u/Massive-Emu7589

Intentionally Provocative! But name a better version of stash than 12/28/98. I recall feeling like the garden was gonna collapse

Want to hear from professional musicians, especially drummers, about John Fishman. I’ve been trying to understand what makes his playing feel so unique and different, but I don’t really have the musical vocabulary to explain it clearly. He sounds unlike any other drummer I’ve ever listened to. The best way I can describe it (maybe poorly) is this: with a lot of rock drummers, it feels like they’re holding down a standard groove and then throwing in fills every so often, those fills especially precede little peaks, but they often always feel similar to each other - a break from the groove with some tom and snare stuff.
Fishman feels completely different. It’s like he’s doing something more fluid and not just a tom snare thing but I can’t quite pin down what it is. he also seems to go deep into a groove without a fil where other drummers would seem to add one and instead of some standard fil general organized percussive cacophony ensues and then leads to unbelievable crescendo with some fil that I’ve never heard before in any other music. For example hood groove into peak 12/30/24. Even when it sounds like he’s playing the “same” beat for a long stretch, it still feels dynamic and evolving in a way I don’t understand.
What is he actually doing from a technical or musical perspective that makes his drumming feel so unique?

** These are amazing, thank you! They make me realize how ridiculous it is that there doesn’t seem to be a SINGLE vid in existence of just fish drumming! Obviously he is featured a bunch on live phish but how is there not a single video of a show where a camera stays on just him?