Friday, November 18, 2005

Buckethead lands briefly in Utah

Buckethead played a beautiful white Les Paul
I finally attended my first Buckethead show on Weds. night in a seedy smoke-filled dive in Salt Lake City called, of all things, Egos. It turned out to be one of the most thrilling music shows I have ever attended. The degree of musical virtuosity is spellbinding, not to mention the wide ranging repertoire of styles and compositions. Buckethead is truly a wonder to behold.

The encore began with a spirited instrumental cover of Hendrix's Foxy Lady followed by the most extraordinary rendition of Machine Gun I will probably ever hear in my life. I told Vanessa (my date) that it felt like Jimi's spirit was somewhere in the room while that guitar wailed out some of the most intense pulses of blues vibrations my skull has ever endured.

Afterwards I met the drummer, Pinchface, and told him about Jimi's spirit being present in the room and he said that he could feel Jimi looking down over the bandstand every time they performed that song. WOW!

A powerful night it was.

You must go to a Buckethead show if you can! He is a one of a kind phenomenon that must be seen and heard live to be believed.

2 comments:

Audie said...

How was the crowd?

beamis said...

The crowd was mostly a youngish group of testosterone and Red Bull fueled idiots, who sort of treated the whole thing like one big freak show. With an act like Buckethead's I suppose that's almost inevitable.

Vanessa complained that it was a poor place to showcase such a talented musician. I agreed with her, but loved the performance nonetheless.

When we left we both smelled like the inside of Sweaty Elvis's car, but such is the price you sometimes must pay to witness greatness.