Style: hard rock, heavy metal, experimental
Label: Avabella Productions
Year: 2006
Home: San Francisco, California
Concert location: Cactus Club; Basement; family reunion
Year Recorded: 1990; 1991
Length: 13+18+16 minutes
Bonus Features: none
Members: Brian Caroll "Buckethead" ~ guitar/keyboards
Maximum Bob ~ vocals
Pinchface ~ Drums/b. vocals
Tony Black ~ bass
This two volume set of 8 mm archival recordings looks back at the early days of avant-garde/metal guitarist Buckethead when the gimmick of being a non-speaking guitarist wearing a face mask & upside down KFC box was even stranger than it has since become on the national stage. It's the early underground work of Buckethead on his own & with the avant-garde band the Deli Creeps that really built him into an innovator with a reputation as a stellar guitar player long before the almost anti-climactic gig with Guns N' Roses as Slash's successor. & Tame is the keyword when watching this collection ... anything Buckethead has done since will seem tame. Buckethead, aka Brian Carroll, is zany in a niave & youthful way where he can make lots of mistakes in discovering his alter-ego as there's no constant spotlight on him, unlike today where the pressure is on. This first volume opens with a complete concert by the Deli Creeps from 1990 at a small bar creating loud & meandering rock with strange talkative vocals of the Primus sort by a strange freaking out frontman Maximum Bob ... a sight to behold. Buckethead plays a otherworldly robotic creature that comes & goes. It's not the stiltedness of Devo but something out of a fantasy film. The underground music scene has a lot of characters & it's not hard to see how Buckethead pulled out of the mesh, though it's sad that the Deli Creeps didn't last long enough to do so as a group as their Jello Biafra freak out would easily find fans. Buckethead is certainly a good & technically skilled guitarist but a lot of his playing is just noise against an awkward but strangely addicting performance that culls from the Plasmatics art rock & Alice Cooper shock theater school of thought. They disbanded before releasing anything though the audio recordings would have given them little justice & they really must be seen, preserved here but a few months old. Includes a great solo done leaning against the wall while Maximum Bob rambles & belittles everything & the drummer giggles like a fool, later followed by a guitar solo just done by swinging the guitar around the body with the fingers never touching the fingerboard. It's Buckethead at his show off best & the character is mature at an early age. Though, it's hard to say if one will be converted to a fan of Buckethead but seeing his roots will certainly bring a new understanding of his charisma ... along with what has kept him on the outside of the guitar hero club. Also included is the soundcheck of the show. Like most soundchecks its a twelve minutes that wavers between exciting & not depending on what one is watching for. Buckethead, sans mask but face fuzzed out with the cameraman saying he won't film his face, leans against the wall running Yngwie-esque scales & showing off his prowess in a way he doesn't do live. A third clip is a home movie from a year later of Buckethead with facemask only in the basement putting in an improvisational cosmic sounding keyboard performance while a guys talks & screams about getting out of a cage ... a cage that is actually a milk crate over his head. Eventually he takes the crate off & reacts to the music flipping out. Buckethead eventually appears in the background in full robotic moves moves under a transparent facemask, t-shirt & shorts. The character is being developed. The problem is that they are obviously looking in a mirror or something while the direction goes nowhere & the characters do too. But, this is what every kid sets out to do who wants to be a filmmaker. A little barely watchable movie that starts off strong but ends muddy. The last clip is one of the earliest performances of Buckethead as he performs for his family at a 1991 family gathering in the home backyard. He lets out a solo with the family making fun of him as Buckethead at first only to gravitate to cheers. It's a technical fest as he mixes together everything from Joe Satriani to Chet Atkins. Though the flannel shirt & shorts definitely don't work for the image ... guys don't look good in shorts & neither do robots, but the kid has his chops & creativity down & it's obvious from day one. No bonus features on this DVD but the fact that these movies exist & Buckethead has chosen to share them is a bonus in itself.
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