Man, long time lurker on this site but I've never posted. I splurged and went to 3 Tool shows in the last week, San Diego, Las Vegas and last night in Los Angeles.
I gotta say, the drum battle during Lateralus was EPIC..EPIC!!!
Easily the best version I've ever seen and I've seen Tool atleast 15 times and also seen probably 5 different drummers play with Danny. I gotta say, that guy Gino Barboni from the opening band Rajas played better with him that any of the other cats I've seen.
You could tell Danny was really digging it. Of course, whenever Gino would lay down something great, Danny would just blow out some insane lick to show him who's boss.
But wow...Incredible.
Check out two of the clips I found on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiMMDpj52xU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnkZv_vWR5E
You can't tell by the audio, but the fast double bass runs both guys were doing towards the end of the solo sounded so f'n huge in each venue through the subs, it was insane. I agree with the other poster though that they don't have the guest drummers levels up to Danny's levels. But then again, they set up the guest drummers kit in about 45 seconds, literally, and they don't use overhead mics. It was the loudest of all last night, at Nokia Center, giving Gino a bit more level than usual. I hope someone out there recorded last nights performance, as it was maybe my favorite of the 3 nights I witnessed. At one point Danny just stopped and started laughing. Amazing stuff.
I'm not sure who Gino even is, I've never head of him before, but I gotta give him props, the mans got talent.
Last night Maynard the singer was taunting him during the solo to hurry up, holding up a XXX Porno classifieds, saying, "speed it up so me and you can go get some hookers".
Also Maynard would mess with Danny and the guest drummers, each night rating their performance with score cards and bizarre quotes.
Last night he gave Gino a 9 and Danny a 6, then held a sign over Gino's set that said "WTF" and one over Danny's that said "!??!"
I gotta say, there's no better dream of mine then to someday sit down and play a solo with Danny Carey. No matter how daunting that might be....wow
So inspirational.