Andrea on my.opera

I was looking for my dose of Zappa on-line and I found a video where he plays with Lennon. I felt great, this could be interesting. I opened it and my smile started disappearing. Yoko Ono was there too. I was worried but I thought "it's an old video, quality sucks, maybe her parts won't be very audible...". I was wrong, she is doing the scared-pig-imitation all the time and basically making me feel pity for her. And ruining what could have been a magical moment. Here's the video :



(the joke "yoko oh-no" is not mine, I'm pretty sure I heard it in "the pros and cons of hitch-hiking" by Roger Waters)

This will clean your ears a bit if you dared to listen to the scared pig (I don't say SHE IS a scared pig, but she sounds like) :



and some moody BucketHead to relax and whisper good night :



Ok, now I feel better.

It's a while I wanna post about this video; it is one of the only 3 official music videos from Buckethead, and it features a poor Buckethead sent into an elaboration of some of Hieronymus Bosch's best known paintings concerning hell. I think it's a weird and truly great idea, and Buckethead's fragmented tune works perfectly with it. Of course for better appreciating the video you should know about the paintings that are used in it, and even better, you should know about Buckethead's dark irony

Read more...

Buckethead is an amazingly gifted composer and guitarist; you can read many detailed info on the wikipedia page about him, so I won't spend much time writing all that again -- I'll just give you my view on him.

First of all, two words on his public look; he created a very personal and weird image over the years, and I love this "anti-look" he has. Buckethead is anything but fashionable or trend-following. He's not having this image cos he wanna get attentions either, since he's not mainstream and he never wanted to be (he played a bit on new Guns'n'Roses but left em after a while cos they were not his way of being a musician).

He's a very prolific composer, and he created 24 solo albums right now, while playing on kinda 50 more on his many side projects; one thing that amazes me is not only the number of those albums, but their high quality and musical diversity. They range from acoustic to metal to techno to jazz to noise to fusion and more, but they always keep his distinctive sound and over the top technique.

Yes, over the top technique : no matter if on steel or nylon acoustics or on electric guitars, or even on banjo or on electric bass -- Buckethead is a monster of technique. He developed some very personal techniques and learned to mix em all in a unique and amazing style. Sure, he didn't invent tapping nor multitapping, but find me someone that is using 4 fingers multitapping in such a creative way, mixing it with light-speed alternate picking, killswitch madness, chicken picking, slapping and everything else you can do on a guitar. And he is being such a virtuoso without being the usual neoclassic monochrome player. He can play all kind of genres but he always plays them in his way -- that is not a human way

Enough with talking, let me give you some album titles and then some youtube links.

I love everything he did, but some of my favourite albums are probably :

Monsters And Robots : I think it is his masterpiece, though it is not the album where he plays the most amazing things. I love this album because it's a very good introduction to Buckethead's style and way of thinking music. It mixes rock, metal, techno, funny sounds and delicate moments, and everything works just fine

Giant Robot : another album that shows Buckethead's "more typical" style. He takes luna-park songs, b-movies samples, some weird singing from his musician friends and mixes it all. It's an album that remains interesting and beautiful from beginning to end, with some highlights like "wellcome to bucketheadland", "I love my parents", "last train to Bucketheadland", "binge and grab", "I come in peace".

Crime Slunk Scene : the first 5 tracks are some of his finest material, but it's the track number 6 that will probably make you love Buckethead : "Soothsayer" is one of his best compositions, with its perfect mix of emotional playing, simple structure at the base and amazing guitar playing. It's the prove that you can move and give deep feelings even when you are playing like only the greatest electric virtuoso alive can do. The rest of the album is the usual avantgarde and experimental music you can expect from Buckethead

Albino Slug, Pepper's Ghost, Somewhere Over The Slaughterhouse : those 3 albums are pretty similar in some ways, as they are showing a more straight forward musical composition. They are a mix of rock and techno, with some amazing moments. I love em all and I think they are among his best ones. Check out tunes like "Siege Engine", "Help Me", "My Sheeetz", "Brewer In The Air", "Towel In The Kitchen", "Dawn At The Deuce", etc etc

..and then, after you think Buckethead is "just" a rock-jazz-techno virtuoso, you find albums like those two I will list now, and you just can't believe it is the same person :

Colma , Electric Tears : they are two really delicate acoustic albums (Colma is dedicated to his mom and is having some drumming too, while Electric Tears is just him and his acoustic); they're filled with emotional tunes that will move you and give you beautiful feelings. It's hard not to be moved by pieces like "Watching The Boats With My Dad", "Electric Tears", "Spell Of The Gypsies", "For Mom", "Whitewash", "All In The Waiting", etc..

Buckethead then amazes you again with his ambient and more relaxing albums. I took most of my nude photos while playing "Heaven and Hell" and "Chicken Noodles" in background

Heaven And Hell : a beautiful ambient album he published with a fake name ("Shine"). Buckethead is often using fake names when publishing his artworks, for some reasons -- names like Shine, Death Cube K, The Pieces, etc etc.

Chicken Noodles : a delicate and hypnotizing album that I love to have playing for hours. It shares the same sound with more structured albums like Population Override and The Dragons Of Eden (which I both really suggest you to listen to, since they are surely among Buckethead's best ones).

It's not easy at all to compile a list of Buckethead's works, cos there are so many differences from album to album and even inside of a single album. For instance: take his side project "The Pieces", made with his friend drummer Bryan "Brain" Mantia.. it is a very experimental album but then you find the amazing acoustic melodic tour de force "Twice With The Sledge" with its Al Di Meola inspired runs.. and you just don't know what to think Buckethead loves to hide such pearls inside of his experiments, like a reward for your patience on trusting him and his musical ideas, which are quite often not easy at all to follow, especially if you are not a guitarist.

A note about his adventure with Guns'n'Roses : Buckethead was called to replace Slash (I have to admire Axl Rose for having so much courage.. he wanted to change and to do it with the best he could find, and so he did). Buckethead brought Brain (one of the best drummers around, check him in the youtube video I'll post later) to GNR too, and that was great. He heavily influenced composition and arrangements of most of the songs on Chinese Democracy and you can actually hear him playing there too, though most of his parts were kept as writing but then somehow played in simplified versions by other people, because after some years Buckethead got bored and leaved GNR to go back playing into small clubs. I'm liking Chinese Democracy quite a lot, there are some good rock moments (I especially love the title track, Better, There Was A Time, Madagascar); you can hear some Buckethead's solos played by himself, like the one on the tile track, all the acoustic parts on "If The World", the first solo on "Better" and especially the amazingly beautiful solo that closes "There Was A Time" (the solo starting at 4:24), where Buckethead manages to write a rock solo but filling it with its own signature tricks like the multitapping and the killswitch, though keeping them at minimum.. I love that solo and I think it alone can justify the whole album.


Now it's the time for some youtube about our hero :

Buckethead - Soothsayer - Lincoln Theatre 10/5/06


Buckethead - Animal Behavior Outro/Solo - 9/4/95

(this is some improvisation over the ending of "Animal Behavior" song, from Praxis' masterpiece "Transmutation" -- Buckethead is a Praxis' member too)

Buckethead - Night Of The Slunk - Williamsville, New York - 7/28/08


Buckethead - Acoustic Jam / Hog Bitch Stomp


Buckethead - Who Knows? Machine Gun - Mishawaka 6/16/06


Buckethead and Praxis - Interworld and The New Innocence

(check out expecially Brain's amazing drumming!!!)

Buckethead - Siege Engine (New Song!) 9/19 Belly Up


But that's just some random videos. Youtube is filled with his videos and you can find so many great stuff played by him, even some of his Guns'n'Roses lives.

I hope you enjoyed this little introduction to Buckethead's music! It is not easy to write about such a complex artist, really. I mainly wanted to give you some info so you can start listening to him and judge on your own

Thanks for reading!


@Inna : I don't have fav ones I guess, though I love "Soothsayer" and "Spell of the gypsies" in a particular way -- but really, I just love everything he did, in the same way. He's one of my big inspirations when creating and as an artist.


EDIT:
I forgot to say that Buckethead also released some quite heavy albums, meaning heavy sound, fast tempo, sharp riffs and so on. "The Cuckoo Clocks Of Hell" and "The Elephant Man's Alarm Clock" are very good and cool examples of this kind of albums.