 |
 |
"We're all professionals, and we all baaaad." - Bernie Worrell, describing Colonel Claypool's Bucket of Bernie Brains
Primus. Parliament. Praxis. Three unique, trail blazing bands, each with its own style and sound. Combine the best elements from the three of those groups, and you get The Big Eyeball in the Sky, the astonishing debut album from Colonel Claypool's Bucket of Bernie Brains.
The story begins in June 2002, at the Bonnaroo Festival in Manchester, Tennessee. Les Claypool, on a break from his platinum band Primus, is scheduled to play with his other group The Frog Brigade in front of tens of thousands of fans. At the same time, the experimental and influential band Praxis were asked to perform at the festival. Unfortunately, when Praxis mastermind Bill Laswell was unavailable, he essentially stranded the group's other members - drummer Bryan "Brain" Mantia, guitarist Buckethead, and keyboard legend Bernie Worrell.
|
|
 |
|
 |
"The guys were bummed, they wanted to play," remembers Claypool. In a moment of inspiration, the singer corralled the stranded trio for a loose jam session, and cleverly dubbed it Colonel Claypool's Bucket of Bernie Brains. ("It just seemed like an interesting way to get everyone's name in the title," he says.) Though the impromptu group had only planned a one-off appearance for Bonnaroo, the show went off incredibly well. This, in spite of having no songs, no set list, and no sound check.
Normally, that would be the end of the story. But word quickly spread about the group, prompting C2B3 to book a few shows around the Bay Area, where Primus and Praxis had come to fame. A few sold-out shows later, including one amazing night in early 2003 at the Fillmore, and the consensus was that this little unorganized, impromptu "group" just had to do an album.
At first, the group tried to do a straight-up live record, in part due to their rigorous recording obligations elsewhere. "We recorded a show, and it was OK," remembers Brain, who was at the time finishing up touring and recording commitments with Tom Waits, electronica wizard BT and Guns N Roses. "But then we were like, 'let's put out a real album.' And then one thing kind of led to another. We just took the tapes we had made from Bonnaroo, listened to them in the studio and started from there."
For their first record, it was decided to keep the recordings loose. "Les had his ideas, Bucket had his, Brain had his, and I had mine," explains Worrell. "We just started playing, and hit 'record.'" Basic tracking for the record took only five days at Claypool's private studio in Northern California. "Les would lay a groove down with Brain, I'd color it, fuse it all together, and then Bucket would come in with his leads," says the keyboardist. "It's all our feels fused together."
|
|
 |
|
 |
