Five Extraordinary Buckethead Songs

Music for the Modern Electric Guitarist

Nov 2, 2009

Sifting through Buckethead's 28 albums for his greatest pieces can be time-consuming. Here is a list of five amazing tracks that every guitarist should hear.

Famous for eccentricity, mystique, macabre humor, a deranged love for chickens, and guitar virtuosity, Brian Carroll, better known as Buckethead, has released 28 solo albums that contain a sound spectrum ranging from classical to jazz/funk to rock, electronic, shred, even his self-styled "chicken-picking." By its broad stylistic scope, Buckethead's uniquely synthetic sound indeed transcends genre.

In the Coop, Buckethead Begginings

Buckethead grew up in California. Accounts of his biography remain hazy due to the nature of his masked persona. Young Buckethead Vol. 1 and 2 shed some light on the artist's history, though, as does his even stranger DVD release, Secret Recipe, featuring behind the performance documentary footage, music videos, and other odditties.

Further information on items such as touring, purchasing, and legend exists at the Buckethead website, which now features "The Homing Beacon," a song dedicated to Michael Jackson.

Spanning Sound and Genre

Buckethead transcends specific genre by experimenting with a range of sounds and styles. However, out of the musical amalgam, arises a uniquely compelling, yet wordless, voice.

Perhaps Buckethead's music should simply be labeled "guitar music" because its broadness of scope continues to expand. Recording after recording, he deftly manipulates metal strings and electricity, creating strange and sonorous sounds that blend in waves from serenity to insanity. From album to album, and often many times within single songs, melodically and rhythmically, through nuance and preternatural technique, he effortlessly shifts through a catalog of styles with a sort of schizophrenic genius, like audible chaos theory, harmony, dissonance, grace, and destruction, coalesced.

The Buckethead ListEach of the songs appearing on this list demonstrate classic Buckethead sound, arrangement, technique and style.

"Asylum of Glass," a concise and driven rock track, features Buckethead oscillating between the heavy and heavenly and includes one of Buckethead's many amazing guitar solos. "King James" displays Bucketheads mastery of melody, rhythm, and the Digitech Whammy effect pedal.

Referencing the film, The Warriors, Buckethead in "Baseball Furies" unleashes an array of grunge, shred, and electric cunning. In "Brewer in the Air," he dazzles with his fast-paced, classical-style picking and killswitch maneuvers. And in "Whitewash," Buckethead shows his melancholy side through acoustic echoes and delay.

Concluding RiffsThese songs are great entrance portals into the warped world of Buckethead. From chicken-picking to palm-muted shred to classical serenades, Buckethead on his many albums traverses the soundscape, exploring its mountains and abysses. This list of songs hopefully will help listeners to begin their own musical expedition.

The copyright of the article Five Extraordinary Buckethead Songs in Rock Music is owned by William Padgett. Permission to republish Five Extraordinary Buckethead Songs in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.