The Legend
An illegitemate child of a local preacher, a very young Buckethead was locked in a local chicken coop in an attempt to hide the town's shame. The chickens accepted him as one of their own, and raised him from a small child. Buckethead grew to love his chicken brothers, and dreaded every night when the owner of the coop would spray him into a corner with a hose and steal one of his chicken friends. He would occasionally sneak out at night to perfect his guitar skills by playing his soapbox guitar to the headstones in the chicken graveyard.
One night, when Buckethead was about 17, the owner of the coop decided to play a cruel joke and threw a bucket of fried chicken over the fence to Buckethead. It took Buckethead a few minutes to figure out what was in the bucket, but once he realized that the townsfolk were killing and eating his family he snapped. He put the KFC bucket full of chicken bones on his head and a white plastic mask over his face to cover up all the chicken scratches before he burned the entire chicken farm to the ground with gasoline. Buckethead fled to Los Angeles, where he raised money by doing puppet shows and dancing on street corners to raise money for his first real guitar.
The "Truth"
So goes the origin story of avant garde chicken / robot guitar god Buckethead, whose real name is probably Brian Carroll (though you'll never get the man in the mask to admit it). Buckethead is strange, from his playing style to his behaviour, and just about everything else. He never talks and he never takes off his bucket or mask. The only speaking interview I've ever seen him give is to MTV's Kurt Loder, and that was via a rubber monster head hand puppet named Herbie. His stage behaviour is exactly opposite of what one would expect of a guitar hero. He seems shy on stage, and even stands behind the amps on occasion, even though he's wearing a a KFC bucket on his head, the mask, and yellow raincoat and towers above the stage at about 7 feet tall. (He's so tall that he got a custom made oversized flying v guitar made so it wouldn't look so cheap in his hands.) His one trick (besides an occasional improv robot dance) is to play a flying guitar solo with one hand while doing a nunchuck kata with the other. That's skill, baby.
His pre-show warmup involves playing to a rack of toys, including Colonel Sanders (his father figure), Leatherface, and a rubber chicken. He's played live shows that consist only of him improvising a new soundtrack for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre while it plays on a huge screen above the stage. He claims to have visited Disneyland more than 500 times, and has tried to get Disney to clear an all Disney song cover album (he does cover a few songs).
On top of all this, the man can crank it out. Since his first album with the Deli Creeps in 1991 (while still a teenager) he has released 10 solo albums (2 under his alter-ego, the anti-buckethead Death Cube K), 5 Praxis albums, 5 movie soundtracks, 2 TV soundtracks (Dragon Ball Z, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers), 3 spoken-word albums with Viggo Mortensen (yeah, that guy), a breakbeat album, and more than 40 albums with other projects. All this while planning his theme park Bucketheadland.
So, what's he sound like?
Here's where it gets complicated, because his style is very hard to describe. Imagine a classic robot (Tobor, Gort, your pick) with a little funk playing his version of the theme to Mega Man, and you're close. Now combine that with Yngwie Malmsteen, but without all the cliche and chest hair and you're a little bit closer. Still, that's a poor description of Buckethead's talent. One of the great things about about Buckethead's albums is that they're very listenable. They're nothing like the studio-musician backed, vanity press albums that most guitar players like to put out. He plays over a giant range of backing: straight breakbeats from DJ Disk, Bootsy funk, to Les Claypool and Brain playing Primus riffs. They're chock full of samples from just about everywhere, and even him battling his nemesis, Slipdisc, or classic monsters from Giant Robot.
That's not even mentioning his dark ambient albums (Death Cube K), his funk-metal-robot fusion albums with Praxis, or his appearance on DJ Qbert's Wave Twisters. He's also currently filling Slash's snakeskin boots as the current guitar player for Guns N' Roses. His riffs can originally present as fairly simple and just heavily layered, but repeated listening brings out just how complicated and fast his managing to play. Occasionally, his blazingly fast yet oddly mechanical fret runs can get downright scary.
You need a Buckethead album. Your booty will thank you.
A Heavily Abridged Discography
Because a full one would be damn near impossible and HUGE.
Solo:
Bucketheadland
Giant Robot
Day of the Robot
Colma
Monsters and Robots
Bermuda Triangle
Electric Tears
As Death Cube K:
Dreamatorium
Disembodied
Tunnel
With Praxis:
Transmutation (Mutatis Mutandis)
Sacrifist
Metatron
Collection
Warzsawa
With G-n-R:
Chinese Democracy