Yeah, I'm just nit-picking really - but my point about the bird/fish thing was that one could infer from your piece that you are citing the ability of flight as an evolutionary jump that birds (except perhaps the ostrich) got and fish didn't and that the fish remained unevolved. Whereas the fish kept evolving into a bunch of other things - i.e. other fish, birds, amphibians, mammals etc.
This is really secondary to the main point which is that I think your use of the word "evolution" is perhaps misplaced: as I said, I agree that New don't always mean Better - but I really believe that progress is impossible without evolution. After all, if a given generation doesn't improve through evolution then it will be swept away by disease, predators, infertility, whatever - the non-survival of the non-fittest. It's hard not to describe evolved human beings as an improvement on the ocean life we sprang from.
I suppose it just struck me as a surprisingly weighty parallel to draw when talking about pop music: I basically thought it distracted from your main point which is Thomas Lang hasn't thought up anything that Papa Jo Jones didn't already know, which is of course absolutely true.
I think you misunderstood my point (or I didn't express it clearly!) with the fish/bird thing. I was not at all inferring that flight made fish seem unevolved. I was saying the exact opposite, that birds and fish are equally adapted but to different environments.
I do think that evolution is actually a really good word to describe the history of drumming so far. The problem is that people tend to misunderstand/misuse the word evolution. Again, evolution does not imply progress, it means more simply generational change motivated by adaptation. In the music analogy, drummers have not gotten better, they have simply changed to adapt to new musical environments.
I hear what you are saying about the difficulty of separating the idea of evolution from the idea of progress, that is a good point. I think this connects to the point MAD was making about the incredible wealth of drumming and drummers that has built up over time. If I could extend the evolution analogy a little bit I think I could respond to both points.
Over time through the simple process of evolution, an incredible array of genetic diversity has come about. Similarly in the world of drumming, their is an incredible historical legacy that has been built up generation by generation. Although this may seem to imply improvement over time, it doesn't.
Individually, humans are no better at surviving in our particular niche than earth's original one-celled organisms, it is just that the environment has changed so much, and so much genetic diversity now exists. Humans aren't better or worse from this perspective, we are just different.
As many of you have noted, in the world of drumming particular skills have become more important. Many people have noted drummers increased technical capacity, or the seemingly increased range of genres and styles that drummers are expected to cover, or even our increased access to information.
My point is that anything that you work on in your drumming essentially comes at the expense of something else. There is a simple limit to what individual people are capable of accomplishing based on the restraint of time. So rather than seeing this increase in technical capacity, stylistic range, or education as an improvement, I am suggesting that it is simply a change in priorities based on what music calls for now.
To put it another way, this change in priorities is fundamentally subjective, motivated by the musical needs of our moment in history. If you look at any of these "gains", there are potential musical drawbacks lurking in each. For some, increased technical capacity tempts people to play with less "taste" or "feel". An increase in stylistic range can lead to a lack of strong musical identity. Greater access to information can lead to less time spent actually playing the instrument.
I am not suggesting that any of these musical drawbacks are inevitable, I am just trying to show how things that may seem like obvious improvements to us can have downsides.
I will try my best to respond to everyone, but there are so many really excellent ideas in this thread I don't think I will be able to keep up! Thank you everyone!