Guest Blog: Rockula Reviews Buckethead

So my best friend, the irrepressible Rockula, is both a musician and a wonderful writer.  As a birthday gift, I bought him a ticket to see Buckethead this past week at the Granada, and invited him to do a guest review of the show for my site.  He obliged, and I like what he has to say.

Buckethead, for the uninitiated, is a guitar player who wears a fried-chicken bucket on his head.  Buckethead started out as a Bootsy Collins protege; he is best known to the unwashed masses for his brief stint in Guns N’ Roses in the late 90s (he was supposed to revitalize the GnR franchise; perhaps it’s a reflection on Axl’s notoriously difficult temperament that not one moment of Buckethead’s work is on the new Chinese Democracy album).  He is wonderfully talented, moving easily between classical playing and metal shredding; he puts out about twenty million impossibly weird concept albums per year, and has a rabid fan base consisting of progressive music dweebs who listen to stuff like Foetus and King Crimson.  In a nutshell, I don’t get it.  The bucket is cute, the music is good, the Buckster himself is incredibly talented, but it goes over my head at startling altitudes and unfathomable speeds.

Rockula, in a nutshell: extremely articulate progressive music dweeb who has an ear for pop music as well as an appreciation for extremely strange experimental-noise stuff.  He is mostly a drummer, and has been playing with various bands around Dallas for over 20 years.  He understands things about music that I don’t, and it’s always interesting to hear his perspective, because he has a way of explaining things that makes sense to even the densest of Carrie Underwood fans (that would be yours truly – I loves me some Carrie).

so here it is.  It’s also available for viewing on Rockula’s livejournal.  Enjoy…

 

Laura gave me a belated birthday gift in the form of a ticket to the Buckethead show
I was a bit pensive about seeing him live again after the last time I saw him because I couldn’t sit through 3 hours of Buckethead with a band
However I saw him playing solo and it was a much more enjoyable experience
The first thing I heard from Buckethead was the album “Welcome to Bucketheadland”
It was basically a concept album in the form of a theme park 

Buckethead was trying to build a theme park called Bucketheadland and he had enemies that were trying to destroy the park
This is one of the most important albums in my musical development because it showed me that you do not ave to follow any rules whatsoever
An album doesn’t have to stick to one genre of music
The fucking thing doesn’t even have to make sense
His homepage can be navigated like a theme park as well
Also, there are a million videos posted on YouTube but I suggest you look for the latest ones because they are from this tour

I quickly began devouring as much Buckethead as I possibly could
His concept albums are my favorites but he does so much else that I enjoy from the Drum n Bass of “Day of the Robot” to the chilled out acoustic “Colma”
Suffice it to say I have a ton of his shit
I wouldn’t think in the directions I do if it were not for Buckethead

This tme, Buckethead was playing at The Granada Theater
Even better, he’s playing solo
For the un-initiated, please allow me to expound on the difference between solo Buckethead and Buckethead with a band
There is a great degree of variety in the Buckethead catalogue
Some of it cannot be replicated by “most” humans (except maybe BH’s drummer Brain who is a machine in a man’s body)
When he brings along a band,  the set is more restricted to music that a band can replicate
Solo means that he can go off in any direction at any moment
This aspect also feeds directly into the “Man-Machine” (I stole that term from the band Kraftwerk) image that Buckethead portrays
The white mask and KFC bucket do alot to remove the humanity,  his easily 6 ft plus lanky ass frame moving in a very mechanical way (not to mention those blindingly fast E.T. fingers) makes him seem like a robot and the seemingly impossible music coming from that guitar all lend itself to some  sort of animatronic attraction in some futuristic theme park (Uh, maybe in ….Bucketheadland?)  
In fact, he frequently makes references to such activities in his Bucketheadland albums

The show was packed with the usual prog dork guard
Guys with long hair and goatees with their girlfriends and the dorks like me who didn’t have girlfriends
However, there was a new element to the Buckethead audience I had not counted upon
There were quite a few sets of parents that brought their kids to the show
I am not completely sure of how this happened but I believe it has something to do with Guitar Hero
After thinking about it for a while, I realised that Buckethead is not really that threatening in the traditional “threat to our children” type way
I don’t think I can remember a BH album that had swearing in it and there are virtually no references to any sort of sexual activity
The only thing I can see a parent objecting to is the bizarre violence he sometimes uses
For instance, there is a ”bonus track” on the end of Bucketheadland 2 that has the sounds of a Bucketheadland animatronic robot show going rogue and killing all of the audience members
Only a hysterical little girl is left alive
Pretty dark shit and it is peppered throughout his entire catalog
However, that is tame compared to some of the video games that these kids play so maybe it’s not a big factor after all

The opening act was“That one Guy” whom I have not seen before but have heard people mention him
He had this tubular contraption with triggers and bass strings mounted on the sections
He also played electronic bass drum pedals as well as a pad
I liked his stuff and was very impressed by the inventiveness of his performance
When he says “that One Guy” he actually means that there is no other like him
TOG was very energetic and his music didn’t suck
It was a bit too clever for me at times and I could see more of a street performance aspect to his concept
Basically, he did the old one man band concept   but with a much more modern approach
If I had seen him without Buckethead, I would have been blown away excited to discover him
Perhaps i eventually will 

Buckethead managed to cover almost every title in my collection this night
I don’t bother to remember most of the titles of his songs so I won’t give you  rundown of the songs he played
Not only can he faithfully reproduce these incredibly complicated songs, but he finds ways to improvise within them in order to keep them fresh to the faithful who have memorized every frantic note
One of the things that sets Buckethead apart from the weedleeeeweee shredder crowd is his amazing control over his effects
The use of effects as a musical instrument is a very difficult art and Buckethead is a master manipulator who flows effortlessly between traditional playing and noise sculpture

The middle of the show is marked by the traditional robot dance/nunchaku demonstartion/exchanging of gifts segment
Then back to the music
Later on, BH was joined onstage by TOG and they played a few songs then BH finished up the set
I didn’t even mind that the show was almost 3 hours long
I left the show feeling energized and inspired

Buckethead shows are definitely not for everyone
A constant barrage of notes and changes of direction assaults the audience with occasional breaks in the action to give you a breather
Even I have a saturation point and my tank was plesantly on the “F”