Zick Posted May 19, 2013 Share Posted May 19, 2013 no seriously, what makes this guy so good? is it the mystique that draws people toward his goofy ass? i know it isn't his inane use of arpeggios and scales that would make a 3 hour wesley willis instrumental sound inviting. You've obviously never listened to Buckethead Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheArtThief Posted January 1, 2014 Share Posted January 1, 2014 now will someone please press a 45 rpm 12" with soothsayer on both sides? then if I wear out the a-side, I've still got soothsayer on the b-side. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
topher Posted January 1, 2014 Author Share Posted January 1, 2014 Holy zombie thread, Batman! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tina Tinker Posted June 1, 2014 Share Posted June 1, 2014 So i've been completely obsessed with My Bucket Head for many many moons, you can imagine to my surprise when i found out who he really is and that ive actually met him in his human form and crushed on Brian. Wtf! !!! He use to visit my old job and his presence would oddly put me at ezzzzz. What if??????? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tina Tinker Posted June 1, 2014 Share Posted June 1, 2014 now will someone please press a 45 rpm 12" with soothsayer on both sides? then if I wear out the a-side, I've still got soothsayer on the b-side. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tina Tinker Posted June 1, 2014 Share Posted June 1, 2014 Does anyone on this forum own a Time Machine so i can go back and claim my man Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TFP Posted June 1, 2014 Share Posted June 1, 2014 ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tina Tinker Posted June 1, 2014 Share Posted June 1, 2014 Mr.Head Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaedong Posted June 1, 2014 Share Posted June 1, 2014 i'm not saying hes bad. just overhyped. he's like steve vai. most of his appeal comes from his goofy hats and stage presence. sorta like gg allin. music sucks but his appeal is his attitude and live shows. hell that's what got me to go to his show, otherwise he's just a singer in a run of the mill punk band. hope that makes sense. no offense, but this comparison just seems a little silly. i mean really, gg allin? it sounds like you just don't like "gimmicky" musicians, which is the usual thing people bash a musician like buckethead for, and which is fine and i mainly agree with, but Buckethead isn't even that gimmicky. the image is stupid, sure, but he's not even that popular and he's far from the first musician to do something dumb like that. people definitely don't like vai because of his goofy look. people like Vai because he is a virtuoso who played with Zappa when he was practically a kid and released some of the best instrumental guitar albums of his day (as good as Becker, Lane, and all the prior 'shredders' were, nobody had really released an instrumental album like passion and warfare. its not quite EVH revolutionary, but there is tons of guitar playing on that album that nobody was really doing like Vai). he's kind of a weird guy sure, but all the shredders have a pretty stupid look and personality. probably because they play shred guitar, which even as a guitar player, sucks pretty bad. personally, and again i don't like shred, but i think Batio is way more of a clown than buckethead. at least buckethead seems to 'get' to an extent how ridiculous the genre he plays in and loves it. john 5 is the same way to a lesser extent, dude just plays the music he loves and has a good time doing it. all of them are basically 'guitar magazine' players but Batio's music way worse, and his playing i'd consider more tasteless. at least Buckethead changes his sound substantially. Batio also takes himself really seriously because he prizes the one thing he can do so much: speed. i'd say in general artistic identity is far more complicated than something that can be reduced to "he's popular because X" or "now he's changed his style because of Y," and even moreso a lot of the truly brilliant musicians walk a fine line between being ridiculous and serious. if anything, i'd wager buckethead is intelligent enough to 'get' that wearing a bucket on your hand doesn't really make you any more ridiculous than wearing a tophat and Shades and referring to yourself as Slash. again, i respect your opinion and your entitled to it, i just wanted to make a case for buckethead's appearance because i too used to be very turned off by it. i mean Frank Zappa is endlessly more talented than any of those guys, and yet people don't even realize how utterly insane his compositional abilities are given that he's up on stage singing about titties and beer and piss snow cones. and people didn't take him seriously during the PRMC bullshit at first because of his "hippy" image and absurd sense of humor. but Zappa was a genius and didn't even do tons of drugs. and most people STILL remember him as the guy who wrote 'the yellow snow' song. its not exactly uncommon for truly brilliant artists to exist in these realms that seem ridiculous to us, and i'm not saying that's the case for buckethead, but i wouldn't write him off purely because of his look, ESPECIALLY not in favor of a guy like Batio. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BuzzersonKillwell Posted June 1, 2014 Share Posted June 1, 2014 Well that clears that up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
controlthebleeding Posted June 2, 2014 Share Posted June 2, 2014 no offense, but this comparison just seems a little silly. i mean really, gg allin? it sounds like you just don't like "gimmicky" musicians, which is the usual thing people bash a musician like buckethead for, and which is fine and i mainly agree with, but Buckethead isn't even that gimmicky. the image is stupid, sure, but he's not even that popular and he's far from the first musician to do something dumb like that. people definitely don't like vai because of his goofy look. people like Vai because he is a virtuoso who played with Zappa when he was practically a kid and released some of the best instrumental guitar albums of his day (as good as Becker, Lane, and all the prior 'shredders' were, nobody had really released an instrumental album like passion and warfare. its not quite EVH revolutionary, but there is tons of guitar playing on that album that nobody was really doing like Vai). he's kind of a weird guy sure, but all the shredders have a pretty stupid look and personality. probably because they play shred guitar, which even as a guitar player, sucks pretty bad. personally, and again i don't like shred, but i think Batio is way more of a clown than buckethead. at least buckethead seems to 'get' to an extent how ridiculous the genre he plays in and loves it. john 5 is the same way to a lesser extent, dude just plays the music he loves and has a good time doing it. all of them are basically 'guitar magazine' players but Batio's music way worse, and his playing i'd consider more tasteless. at least Buckethead changes his sound substantially. Batio also takes himself really seriously because he prizes the one thing he can do so much: speed. i'd say in general artistic identity is far more complicated than something that can be reduced to "he's popular because X" or "now he's changed his style because of Y," and even moreso a lot of the truly brilliant musicians walk a fine line between being ridiculous and serious. if anything, i'd wager buckethead is intelligent enough to 'get' that wearing a bucket on your hand doesn't really make you any more ridiculous than wearing a tophat and Shades and referring to yourself as Slash. again, i respect your opinion and your entitled to it, i just wanted to make a case for buckethead's appearance because i too used to be very turned off by it. i mean Frank Zappa is endlessly more talented than any of those guys, and yet people don't even realize how utterly insane his compositional abilities are given that he's up on stage singing about titties and beer and piss snow cones. and people didn't take him seriously during the PRMC bullshit at first because of his "hippy" image and absurd sense of humor. but Zappa was a genius and didn't even do tons of drugs. and most people STILL remember him as the guy who wrote 'the yellow snow' song. its not exactly uncommon for truly brilliant artists to exist in these realms that seem ridiculous to us, and i'm not saying that's the case for buckethead, but i wouldn't write him off purely because of his look, ESPECIALLY not in favor of a guy like Batio. i think we can agree zappa was the man.. i have no qualms about zappa or his musical prowess. dude was definitely in a class all of his own. i just think buckethead was be like any other guitar player if he didn't have a shtick. as far as vai. vai's a great guitarist for the time, but i bought that "passion and warfare" album when it came out and i wasn't impressed. to this day, i'm still not impressed. i just think his songwriting lacks (but that's mostly subjective) same goes for buckethead. i just think without the shtick his popularity wouldn't be what it is now. he'd be like any other guitar player trying to make it. his music (as well as vai's) bores me, so i don't get the popularity. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jared Posted June 2, 2014 Share Posted June 2, 2014 I dig Zappa. Now a days all of this guitar shred stuff just bores the shit out of me. Yesterday my band opened up for Animals As Leaders (don't know how that happened considering we're nothing like any of the bands that were playing) and it was a whole bunch of "meh" to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaedong Posted June 2, 2014 Share Posted June 2, 2014 i think we can agree zappa was the man.. i have no qualms about zappa or his musical prowess. dude was definitely in a class all of his own. i just think buckethead was be like any other guitar player if he didn't have a shtick. as far as vai. vai's a great guitarist for the time, but i bought that "passion and warfare" album when it came out and i wasn't impressed. to this day, i'm still not impressed. i just think his songwriting lacks (but that's mostly subjective) same goes for buckethead. i just think without the shtick his popularity wouldn't be what it is now. he'd be like any other guitar player trying to make it. his music (as well as vai's) bores me, so i don't get the popularity. definitely fair enough dude. i mean i'd agree with you lol, i NEVER listen to buckethead, or much shred in general. i'd agree on vai too, even though i find his playing to be super impressive, and passion and warfare is a pretty outstanding album as far as shred goes, i would way rather listen to springsteen or coltrane or morbid angel, basically anything that isn't a shred guitar album. because as a self indulgent person, i love self indulgent music, but shred really takes wanking it to a whole new level. still though, as a guitar player, i can't help but respect a player like Buckethead, and especially Vai. i think even Vai's success is pretty marginal, considering how talented the guy is as a musician. and again, i don't really listen to him, and i wasn't alive when he was really making his name as a guitarist, but from what i've read, he had a level of skill even then that was rarely matched. Zappa himself, who yea i totally agree with you is basically God, was in awe of his "little italian virtuoso," and would have crowd members bring up sheet music on stage that Vai would have to transpose to different keys on the spot while he shredded through it, having never seen it before, and he would always be able to do it. he was Zappa's "stunt guitarist" who played all the stuff that was too technically difficult for Frank to play. i guess my only point is that from a purely musical standpoint, like his phrasing and playing and eventually all the crazy tones and techniques he laid out on Passion and Warfare, its almost impossible not to respect Vai for me, even though he is a goofy pretentious fuck who makes generally lame music. and you consider how insanely good the guy is at playing the guitar, but then how little renown he has compared to a jimmy page or an eddie van halen, or Randy Rhoads who only had 2 really recognized albums but have some of the best solos ever, and yeah its probably all because shred is a genre that, as you say, lacks songwriting. its totally true. like Yngwie liked to compare the style of music he played to Paganini, which is a joke. its like, the over produced guitar tones, the ridiculous images, the personalities, Satch's stupid beanies and sunglasses.....those are staples of the genre lol. i haven't listened to enough of Buckethead's stuff to really talk on him, but i'd check out his album Electric Sea, at least a track off it. its got some pretty beautiful composition on it, though sure i'd rather listen to Satie or Debussy instead. i think i agree with most everything you say, i guess i just wanted to recognize the gray area between artist and aesthetics that exists in shred because its all so ridiculous. i mean the fact that a guy who wears a KFC bucket on his head makes some of the most artistically credible shred around should point out how ridiculous the genre is. i don't know if this is accurate, but it seems to me a lot of Buckethead's recognition came from his very brief stint in GnR, and he's still very much a "guitar player" magazine musician. good old shred, i deny listening to it or liking it even to myself, but then i'll have a smoke and listen to Becker's altitudes and think 'wow, this is pretty sick.' Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
topher Posted June 2, 2014 Author Share Posted June 2, 2014 Yeah, it never fails to amaze me how people assume that Buckethead's music is "shredding", when in reality, it makes up probably less than 20% of his material. It's the same error as assuming that The Beatles only ever wrote love songs. Just because something an artist does is popular, it doesn't mean it is a good representation of the bulk of their material. For instance: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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