Virginia Beach takes a trip to Bucketheadland

Straight from the chicken coop, Buckethead arrived at The Jewish Mother in Virginia Beach on Friday night to a restless crowd of 300.

I’ve been listening to Buckethead for a few years now, and I’ve got to tell you, I still don’t know what is up with this guy. Little is known about his identity, other than his name is Brian Carroll, and he hails from Colma, Calif., a place where supposedly the dead outnumber the living. You will never find a picture of him without his mask on other than a small newspaper clipping from the 1980s.

He’s played with Bootsy Collins, Les Claypool, funk keyboardist Bernie Worrell, jazz great Jonas Hellborg, Guns N’ Roses and even did an album with Viggo Mortensen. Buckethead is definitely all over the place musically, and definitely not something that would work on the radio.

Buckethead has recorded four albums this year alone. His discography is becoming more and more Zappa-esque by the year, playing under the names Cobra Strike, Cornbugs, Praxis and Death Cube K (an anagram for Buckethead to prevent a lawsuit from Sony) among others.

Since his short stint with Guns N’ Roses from 2000 to 2004, his underground cult following has continued to grow.

Buckethead sort of zombie-walks onto the stage, picks up his beautiful all-white Les Paul guitar and begins to play immediately. His set-up is very barebones, with his drummer Pinchface off to the side of the stage and magic pipe bass player That One Guy to his left. Buckethead gets his name from the KFC bucket on his head that can be seen in almost every single picture of the guitar monster you can find, along with his Mike Meyers Halloween mask.

If you like guitar players, you will enjoy watching Buckethead. If you like weird, funky music, you will enjoy watching Buckethead. This guy can play every style you can think of: funk, rock, metal, blues, classical, acoustic ballads. He even takes a break from guitar to noodle around on the bass guitar. By watching him on bass you would never be able to tell that guitar is his primary instrument. Buckethead is also skilled in the arts of break-dancing and nunchucking, which he will proudly display for his fans at his shows.

Buckethead is a one-of-a-kind character and performer. Never breaking his character on stage, he acts like a creepy, frightened kid when something needs to be fixed on stage. Big B dropped his pick once during the third song, and he just looked at his hand as if he just killed a man. He slowly bent down to pick his plectrum off the ground, never stopping the music with this left hand and continued to rock with the rest of the band.

For those who are looking to check out Buckethead, be warned. The music isn’t going to have catchy choruses and melodic vocals. I think most of his albums are without vocals anyway. It is guitar music for guitar people. I recommend checking out “Monsters and robots,” “Colma” and either one of the “Bucketheadland” albums, which take you on a psycho music journey through his fantasy horror theme park. The work he did with Colonel Claypool’s Bucket of Bernie Brains, featuring Les Claypool, Brain and Bernie Worrell, is a lot more musical and still retains a ton of crazy bucket shred. You can also check out Corn Bugs, The Deli Creeps, and Praxis for more weird musical adventures to open up your mind.

I highly recommend going to check out Buckethead whenever he comes around. He rarely comes south of the D.C. area so it is definitely worth the trip, whenever you can make it.

Enjoy your stay at Bucketheadland!