Buckethead Flashbacks: Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2011
Oct 1st, 2011, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco.
Good evening everybody, today in the first of our flashback series we're going back to 2011 to delve into one of Buckethead's most watched videos on the internet, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass.
So, let's begin. Woo!!
On Saturday October 1st 2011, nearing the end of his four and a half month tour, guitar hero Buckethead headlined the 2nd of the 3 day festival, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. An event which is completely free to attend and that year drew an estimated 750,000 people.
Opening up with always awesome 'Night of the Slunk', Buckethead's set also included the classics 'Jordan' and 'Soothsayer' Praxis favorites 'Meta-Matic- and 'Crash Victim' as well as newer fan favorite at the time 'The Embalmer'.
Buckethead himself recently released several photos and never before seen snippets of the show on his website. Which as you can see from this footage, was taken by his (bokbok) P-Sticks.
Hopefully Buckethead will release all the Gopro footage as it's always cool to see different view points of shows, just like this one of a man in the trees enjoying the glorious sounds of Soothsayer.
At the 10th anniversary of the festival, Buckethead was scheduled to take to the 'towers of gold stage' at 5.30pm, but for unknown reasons he was 45 minutes late.
The only possible explanation is that instead of the 'towers of gold stage' he thought he was playing at the nearby 'Rooster stage' and made a wrong turn. Makes perfect sense.
Several weeks before the event, the festivals producer said that Buckethead's 1 hour and 15 minute set would include some noodling on the Banjo. But because of the lateness, the set was cut short to 45 minutes and the banjo segment was scrapped. Sigh.
And at the 45 minute mark as Buckethead was ripping into 'Soothsayer', P-sticks made his way to the side of the stage, is alerted of the time and the Soothsayer solo is cut short by about 3 minutes.
Sacrilege!
But, to be fair the organizers, the event was free and it would've cost them thousands of dollars if they breached the curfew. Just ask the Glastonbury festival who had to pay three grand one time when Bruce Springsteen played 9 minutes too long. Prick.
Regardless of the shorter set and abrupt ending, most of the reviews of that days event, called Buckethead's set the highlight. From his playing of masterpieces 'Jordan' and 'Soothsayer' to the nunchuckery, toy time and more.
The show earned Buckethead many new fans and to date, and is not only his most watched show on Youtube with over 3 million views, but also the most watched video of any other performer in the 20 year history of the festival. Glorious. Woo!!