Make no mistake: To young DP those guys were gods. As they themselves said: "We wanted to be the English Vanilla Fudge, outfudge the Fudge so to say, ... I don't think we ever did ...". But they were extremely chuffed when they met VF on one of their early DP tours there (Mark I line up).
When Tony Ashton and Jon Lord staged their First of the Big Bands project in London for a one-off concert in the mid-seventies, Carmine got to play along Ian Paice and the two had an ectremely entertaining drum "battle", actually it was more of an engaged percussive conversation. They are not that far apart stylistically, but different enough that you can easily tell them apart.
Mothers Army, that thinking man's hard rock project that lasted three albums, but never toured, and featured Carmine, Daisley, Turner and Watson (the guy at Nightranger without the whammy bar!
), has some nice drumming of his too.