...that creep can roll

On wednesday night I attended a performance of the newly reformed, recongealed, reconstituted Colonel Claypool's Bucket of Bernie Brains, a.k.a. c2b3. Despite my traditional lazy ass late start, my financial irresponsibility came through once again as a $20 cab delivered me safely to the roxy, 2 blocks away from a t station, just as Bernie Worrel of P-Funk (that's Parliament Funkadelic to you, bitch) was gettin his groove thang going, signalling the preparations for the mothership liftoff. however, things were about to go horribly wrong.

enter the newly called up national guard reserve colonel claypool. for the first "song" he dons a rubber elvis hat and matching sunglasses and begins introducing creepy noises from his equally creepy looking bass. and when you hear creepy, you know who can't be far away - you guessed it, folks, the one and only, the man with 6 inch fingers, KFC's official rep to the underworld, BucketHead. In case his outfit was not weird enough, he put a nice little piece of funeral tape across the bucket.

FUNERAL

The noises continued filling the space over the already frenzied audience. from my vantage point to the side and above the stage i could see the evil brewing. finally brain, the drummer, came in to put a little order in the nonsense. put a beat around it and everyone will believe it's music. and we did.

just to top off the creepy build up the song concluded with an asian girl, dressed like one of those little anime girls with little antennas on her head, coming out to sing the closing "lyrics".

As the jam came to an end, claypool did that awesome thing that bass players do and started the run to righteousness. Buckethead was not far behind, and Brain kept them honest. Bernie just smoked cigarettes and looked cool - he'd "earned" it (doing all that acid).

The third song featured the reintroduction of the little asian girl - Gabby Lala, playing the weirdest looking instrument i had ever seen. It was like a guitar sitar weirdo thing, and she was great. her and buckethead did a pretty good duet for a while, and les came back with an upright, and they all had this great melodic pretty song. but i was not lulled into a false sense of security.

since i was becoming progressively more intoxicated, the later events blur into more of a melty experience. the highlights include claypool changing outfits a minimum of 5 times, buckethead wearing a much creepier than usual mask, claypool wearing a full ape mask while playing a bass with a drumstick and a lever, bernie clearly "wanting the funk", buckethead doing the robot, brain drum solo, buckethead playing with a rubber chicken, claypool's birthday celebration (he is 73, thank you albuquerque, new mexico), a star wars shred session by the bucket man, and a happy birthday funk jam kicked off by bernie, that sick old fuck, the most evil of them all, that doesn't have to do any work anymore - just wear good outfits and shake his dessicated head as the cigarette in his mouth further dilapidates the skin on his face.

fucking claypool, man...