Michael Myers did more than just eviscerate teens with a giant kitchen knife — he grew his hair out and learned to shred! Photos by .
A friend of mine described music, which I’m not too familiar with, as “rock for computer programmers.” That, together with the fact that it was Sunday night in Boulder, got me thinking I was in for a reserved, maybe studiously reserved night of guitar-god virtuoso.
I wasn’t prepared to find my path at the entrance to the blocked by two bodies being held face down to the concrete by the theater’s bouncers. From the corner of his mouth that wasn’t lip-locked to the cement, one of the men on the ground asked what he’d done. A bouncer informed him it must have been something pretty bad, otherwise he wouldn’t be in the position he was in now.
I thought about hanging out to see how the guy on the ground was going to develop his counter argument against this circular logic, but I had a show to see, and if this guy had truly done something this bad, I had to find out what else was going down inside — knife fights, Kung Fu battles in the balcony, bazooka play, who knew…
And they say there’s no thug life in Boulder.
It was a little deflating instead to find the Fox’s sold-out crowd inside engrossed by a guy on stage playing an extra-long vacuum cleaner attachment. Thatap what it looked like, at least. I checked the longitude and latitude coordinates on my Reverb GPS Notebook. I was indeed in Boulder, Colorado. And things we’re already more interesting than I imagined they would be.
, the opening act, plays (and loops live) a homemade instrument consisting of one hollow pipe with a string, which sounds like a violin when bowed, connected by what look like pipe fittings to another hollow pipe that emits percussive sounds when tapped. Add to this the electronic loops and samples produced by That One Guy, a.k.a. Matt Hodgson, and you’ve got what sounds like music for the futuristic hobo.
A guy next to me asked how he was producing the music, to which I could only shrug my shoulders. I hadn’t heard many people play vacuum cleaner attachments before, but I was willing to bet That One Guy was one of the best out there. A lot of That One Guy’s music was adventurous improvisation but he closed his set with a few rousing bars of Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man,” followed by a fun version of Thelonious Monk’s “In Walked Bud.”
It was then a long wait for Buckethead, whose real name is Brian Carroll. There are virtually no pictures available of Buckethead when he’s not wearing a Japanese mask and his namesake KFC bucket over his head, and he consciously preserves this mysterious identity by avoiding publicity. When you can play guitar like he can, people are going to find out about it on their own.
With black coveralls, his mask and a surprisingly simple, unadorned white bucket sans any KFC logos on his head, Buckethead came on stage and wasted no time tearing into his first song. Now, some of you out there might be asking, “A white bucket after Labor Day?” But Buckethead is not about fashion, he’s about guitar. And I can’t say I’ve heard anybody play the instrument with the same fire that he does.
His first song developed around a pretty simple jam-like hook. He tilted the body of his guitar toward the floor when he wanted to add feedback, and his lightning fret hand added short bursts veering from the melody before he took off on an extended improvisational solo. He followed that with an experimentation in different kinds of feedback that produced sounds you don’t normally hear coming from a guitar. For instance, I’ve heard people duplicate DJ scratching with a guitar before, but I’ve never heard anyone do it while working guitar feedback at the same time.
With a dizzying array of sounds, from rock to metal to funk — sometimes all in the same song — Buckethead dazzled the crowd, who seemed to recognize many of the songs. I have to say I witnessed some of the best air guitar playing from any rock audience, people bent over strumming away, walking around corners to find more space to jam out, jumps in the air a la Pete Townsend, faces crinkled with chordal explosions. And through it all there was the passive, expressionless mask covering ܳٳ’s face. It seemed odd at times, like watching “V for Vendatta: The Musical.”
Another technique Buckethead displayed was to occasionally play with just his fret hand. The only other person I’ve seen do that before was Steve Vai. Itap one of those tricks you have to see someone play live to appreciate, but I don’t think there’s a lot of competition out there.
Buckethead also sprinkled in some great references, a James Gang riff there, echoes of Hendrix’ “Foxy Lady” and “Voodoo Child,” even the theme from “Star Wars.” There were moments in the more balladic songs that sounded a little like recycled Joe Satriani, but overall, Buckethead was in command throughout the night, pulling off one mouth-gaping solo after another. I only wish he plays with a live band some day, as the recorded drums restricted how long and when Buckethead could improvise.
About halfway in to the show, Buckethead put down his guitar and executed a flawless nunchucks demonstration. I’m not sure why he did this, but it was cool. Maybe he just wanted to send a message to the Kung Fu masters in the audience — in case they were feeling a little randy on a Sunday night in Boulder.
Sam DeLeo is a Denver writer and regular Reverb contributor.
is Boulder freelance photographer and regular Reverb contributor.
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