Lar, you are not someone I would think of as someone to be disappointed with your drumming! I remember something you said to me when I posted my playing and was self critical.
You said that if that playing was posted by someone else I would have been glowing with praise, or something to that effect. It's one of those times when you don't realise that a small thing you said could have such a big impact on someone else. Thanks - it was a confidence boost and reality check and it was was helpful. I'm sure I could say the same to you with those recordings. Sometimes we so critical about the minutiae that not even good musicians you're playing with notice.
Still, Matthias made a great point about the small things making a difference - every glitch is a break in the flow of the music, a slight loss of vibe and atmosphere.
However, striving for greatness is not ideal for a band practice (if ever for most of us, FFS
Band practice is a time to get the arrangements sorted, iron out the kinks and get the music and muscle memory ingrained.
Also, as Mike said (liked your post BTW, Mike), you can try some things you might not dare to do at a gig but don't have the opportunity to do in other settings. So it looks like you lost perspective for a moment and allowed Pro Larry to judge Experimental Larry ... or maybe Pro Larry thought that Experimental Larry had ventured too far
Larry, I just want to ask if you experience this related issue ... you play both jazz and structured music. I do something equivalent - I do a lot of jamming and also play band arrangements. They are very different approaches.
Sometimes I find one approach leaks into the other - like if I'm not feeling centred I might find myself getting too slap happy within arrangements, or I might stay rooted on a backbeat pattern while jamming and miss opportunities. Don't know if that's just me or not.