So what's up with Buckethead?

For the curious, here's three different sounding Pikes:







Sometimes I listen to some Pikes on Youtube as background music when I'm cleaning, getting ready for work, etc.

I checked out a few ones yesterday (all 2014/15). I tried some that should be fairly different from each other from descriptions I read (siLLy puPPy and comments on youtube), but my personal impression was not one of inconsistency. True some are more some are less experimental, some faster and some slower, some noisy some calm, but for me they all had a fairly similar feel to it, a musical stream of consciousness of which it doesn't surprise me one bit that this is all the same person. This is how moods change and music can express it. The whole approach what kind of thing this guy thinks makes a "song", the guitar playing and how it contributed to express different emotions, the use of rhythm and licks etc. seems pretty recognizable to me. Perhaps not recognizable enough to achieve 100% in an "is this Buckethead or not" quiz, but enough to give me the feeling that it's the same person, the shape my impression of his personality, but also to think at a certain point that it's all "more of the same" even when I go to a pike that is supposedly very different.

When I started to make my own music at the age of 15 or so I was very fast but bad. I have big appreciation for Buckethead for how good this stuff is given that often he does 30 minutes in a single day. I'd be mightily proud of myself had I been able to do 30 minutes of this quality in a day. On the other hand, the lack of elaboration of the compositions seems fairly obvious to me at any moment. OK, in my fairly random exploration (although I went into a few that got 4 stars by siLLy on purpose) I may have missed things that are different but still. I haven't come across parts/songs where I clearly felt that I want to listen to this again. (Probably I should peek into his earlier stuff when he took more time.)

I just saw that siLLy has come up with a one star review today. This was probably the first oen, but I'm not sure. I wonder whether this pike is really particularly bad or whether siLLy just gets bored more easily the more of this he does. We'll see.

Obviously having listened to Buckethead now on only two days in my entire life, I can't claim that my opinion is very qualified, not only may I have missed great stuff, also the stuff I listened to may grow if I'd give it more time. Still, my listening gave me a pretty solid feeling of what to expect, that I can occasionally have fun listening to some of this, I respect it for the productivity and for being an original thing to do and credit goes to him for doing it first, but also that I don't expect anything from this guy that can really draw me in, at least not in this 2014/15 phase; of course he may change direction at some point and he apparently has done this before.


Edited by Lewian - December 04 2015 at 06:55

siLLy puPPy wrote: Lewian, I'm trying to be explicit in my reviews all the whys. I have given a few 1 stars for pikes. The reason is usually that it is nothing new and yes boring. Compare albums I gave 4 stars to those I gave one. I've now listened to close to 70 pikes and my standards get higher as I proceed. Everything is played well but in my subjective opinion I just don't find all of equal quality. Same with other artists with large outputs like zappa.

Yes, I admire your reviews, you make them very informative which is quite an achievement given how many you write in short time (I can see a connection there), and I agree that the pikes are not all the same quality. Musical taste and even perception is of course subjective but still to me the impression of consistency (although perhaps not at the most obvious level) trumps diversity in what I have heard.

what's up with Buckethead? Well, the only real answer is...