NOISE: Jamming with Buckets of Brains

One hot and humid day in June 2002, singer and bassist Les Claypool joined three fellow musicians—Bernie Worrell, Buckethead, and Brian "Brain" Mantia—on stage at the Bonnaroo Festival in Manchester, Tennessee. There to play with a side project, Claypool was a last-minute addition when Praxis bassist and founder Bill Laswell could not go on. For the special occasion, the musicians dubbed themselves Col. Claypool's Bucket of Bernie Brains (C2B3), and for music took an equally cobbled-together approach. "The band just started as us going up onstage and cold improvising," Claypool says. "No set list, no keys, no nothing."

To their delight, the impromptu jam yielded positive results, much of which must be attributed to the high level of musicianship the four share. Both guitarist Buckethead and percussionist Brain are renowned for their work as side players with Primus and the reconstituted Guns N' Roses, among other bands. Brain also appears on the new Tom Waits album, Real Gone, with Claypool who, as the lead singer for Primus, has achieved notoriety for a variety of eclectic projects. In addition to composing the theme song for the television show South Park, Claypool also forms a third of Oysterhead, with Trey Anastasio and Stewart Copeland filling out the rest of the band.

"I don't like missing out on opportunities to do interesting things," the ubiquitous bassist says. "When Adrian Belew calls me about working on a project, I'm going to try and do it. Stewart Copeland or Bernie Worrell? These are incredible musicians."

Keyboardist Worrell rounds out C2B3, and as its most seasoned member, is also the most esteemed. An original member of Parliament/Funkadelic and a participant in the Talking Heads, Worrell's lilting organ notes flutter around the other instruments. "It's inspiring to see how accomplished a player he is," Claypool effuses. "He's truly a master at what he does. I don't think I've ever played with anybody of his caliber. He's got the salt. He's lived it, breathed it for so many years, so many different ways. You can really tell."

Clearly enthused by their mutual chemistry, the group decided to record an album. "It was very casual," Claypool says. "When we went in to make the record, we weren't sure what we would come up with. I thought it would be more like a Herbie Hancock Head Hunters thing. And some of it is to an extent.

"But we ended up writing quite a few more songs than I thought we would and that came from us jamming," he says. "Maybe Buckethead would have a riff or Bernie would have a riff, and we would listen to tapes from the very first show we did at Bonnaroo and pick some of the riffs we liked and try to develop them into songs. And then I would start singing over the top, and next thing you know, we had an arrangement."

When it came time to craft the lyrics, Claypool turned to the current events that were on the minds and tongues of everyone he knows, the impending Iraq War. "It was very difficult not to write about such things," he says. "It was a dominant part of our lives at that point in time and continues to be to a certain extent. But during that period, it was very intense. That's about when Bush gave Saddam 48 hours to get out of town or we were coming in to get him. So that evening we wrote '48 Hours to Go.'"

The political tone infuses almost all of The Big Eyeball in the Sky. The song "Junior," leading with the cheer "Yee Haw!", sears President Bush: "Look at him go / Look at that sonabitch go!", the barrage begins. "There is a boy named Junior / Playing Uncle Sam / Got a master plan / Like Vietnam / Don't give a good goddamn about Saddam / Gonna drink his oil right out the can."

The romping soundscape is propelled by Claypool's bass lines; their rapid "thwap-thwap" matches the ominous mood, mimicking the feel of the actual blitzkrieg America unleashed on parts of Iraq. With the lyrics and Claypool's cartoonish vocals, the song, like much of the album, viciously mocks the intended subject.

Bob Dylan discovered early on that a political message could subvert a song's musicality. Not that this is happening here, but The Big Eyeball's most enjoyable moments do come on the album's two instrumentals. With all pretense abandoned, both "Elephant Ghost" and "Jackalope" allow the individual band members to strut their stuff, their instruments cross-pollinizing into what amounts to an acid-rock, free-jazz fest that should only flower live. For Claypool, this act of collaboration in itself is what matters most. "That's what it's all about," he says. "Making interesting things and working with interesting people."