For those of you regulars that have been around here long enough to know my addiction to Buckethead's guitar mastery, I forgot to mention that I got to see him live last Monday in a small tavern outside Pittsburgh.
Maybe 250 people max.

He hadn't toured in years (to my knowledge), and my wife came across the listing for the show while looking for something completely unrelated (kind of like how many of us found our wives)

We managed to make our way up to within 3 standing rows of the stage.
He plays lead guitar over backing tracks consisting of him playing rhythm guitar, bass guitar, and percussion he's had someone program into a very high quality drum machine.
So he is a 4 piece one-man band.

He has well over 300 albums out, and the show consisted of him playing the lead parts to portions of many a song, most of which I did not recognize, but that's part of the fun.

He makes extensive use of guitar effects pedals, often using 3 in succession, along with an interruptor button on his guitar that momentarily cuts the output from his guitar.
As a guitar player, this is usually a total turnoff to me, as it makes simple stuff sound magical in a fake way.
But combine musical skill and knowledge of how to get the sound you're after, and it's fine with me. He has mastered his art.

While he did play a few mellow licks here and there, he was clearly in a speed/shredding mood, and most of the songs had a heavy, driving force behind them You can just tell the man loves to play.
This man's fingers are longer than Jimi's, yet they are lightning fast, both fretting, tapping, and picking.

Before the intermission, he gave out toys to most of us in the front rows. They are small action figures, nothing fancy. Not sure when it became a part of his stage show but it has been going on for a long time.
Both my wife and I got toys, I got a Mini Wonder Woman action figure and my wife got a small red VW bus type thing. Hardcore fans actually exchange toys with him, as he is into robot toys, action figures and such. Everyone is a big kid in their own way.

Later in the show, he played a song where he made heavy use of the interruptor button, and in the middle of the song, he stepped to the front of the stage and held the bottom of his guitar out and down and let some of the fans play it.
I was one of them. I tried to infuse the song with an ofbeat reggae interrupting pattern, but it only took him 2 measures to figure out what I was doing and the guitar was withdrawn from me and passed to the next person.

He saved his signature song, "Soothsayer" (part of it anyway) until very near the end of the show.
As soon as I recognized the intro, I started to video it with my cell phone. That lasted all of 4 seconds, as I unconsciously decided I'd rather have a mental memory of the experience than a visual one. I swayed along with the rest of the people who know the song note for note. He kicked in an overdrive effects pedal, and the bass and midrange vibrated through my sternum on its way to the people behind me.

It took 4 full days for my hearing to fully return and the ringing to cease.
I don't recommend standing in 12 feet from a raised 100 dB PA speaker for 2 hours without earplugs.
I did not think we would be anywhere near the stage or I would have brought some.

As I am writing this, there are riffs running through my head, and my ears are ringing ever so slightly. Funny how the mind works.....

$23 a ticket + fees. All Geberal admnission. He's not in it for the money.

He's in it for the music.

 

Damn, $23 to see Buckethead? You, my friend, had a bargain and a legendary night to remember. I'm jealous. He's awesome!