Any one else follow Buckethead on Bandcamp?

andy_k

Seems not a week goes by without him releasing a new album.
Been a rough few years for him, with health issues and a lot of his gear stolen.
I usually have a listen, and quite often spend the money to be able to download the tracks, just paid for Mosaic released 02/09/2022, and it is classic BH, but the last one before that was Fork, from Nov 21, which is just basically an excellent ACDC / ZZTop record, without the annoying bass and vocals.
The guy is a genius.

M1ck

Just had to look up ‘Bandcamp’  and to make matters worse I couldn’t work out how to use it!   
I sometimes just put a BH playlist on Apple Music if I’m busy but Apple Music only goes up to 2020 (currently) he certainly is prolific how on earth does he remember it all! 

Guess I’ll have to go back to bandcamp and try and work out how to use it and have a listen to mosaic and fork !

andy_k

He's releasing everything he does through there, and he sells some physical stuff through his website.
Most of the stuff gets posted direct to YT, but I do like to buy stuff occasionally.
I heard a track, on the last Doom soundtrack, The Patrolman, which is on Racks, from 2012, and I had to buy it to see if I could get a better quality version- couldn't stop listening to it.
Fork was recommended, via Bandcamp, and it was the best £3 or so I have spent in a long time, 9 tracks of DC and ZZ style riffs.
The newer one is Language of the Mosaics, and it is classic Buckethead craziness, every track will leave you wondering how he does it.
Amazing.

axisus

To be honest I've never heard him. I've never liked silly images (Buckethead, Slipknot, GWAR etc) and actively avoid that sort of thing. I remember seeing pix of him in Guns & Roses and it just looked ridiculous to me. 

If enough people here think he's worth a listen I may just check him out ...

andy_k

The image is just something to hide behind, as a guitarist and musician, he is peerless.
The sheer amount of 'music' he puts out is amazing, in many genres, the latest 'Mosaic' release seems to be highlighting the variety in each track. Nobody sounds like Buckethead.
There is a reason all his stuff was left on the GnR album, after he left the band, and Axl had to replace him with 3 guitarists.

barnstorm

People who are 'in the club' obviously enjoy the fact that he records and releases pretty much every idea that comes to him, but as an outsider I always think he needs an authoritarian producer.

Also not a fan of the look and imagery – partly because they're not my cup of tea, but also because they colour people's assumptions about what (some of) the music sounds like. Not like he needs advice from us lot, though!

Philly_Q

I've liked everything of his that I've heard, but I haven't attempted to investigate his recorded catalogue, there's just way too much of it!

MikeB

Philly_Q said:

I've liked everything of his that I've heard, but I haven't attempted to investigate his recorded catalogue, there's just way too much of it!

Listened and sub'd on YouTube but the back catalogue and trying to navigate it is a big old task. Some of his work though is just amazing both musically and as a guitar head.

JasO

The image is just something to hide behind, as a guitarist and musician, he is peerless.
The sheer amount of 'music' he puts out is amazing, in many genres.... Nobody sounds like Buckethead.

During my decades as an editor for Guitar Player magazine, I was always on the search for groundbreaking new players. This led to my doing the first nationally (in the U.S.) published interviews with EVH, Eric Johnson, Steve Vai, and Joe Satriani, among others. To my ears, even in his teens Buckethead was clearly in the same league as those guys. During the time he lived in my home, during the Deli Creeps era, I was continually amazed by Buckethead's ability to absorb and instantly mimic musical styles. For instance, we started watching the Ken Burns documentary called The Civil War, which has all of this beautiful traditional acoustic music. After watching one episode, Buck picked up my Guild D-40C and instantly began improvising music that perfectly fit the documentary. We turned on the recorder and the Acoustic Shards album was done on the spot in a single take. (This was around the same time we made the Young Buckethead DVDs.) My favorite Buckethead tracks have this rare, almost haunting beauty about them -- "I Love My Parents" is a perfect example. He was very close to his family and missed them when he left Claremont for San Francisco. I haven't kept up with his dozens (hundreds?) of albums, but enjoy his playing every time I hear it, especially the lyrical stuff. 

andy_k

JasO said:

The image is just something to hide behind, as a guitarist and musician, he is peerless.
The sheer amount of 'music' he puts out is amazing, in many genres.... Nobody sounds like Buckethead.

During my decades as an editor for Guitar Player magazine, I was always on the search for groundbreaking new players. This led to my doing the first nationally (in the U.S.) published interviews with EVH, Eric Johnson, Steve Vai, and Joe Satriani, among others. To my ears, even in his teens Buckethead was clearly in the same league as those guys. During the time he lived in my home, during the Deli Creeps era, I was continually amazed by Buckethead's ability to absorb and instantly mimic musical styles. For instance, we started watching the Ken Burns documentary called The Civil War, which has all of this beautiful traditional acoustic music. After watching one episode, Buck picked up my Guild D-40C and instantly began improvising music that perfectly fit the documentary. We turned on the recorder and the Acoustic Shards album was done on the spot in a single take. (This was around the same time we made the Young Buckethead DVDs.) My favorite Buckethead tracks have this rare, almost haunting beauty about them -- "I Love My Parents" is a perfect example. He was very close to his family and missed them when he left Claremont for San Francisco. I haven't kept up with his dozens (hundreds?) of albums, but enjoy his playing every time I hear it, especially the lyrical stuff. 

That's amazing. I haven't watched the full version of 'young Buckethead', but the clip where he plays the theme from 'The Exorcist' and then does it with tapping just blew me away.
I also found some multitracks of 'Chinese Democracy' and I couldn't stop listening to his solo in 'TWAT', just BH and the drums.
You get the sense that this was one take, improvised, and obviously was the reason Axl kept all his stuff on the final release, in fact the leaked tracks which were less well produced are a bit better for raw Buckethead content.
I confess to not being into everything he does, but he is the only guitarist that I can listen to who will ALWAYS surprise me with something new.
Thanks for the story.

andy_k

Listen to 'The Patrolman' on repeat, I did, and still do, it is fantastic.

andy_k

Had to be done-
-

And a more recent one, well it is 8 months old now, not sure how many he's done since.


Genius.

Funkfingers

IMO, Buckethead ought to collaborate with The Residents.

One of the pieces of music used throughout Burns' The (American) Civil War series, titled Ashokan Farewell, was commissioned for the project. Careful instrumentation makes it sound convincingly of the 1860s.