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Indeed I do consider Nick Mason to be a very underrated drummer.
This is a clip from Live at Pompeli. At 4:34 you see Mason drop a drumstick but he quickly grabs another and stays on beat. Now that's class.
I think the fact that Floyd were not classically trained musicians (with the exception of Wright) is what set them apart from the other prog bands, because they took the same concepts and brought it down to a more accessible and cohesive level.
Waters has this really beautiful quote.
"The better musician you are the, harder it is not to imitate someone. We didn't imitate anybody because we couldn't imitate anybody."
Of course Moon wasn't a technical titan either, so that's not my point. Moon was sloppy but it was his fire and energy that made him impossible to ignore, in that sense I consider him the Hendrix of drummers.
Speaking of dropping a drumstick (well more breaking one), check this out.
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