At one point in my life, I travelled roughly two hours from Cleveland to Columbus to witness Buckethead perform alongside Brain (one time Primus drummer) and Bill Laswell, who in the past sat in with Miles Davis. The performance, a ‘Black Box Show’ at the Wexner Center, was pretty much all that could have been expected. It was a monstrous display of dexterity on any and ever instrument that was present – and there was even a bit of a light show going on behind the curtain where the crowd was, in fact, situated. If my approval of the guitarist and his cohort hadn’t been solidified prior to this event, it certainly was afterwards. I don’t think the ticket was more than fifteen bucks either. Bonus.

Since then, Buckethead’s kept busy, releasing at least ten discs under his name in addition to the work that he’s done as a session man – and of course as Slash’s replacement on the long awaited Chinese Democracy, which wasn’t as bad as everyone figured. Buckethead’s guitar antics might not have been what folks paid the entrance fee for on that last GnR disc, but his talent is easily perceived after a quick listen.

And while I haven’t really been able to keep up with the non stop release schedule that this masked musician has maintained, the Praxis album Transmutation (Mutatis Mutandis) remains a consistent favorite of mine to this day – and I think it’s about seventeen years old at this point. Considering the shredding that this man’s been into for that amount of time, it would make sense that at some point, he’d need to slow down to explore other ways by which to manipulate his instrument. That, in fact, then brings us to the latest disc from Buckethead - A Real Diamond in the Rough.

Again, I don’t have any idea what the last few years of recording has done to this bucket wearing maniac, but it’s now safe to say that he’s foregone – for now at least – some of the more muscular trappings of his work. Anything from Buckethead in the past has included more than a dash of cheese ball metal to it. And by logical extension, this disc has a pinch of that as well. Actually, it’s all kinda cheese ball – but not metal, just the lame pop rock that was derived from Van Halen ripping it up.

The fact that the instrumental work clocks in at an hour and twenty three minutes doesn’t help – nor does the fact that each Buckethead composition here sounds approximately the same. After spending such a long time being a fan of this player, it’s more than saddening to hear A Real Diamond in the Rougg, but to be fair, I only got through this disc once – there doesn’t seem to be any reason to revisit the work, though. He’ll most likely receive this same sort of criticism in most press outlets, which is unfortunate. And while ‘artists’ need to occasionally change up the palette with which they work, there aren’t gonna be too many fans who are enthused about any of this.