The first time that I had an opportunity to see Buckethead live was on June 11, 2004 during the Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, Tennessee.  While many chose to attend a lackluster performance by Paige Mcconnell’s (Phish) band Vida Blue, I strolled over to a small tent on the other side of the field instead.  Buckethead rounded up the lineup for Praxis, a “super-group” that included Brain (Primus, El Stew) on drums, Bernie Worrell (Talking Heads, Parliament Funkadelic, Woo Warriors) on keys, and the prolific producer/bassist Bill Laswell.  I was completely sober but, that Praxis performance was still one of the most psychedelic and visually disorienting shows that I have ever seen and my mind was swiftly blown like a tenth of molly.  Bill Laswell kicked into the bass-line of “Salt Shaker” by the Ying Yang Twins as Buckethead pop-locked holding an animatronic decapitated head that scanned the audience with its eyes and rapped the lyrics.  Anyone who can’t find entertainment in a spectacle such as that, I don’t think I would want to be friends with.  I witnessed Buckethead perform again at the festival with Material, another Laswell project, and later that year in Seattle with Colonel Claypool’s Bucket of Bernie Brains, which mirrors the Praxis lineup, with the exception of Les Claypool on bass.  In 2006, I went to another show in Seattle where Buckethead fronted a trio which featured his old Deli Creeps drummer Pinchface, and had a much heavier and more straight-up rock sound.  He’s released a dark dub album called “Devil Dub” with his group Ben Wa, gone in more electronic directions with DJ Extrakd on albums like “Bermuda Triangle“, and even appeared on albums with actor Viggo Mortenson and recorded under the acronym Death Cube “K“.  His eclectic musical resume is beyond impressive but, it still forced me to worry that I may be rolling the dice by attending Buckethead’s 2009 New Years performance.  A few advertisements aired for the show on local television which featured a track with vocals by Serj Tankian (System of a Down), who’s label he is currently signed to.  It made me fear that I would be spending my night with what I feel to be some of his less appealing work.  Unlike many of his fans, I don’t attend G3 Tour performances and have dreams of “surfing with an alien” so, I was actually a bit skeptical about if a mute guitarist with a cardboard chicken bucket on his head could maintain the audience’s interest all by himself.  One thing that I knew I could be sure about is that, at some point in the show, I would witness something so incredible and awe-inspiring that it would make up for any cliched hair metal antics that I may have to endure.

Buckethead

Moore Theatre

Seattle, Wa

12/31/08

We got downtown and hopped off of the metro at around 9pm.   The bus, which reeked of 151 and weed, was packed full of paper-horn blowing assholes with plans to start their new years off “drunconscious” in tacky bile-stained Ed Hardy dress shirts that have embroidered eagles and shit sewn onto the backs.  I hadn’t expected the show to actually start at 8 sharp but, when we arrived at The Moore Theatre, there wasn’t anyone else in line.  I had expressed concern to the promoter that I may have trouble bringing a Digital SLR into the venue however, after 2 checkpoints without issue, I was escorted to my seats 4 rows back from center stage.  We had already clearly missed the opening act, PCP (The Portland Cello Project), and Buckethead was already on stage when we walked in.  He stood alone in front of a Marshall stack and a plethora of pedals and effects racks that provided his rythm section.  His set started off that evening with “Night of the Slunk” (Monsters and Robots 1999) which is very heavy on the kill-switch usage.  What I mean is that Buckethead’s Gibson is equipped with buttons that he presses rapidly to cut out the sound in choppy intervals, like a DJ with a fader.  Halfway through he went into some one-handed guitar work, as he moved around robotically like an anthropomorphic character from Chuck-E-Cheese or Showbiz Pizza.  By his second track, “Crash Test Dummy” (aka: “Crash Victim” from Praxis’ Transmutation),  he was already making use of his trademark elastic guitar strap to stretch his instrument out towards the audience and fuck with everyone’s perception.  His blank mask gives him such a stoic quality that every movement looks even more exaggerated and, combined with his gestures and rapid fire solos, it increases his appearance as being something more than human.  Switching it up, Buckethead pulls the pseudo-ballad “Ghost Host” (“Decoding the tomb of Bansheebot” 2007), out of his repertoire before shifting to the raunchy guitar chops of the “Gory Head Stump” intro, where he momentarily wore a rubber head on his hand.  Mid-way through, he thumps his guitar like a slap bass and takes it into an all out funk jam, before returning back to it’s much grimier start.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8AiJD19KOY

I was already up front and snapping photos by the time he went into “King James” (Crime Slunk Scene 2006), an ode to basketball star Lebron James.  While he was playing, the wireless device that he had been using up until that point, began to fizzle out and his dreadlocked music tech P-Sticks came out mid-song.  His huge goatee stuck out through the bottom of a surgical mask as he connected the guitar through a direct line and promptly exited back behind the equipment.  In continuance of his rock-ballad/Lebron James/basketball theme, Carroll casually jammed that song into “Redeem Team” from his recent release Albino Slug.  I think that was about the time that I was yanked the fuck out by security and taken into the lobby to explain myself.

I dropped some names and got sifted through a hierarchy of security.  There were about 3 different men and each one was less receptive and more condescending than the last.  The first two guys were actually pretty cool about everything, but the last one made me call the promoter from a noisy lobby.  This was even after I stated that I wanted to step outside where it was quieter.  “Can’t you call him from right here?” he asked.  “Sure, I’ll call him from here“.  I had already sent him a text and I didn’t want to interrupt whatever New Years festivities he may be engaging in himself.  When he answered the phone, neither of us could hardly hear anything on each others end.  He was extremely helpful and I heard him say, “Someone’s on their way“.  I thanked him and, right as I hung up my phone, someone was already approaching and asking if I was the “photographer“.  He walked me back in and down to the front where he informed another security guard of my authorization and instructed him not to harass me further.  I started shooting again and, when the original guard re-approached me, he was waved off instantly.  I’m used to this treatment and it wouldn’t be me or Monster Fresh, if I didn’t encounter some sort of issue.  I actually prefer things this way for two reasons: 1) I still feel a connection to the makeshift ghetto roots roots of sneaking into shows that birthed this site and 2) I had only been shooting from obstructed angles off to the side before this all went down.  Once you go through all of the drama of being scanned through upper management and they do eventually approve what you’re there to do officially, nobody below them fucks with you at all.  You’re usually able to get away with a lot more than you might have, if that never happened.  The risk of being removed has decreased so much; the staff has orders to leave you alone.

The crowd, more or less, remained seated as Buckethead went through tracks like the funk-metal “Fountains of the Forgotten” (Cuckoo Clocks of Hell 2004) and the highly popular “Soothsayer” (Crime Slunk Scene). Then it was time for the patented nunchaku and robot routine.  As usual, the guitarist put on a recording of the space-funk “Minute to Forever” by the artist Freekbass and grabbed his nunchucks.  He skillfully wielded them around before tossing them aside for a pair of giant blue foam fingers.  The foam couldn’t quite cover the palms of his giant hands, while he did the robot and glided across the stage.  He was really pulling out his bag of tricks at that point and now it was time for him to grab his bag of toys.  When he walked over to a giant plastic shopping bag, the audience rushed to the front of the stage and I instantly found myself surrounded by a crowd.  Buckethead reached into the bag and handed out random toys to his fans.  Many were prepared with out-stretched buckets of their own to collect the free prizes and others even brought gifts for the performer himself.  Among the gifts that Brian Carroll received were a “Star Wars” vinyl LP and a handmade replica of the Buckethead doll featured on his “Secret Recipe” DVD, complete with the detailed packaging.  I personally was handed a Playmobil Dragon Kinights playset with projectile balliste.  Some of the crowd walked away with Disney related toys representing Carroll’s fascination with the theme park that he grew up close too.  One kid left the Moore Theatre that night with a large box containing an Disney acoustic Hannah Montana guitar.  The interaction between Bucket Clause and the crowd was reminiscent of the classic Frankenstein scene between the monster and the little girl.  He appeared like a kind hearted monster as he curiously, gently, and appreciatively inspected toys and gifts given to him by the crowd.  Someone offered him a plastic hand with a plaid blood-stained sleeve.  Carroll pulled it over his own arm and then did a short routine with it, which involved some more posing, slow-motion, and charging across the stage.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeFLN3y2KLM

After the martial-arts/hip-hop/toy intermission, the audience was treated to a rendition of “Jordan“, a song which was named after Michael and has gained popularity with the kids as an unlockable bonus track from Guitar Hero II.  By the time the toys had been passed out, I had feared that Carroll had exhausted every trick that he had up his extra-long sleeves but, the rest of the show worked as evidence to the contrary.  There was a moment when the lanky musician froze in his typical mannequin-like fashion.  A man dressed like a mad scientist came out to simulate electrical maintenance on Carroll’s back, while mechanical computer sounds pumped through the speakers.  Once when  Brian left to take a brief break, a stocky character entered the other side of the empty stage.  He was wearing an old man mask like one my sister had when we were children.  He picked up an electric mandolin and did a jig while plucking the strings off key.  Eventually, the guitar shredder returned and they performed a little circus tune together.  Later, during another break, the same man came out and placed two singing and dancing robotic chicken toys on a stool with a mic in front of them.  Buckethead had various samples and audio clips that were featured throughout the show.  At one point he mimicked vocals with his hand-puppet “Herbie” and, when he played “The Battery Cage Brawls“, (Bucketheadland 2) P-Sticks re-entered the stage in a mask and top hat to lip-sync the “ghost of Abraham Lincoln’s” dialog, “I didnt understand ya there young fella, would you repeat that again?“  The man in the mask and P-Sticks subsequently came out to perform with  Buckethead together.  The man played the mandolin again but P-Sticks was holding a contraption that looked like a hybrid flashlight/theramin.  Back in 2000 a man approached me in a Phish lot at Mountainview, Ca when heard us listening to Monsters and Robots.  “Oh,  are you guys listening to Brian?” he asked, and then proceeded to tell us how he was friends with him.  Apparently, another of their friends invents crazy electronic instruments which he brings to Carroll, who plays them effortlessly.  I’m unsure if P-Sticks was the inventor that he was referring to but, I’m assuming that he was performing with one of the instruments.  At the end of the show, another character, resembling a space-age version of Devo’s Boojie Boy, rocked out on stage in a silver costume and a purple boombox.

Among originals like “The Revenge of Double-man” (Monsters and Robots) and “Botnus” (Enter the Chicken 2005), the bucket-clad rockstar weaved a few cover songs into the second half of his New Years Eve show.  He incorporated the Hendrix classic “Foxy Lady” and even “Pure Imagination” from the original Willy Wonka soundtrack.  Futuristic robotic sounds were manipulated from his white Gibson guitar and eventually melded into songs from John Williams’ monumental “Star Wars” work.  Buckethead managed to reproduce blaster and R2d2 sounds with his guitar and jammed the medley into a phased-out version of “The Itsy Bitsy Spider“.  Before the show was over, a professionally dressed woman entered the stage with a clipboard.  She referenced the fictional “abusement park” that the Bucketheadland.com website is titled and modeled after.  She thanked us for coming to the park and claimed that teh dead bodies had been cleared from specific rides.  Buckethead finished the night off with “Welcome to Bucketheadland” (Giant Robot 1994) and ended the show abruptly before 11pm.

I was surprised that the show ended so early because I’m used to New Years shows that run through midnight with balloons dropping and the whole shabang.  This was the last show of his tour and, based on what I have read, the show didn’t differ much from the previous set-lists on this run.  I walked out of the Moore and a man was out front trying to hustle blank white buckets to people on the street.  The crowd was very young and the energy was extremely positive, unlike what one may expect from a performer that often draws fans of metal and heavy guitar rock.  I enjoyed the early dismissal, which allowed me the opportunity to get back to my area of town and have a quiet drink before the ball dropped.  I have no regrets in my decision to spend my New Years at the Moore Theatre and wonder why I ever questioned it in the first place.  Buckethead is a multi faceted artist and, although the show contained lots of heavy guitar noodling and sentimental ballads like those found on Colma, the tribute album for his sick mom, the guitarist made sure to incorporate enough elements from his eclectic career to please his fans of any level or genre.  I encourage everyone who has ever had any interest in checking out one of his performances to do so.  I’ve seen him 5 times now and, at every single one of those shows, I found something new and enthralling to come away with.  There is a story about Buckethead unsuccessfully trying out for “The Red Hot Chili Peppers“, much like Les Claypool had for “Metallica“.  Today, both of the men continue to be innovative in their crafts and consistently get better over time, while the groups that rejected them plateaued ages ago.  Brian Carroll’s career and the versatility that he has shown as a performer should be more than just inspiration for aspiring guitarist.  His shows aren’t just concerts; they are elaborate productions, utilized to display a genuine appreciation for those who have come out to support him.

-Dead C

We’d like to thank Swolfy & Kerry, the 2 friends who flew out from the East Coast just for the show.  Swolfy provided us with a quick photo of the set list that she was able to snap while at the show (featured in Gallery below) and Kerry helped us out with the first video featured.  Please take a look at Swolfy’s deviant art page to view her photographs from the show.  We also reccommend checking out the rest of Kerry’s videos from her youtube page.  They are really good quality and she was able to catch tons of footage.

(CLICK PHOTOS TO ENLARGE & VIEW)

Although River of Dreams was not like Beethoven, as Billy Joel desperately wanted me to believe back in 93, Snoop Dogg and Guns N’ Roses were actually a little closer to the genre.  I’ve been thinking about all of the reunions, repackaging, or horrible new releases from the likes of Aerosmith, Queen, the Dead Kennedys (minus Jello), Madonna, and The Police. It makes me freak out that the likelihood of the new music being listenable are slim to none. There is still some wishful thinking on the internet that Dr. Dre and Guns N’ Roses may release albums that have been years in the making but that is where their similarities end.

Dr. Dre has had quite the career since he started out with the Strip Club Anthem group World Class Wrecking Cru. I remember playing “Turn Off The Lights” all the time when I was a DJ at Déjà vu.  After his mid 80s success as a booty jam maker, he produced NWA’s Straight Outta Compton. The late 80s and the early 90s had Dr. Dre producing most of the popular gangsta rap music to come out of the era and, after NWA broke up, Dr. Dre came out with The Chronic. The original Chronic was a West Coast soundtrack to the early 90s and, once it dropped, Snoop Dogg, Warren G, Nate Dogg, Kurupt, Tha Dogg Pound, and more carried gangsta rap through its first wave.  Eventually, Dr. Dre decided to come out with his own label, Aftermath, in which he released a horrible album also titled The Aftermath. After The Aftermath disaster, fans waited for years for the Chronic 2001, which eventually came out in 1999. About a year after the Chronic 2001 came out, Dr. Dre began talking about what was to be his next album, “Detox“.

“Chinese Democracy” is the urban myth of an album that was suppose to be Guns N Roses’ follow up to Use Your Illusion 1 and 2.  GNR milked Use Your Illusions 1 and 2 from 1991 until 1993.  At that point, they released an album of covers called The Spaghetti Incident, which was their attempt to make their own Garage Days Revisited.  Around this time frame (1993-1994), Guns N’ Roses transformed themselves from one of the greatest rock bands into a band that did not create new music for their fans.  Axl wanted to sound like the industrial music at the time. Rob Halford from Judas Priest had a band called Fight that was short lived.  Axl Rose never let up on his dream to make Guns N’ Roses the next Fight and, in his quest, he fired every original member of Guns N’ Roses and recast them with bizarre replacements. He spent millions of dollars recording tracks that, somehow, started to leak on to the internet around 1999. The tracks that were leaking out way back then are actually the very same tracks that are leaking out now in 2008. These tracks were to be the next Guns N’ Roses album called Chinese Democracy.

Snoop Dogg is one of the talking heads of credibility that leak information about Detox. Even though this has happened in the past, there is still a ray of hope amongst the die hard fans of Dr. Dre’s lyrical genius and flow that he will return with a sequel to the Chronic that is way better than Cheech and Chong’s Still Smoking. I was reading on a Rolling Stone blog about Snoop Dogg was proclaiming that Detox was coming out.  People got bent out of shape because the article tried to compare Chinese Democracy and Detox. Chinese Democracy is far less likely to come out than Detox, even though it has been floated around since 2000. It floats around like a drifting release date. I recently read that Detox that is scheduled for late 2008, but each year seems to have some new news about what is claimed to be Dr. Dre’s “last rap album“. Maybe he’ll produce Coldplay and My Chemical Romance and the release date will be postponed until 2010.

Click here to view the embedded video.

If and when it is released, Detox cannot be like The Aftermath album that came out after The Chronic.  1996 was a bad time for gangster rap.  Tupac died and Mr. Cee from RBL Posse died.  I remember listening to The Aftermath in the parking lot of Tower Records in Sacramento when it came out and I was so bummed out. It is hard to recreate how much it sucked hearing that tape upon first listen. The Chronic 2001 was pretty good though and I can even still rock that album as much as the original Chronic. It was pretty lame of Death Row to release an album called The Chronic 2000 before Dr. Dre could finish Chronic 2001, but the Death Row album was actually even worse than The Aftermath, and by far. I just assume that Death Row does Christian R & B Praise music nowadays and that none of the Death Row people kick it with Dr. Dre anymore.

Whereas Axl is the creator and the executive producer of the Chinese Democracy project, he lacks that raw talent of other musicians to sing on his album. The Talking Heads did it without David Byrne on “No Talking Just Head“, which happened to have the late, great autoerotic asphyxiation superstar Michael Hutchence.  Sebastian Bach is no Snoop Dogg, hell no, but he is Axl Rose’s buddy that happens to sing a song on Chinese Democracy.  Sebastian Bach and Buckethead cannot pull an album together.  Instead of going through conflict resolution training, Axl decided to say “To hell with everyone” that thinks his new music sounds like a bad demo that’s going to an indie rock label to get signed.  Bach sticks up for Axl and is his main advocate.  With a friend like Sebastian Bach, who could go wrong?  I think that Skid Row lacks any of rock’s thunder in this millennium; they are probably touring with Winger.  I actually think that Winger is probably even more likely to release an album than Guns N’ Roses.  I heard Chinese Democracy cuts on the Internet in 2000 and the exact same songs are up.  Not much has changed.  I snuck a video camera into the Tacoma Dome when Guns N’ Roses played there in 2002 and it was some of the worst video footage I have ever shot in my life. You cannot recognize anything, but you can hear the audio. The songs that were on the Internet in 2000 were played at the concert. I know that industrial music was kinda big in the 90s, but it has lost its flavor among the listening public.

I interviewed Mr. Brogger, an avid fan of Dr. Dre, about the “upcoming” album.  He had more to say about it that shed some light on the current fiasco.  He mentioned that Dr. Dre is always in the public eye putting out music for other musicians and explained that Dre often gives away his awesome Detox tracks to other artist like 50 cent and The Game.  This means that we might have already heard what Detox was going to sound like.  Mr. Brogger further told me that “In Da Club” and “Hate it or Love it” were originally beats from Detox.  I get the same ideas in my head about sampling David Lee Roth and inserting his vocals without background music-to-music samples from 5150.

Dr. Dre has the potential to cut his Thriller or to release an album as successful as Snoop Dogg’s Tha Doggfather and I’m hoping that it will be great. It is hard to find songs from Detox on the Internet but I did find one with Mary J Bilge and The Game.  It was o.k but I didn’t jump out of my seat.  The Guns N’ Roses stuff, on the other hand, has been leaked and identified as crap by the majority of those who have listened to it.  “Good” albums just don’t hang out in the studio indefinitely.  Let’s hope that Axl wakes up tomorrow, holds everyone’s hand from the original Guns N’ Roses (prior to Matt Sorum) while singing Chicago’s “It’s Hard For Me To Say I’m Sorry” and puts the video on the internet, in turn, prompting Dr. Dre to call him up with an offer to produce the new Guns N’ Roses tracks.  Michael Jackson and Billy Joel will sign up and Dre will produce everyone including Outkast.  This would then push the Detox release date to 2016.

As for Billy Joel, he decided not to make Disney music throughout the 90s, as it seemed like he was destined to do.  Instead, he went straight to the bottle.  I saw him perform with Elton John at the Tacoma Dome a few years ago and he was haggard.  He did not have any new material, but had no problem doing Beatles covers with Elton.  Joel played after Elton John, but he lacked the energy of what Elton brought to the stage.  At least Billy Joel can still say that he never sang “Circle of Life“.  I guess that’s why it might be better not to release anything than to release a song that would be the equivalent of a “Can You Feel The Love Tonight” or an I “Don’t Want To Miss A Thang“.  Personally, I don’t want to miss Nuthin’ But A G Thang 2.

I have expected Dr Dre to make an album back in 2005, when 50 Cent and The Game were still on the radio non-stop.  With gangster rap starting to lose the heat that it once had back when Straight Outta Compton or The Chronic came out, Dre is going to have to put out something that is not completely gangster. Perhaps he could get Josh Groban or John Mayer to sing a hook or maybe Dre could get Steven Tyler hooked on pain pills again and record his record while he is detoxing. He could use the samples to drive the album to the top of the charts and Aerosmith could be the backing band of the Up In Smoke 2 tour that is planned to follow the Detox album release. A Guitar Hero game featuring Dr. Dre and Aerosmith would come out for the DS.  It would only be a matter of time.

I found this list of so-called tracks for Detox on a site called Nobodysmiling.com:

1. Intro
2. I’m Back(D.R.E.) ft. Snoop Dogg
3. Rendezvous ft. Busta Rhymes
4. Compton’s Finest ft. The Game
5. Lyrical Dynamo ft. Rakim, Hittman, Ms.Roq
6. That The Way ft. G.A.G.E., Stat Quo
7. Real *****z ft. Kurupt, Ms.Roq, Hittman, Defari, Knoc-Turn’al
8. *****s And b*tches(Skit) ft. Eddie Griffin
9. Raindrops ft. Mary J.Blige
10. Kick Yo Ass ft. Ice Cube, Mc Ren,
11. Pass The Torch ft. Eminem, Nate Dogg
12. Devil’s Gun ft. Kokane
13. You’re Nasty(Skit) ft. Jake Steed
14. Bottles Up ft. 50 Cent
15. Runnin’ Thang ft. Knoc-Turn’al
16. Phone Call(Skit) ft. Eddie Griffin, Traci Nelson
17. It’s Not A Game ft. Bishop Lamont, Xzibit
18. Do It Again ft. Eve, Ms.Roq, Kokane
19. She On The Pole(Skit) Eddie Griffin
20. Cycle of Dre ft. Eminem
21. Things Fall Apart ft. Mary J.Blige, The Game
22. Angle’s Revenge ft. Truth Hurths
23. Inside and Outside ft. Time Bomb T, King T, Mc Ren, Hittman
24. The Sick Bastard ft. Busta Rhymes, Eminem, Kurupt
25. Last Party Tonight ft. Xzibit, Warren G, Snoop Dogg, Nate Dogg

In conclusion, you will hear that Detox is coming out.  People have been coming on 106 and Park, this entire decade, claiming that Detox is coming out in “the Fall“.  I was watching BET a week ago and they said that Dr. Dre is getting ready to drop a new album.  I felt like Matthew Fox from Lost and had a flashback and a flash-forward.  In the flashback, I saw the same information on 106 and Park from a year when Mike Jones or Lil John were still relevant.  In the flash-forward, a saw an interview with Dr. Dre about how close he is to dropping Detox.  It was in the next decade. I’m not going to go as far as saying that I’ll buy Dr. Pepper for everyone in the United States if Detox comes out this year, but I do not have enough faith in gangsta rap that it’ll come through on its word.  May gangsta rap fade away once again only to make yet another comeback?

On that point, I thought about ways that gangsta rap as a genre could make another comeback in about 2-3 years.  In the current climate, it is not profitable to make a gangsta rap record for the mainstream.  If you pay over 1/2 million dollars to make a video for a song that you only wrote the rap for and did not make the beat or do any of the production, you will barely be able to repay the video costs after everyone downloads your hit tracks off of the internet for free. I do not realistically see gangsta rap artists going on tours that heavily promote their singles and, without the touring and strong concept albums that attract money, gangsta rap is unsustainable. If gangsta rap gets real gangsta, like Brotha Lynch Hung gangsta, and artists make thug videos on camcorders, it could lead to a media revolution of the genre. It would be more about crime, drugs, and thugger.  That is, it would be more about what is really happening on the street.  The videos will be so low budget and the beats will be low budget too.  It’ll be a little like Master P, but more on the side of embracing the streets through hand held camera movements.  Real thugs would be filmed in their element, the songs would be about a real struggle, and it would be the next generation of gangsta rap.

-Mac Dawg