Mad About Drums
Pollyanna's Agent
... yet there is an increasing obsession with perfect timing...
100% perfect timing, even when playing alongside a click track, is a hard a task to achieve, and I believe it's not always beneficial to the music, it will give a clinical, feelingless and cold sounding grooves.
Some pro session drummers are working very hard to achieve and provide that warmth, that feel and their sensibility within the music, if it was "too" perfect, you would lose these attributs, which is the very reason why an artist is calling for such or such drummer for their project.
There's a lot of icon drummers and songs already in this thread, and while they're not reading a plot anywhere near a 100% rating on a plot, they've indeed influenced generations of musicians.
A piece of music is full of emotions and feelings, and it's perfectly normal that's reflected within the players involved within the project, I could not imagine "Stairway To Heaven" with a drum track of a 100% rating, it would kill the feel of the song IMO.
Here's a couple of exemples to demonstrate the "accuracy" of an analysis of a plot...
Russ Ballard's Voices:
The plot (64%) http://labs.echonest.com/click/?songId=SOAKLAU12A6D4F7602&artist=Russ+Ballard&title=Voices
The song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVehzvsZ5GY
Even with a reading of "only" 64%, the feel of this drum track is perfect, again, IMO.
Nik Kershaw's Radio Musicola:
The plot (100%) http://labs.echonest.com/click/?songId=SOGKDDS12A67020A54&artist=Nik+Kershaw&title=Radio+Musicola
The song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyQQh0nLeSo
This is a programmed drum track, very clinical sounding, no feel, a real drummer would have been a better choice (strangely enough, all the other songs on this album features a real drummer).
Bottom line, yes it is important to have a solid time as a drummer, but not to the detriment of the music, on some style of music, you actually want to have slight fluctuation within the tempo, such as blues or Jazz, to name but a few. )