now. While Jazz drumming is the ultimate showcase of fluid movement and finding those hidden spaces in time that can hold a beat or a hit, that freedom is quite liberating. I can promise you some of the finest jazz drummers would find it very, very, very, difficult to be constrained into the tightness that is the hallmark of progressive rock and progessive metal and remain musical. The same might be said for some of the great impressionist artists if they were forced to paint in the hyper-realism style that predominated early art. Jazz allows the drummer to have space and room, freedom to roam. I think it would be very difficult to imagine Buddy Rich (who is just astounding, almost beyond description) trying to play Rosetta Stoned by Tool. I hope many of you have had the opportunity to listen to Daney Carrey from Tool, he is a freak of nature and as polyrythmic as any Jazz drummer, in fact he was trained in jazz but grew into what he is now.
