Colonel Claypool's Bucket of Bernie Brains
The Big Eyeball In The Sky

LA RECENSIONE

"God makes them and then couples them, even for a short period of time."

This is the definition that impulsively comes to mind when faced with this super-band composed of a guitarist masked with a bucket on his head (Buckethead), a bassist with a "quirky" look (Les Claypool), a brash keyboardist with a smoking habit (Bernie Worrell), and a drummer who helped Axel Rose release that "work" which would later be "Chinese Democracy" (Bryan Mantia).

Well, folks, from their dark meeting in 2002 during the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, they founded a super-mega-hyper-ultra rock-funk band: Colonel Claypool's Bucket of Bernie Brains (a combination of the members' nicknames). It's difficult to classify this album, the only recorded album, since it is based on pieces characterized by the most total improvisation of the individual members, where no one prevails over the other and each brings something of their own to every track. Every jam session, or at least the most beautiful or better defined as experimentally interesting ones, were then recorded and compiled into this disc: "The Big Eyeball in the Sky"; released in 2004 and followed by a tour in the USA.

Let's talk more in depth about the album in question: as previously mentioned, it is nothing more than a collection of jam sessions composed during the band's performances, which also features the multi-instrumentalist singer Gabby La La, discovered by Claypool and brought to success by him, with her Sitar (especially in the track "Elephant Ghost" where she is left to total improvisation and experimentation).

What can I say, I will stop here to not spoil the discovery of the product offered by this bunch of crazy artists; if you already know Claypool or Buckethead, you already know what I mean.

The word of the mad.