Buckethead?

a zoner gave me 2 freebies a long time ago. took my daughter, was a fun time.

crowd was fine. better than a dead type show. people were there for the shredding. was a trio, all players were great.

I took my son and nephew last night at the Variety Playhouse. Wide range of people in the crowd, a handful of other parents with their kids to see mr. bucket. I have seen him 3-4 times over 25 years and his show does not change much. He wins the gold medal for guitar Olympics! 

Lotta bros at his shows

Deadco would be a lot more interesting if he got the gig instead of Mayer

i love his recorded work, and especially his work with praxis, but the one time i was able to see him live, it was one of the worst concerts i have ever seen in my life. maybe THE worst. many years ago he played hardly strictly bluegrass, i got a bunch of friends to come with who usually dont see many shows because they wanted to see buckethead. it was the main attraction for our group by a longshot.

dude came out about an hour late, played some pretty good shreddy guitar for like 5-10min, then played a bunch of prerecorded music while doing stupid dances, played another 5-10min of pretty good shreddy guitar, and then spent the rest of the show playing precorded music and playing with nunchucks and a rubber chicken. it was like 15min of music and 20min of stupid dancing to shitty prerecorded music and playing with toys AFTER making a huge crowd of people sit around for 45min waiting for him. when i relayed this experience to people who had seen buckethead before, they seemed unsurprised and the consensus seems to be that the whole chickens and nunchucks with prerecorded music schick was just a normal part of his show.

i missed MERLE FUCKING HAGGARD to get a good spot up front for this loser. huge mistake.

he plays a mean guitar, has some great albums, and has played with many giants of experimental rock, but im not really interested in his live shows anymore. if he's playing with a band instead of solo and gets rid of the nunchucks and chickens i might reconsider.

>i missed MERLE FUCKING HAGGARD to get a good spot up front for this loser. <

doh.

Oof

I was at that show at HSBF and it was one of the worst acts I saw there in 15 yrs of going. Wrote him off immediately.

I saw that hsbf set. It was dope. Sick poppin and lockin. 

Music fans need to chill. 

People are impressed by different things.

The first time I saw Buckethead was with Les Claypool's Bucket of Bernie Brains with Bernie Worrell on keys and Brain on drums, and I thought it was prog/psychedelic/improv genius. It was also by far the best non-Primus Claypool show I've ever seen.

I had long heard the critiques of how Buckethead was all mechanics but no "soul", but I was amazed by him that night at the Fillmore and thought I had found another local great to follow, so naturally I gave him a couple of chances with his own groups....... and both were total fails.

Nothing more than technical pyrotechnics and BS show-off shit with nunchucks and other empty crap.

Both shows I saw him as a headliner were all about showing us how "brilliant" he is on guitar (and other things) with nothing vaguely musical going on.

Buckethead is clearly a technical master on the guitar, if you like Eddie Van Halen you'll probably like him, but like other players who get lost in technique and ego, he's far more a machine than a musician.

Sort of what AI would create for a "guitar player".

But in the modern world, as in part The Sphere is now showing us, sometimes technical wizardry is what really captures our attention.

YMMV.

I have to admit I'm intrigued by the contrast of opinions about the guy. There are gushing reviews, mediocre opinions, and awful reports all about the same individual.

Kinda makes me want to see for myself. You would think there has to be something there that attracts people.

sounds like the dude is just a brilliant musician/player, and when he decides to make real face melting stuff or is instructed to do so by a group he's playing with, like bucket of bernie brains/praxis(lance - not sure if you are familiar with praxis, but its just the bucket or bernie brains lineup with boosty collins instead of claypool, with a DJ doing turntables added, and the  band is led/produced by bill laswell), he can do so with flying colors, but often when he's on his own, his musical inclinations tend toward some more masturbatory technical stuff and his instincts on what makes a good rock show seem to often be pretty out of line with what i think most zoners would consider a good rock show.

the dude can melt faces and play incredible shows when he wants to or has to do so as part of a band, but often just chooses not to due to his own artistic tastes - i think that's something probably all of  us have experienced, albeit in a different way, with bobby weir. im sure every one of us have been to shows, even post jerry ones, where bob is a big part of an absolutely mind melting show, and then we've been to other shows where some of  bob's musical choices seem pretty underwhelming to say the least. we all know he is capable of delivering the goods, but sometimes his own artistic tastes lead him in other directions that might be less pleasing for an audience seeking high energy psychedelic improv. i think there is a similar dynamic at play with buckethead.

For what it's worth I was right up front for kris & merle

it was all time

Sounds like the guy can shred, but I'm not a big fan of gimmickry. For me, Garcia in a black t-shirt was just exactly perfect.

> as in part The Sphere is now showing us, sometimes technical wizardry is what really captures our attention.

Yeah, we like us some shiny objects. But once captured, do they tend to hold our attention?