The crowd was packed with sloshing beers and the stage was all set up and one lone individual (that may have been Ray Charles' long lost sibling) sat behind a Frankenstein keyboard, and with a flourish of his nimble digits produced a series of hollowed out trills that began spiraling & blossoming from the amps in building steppes of further intricacy until a satisfying apotheosis of resonance reached a deep plateau reverberating the columns and walls. Glasses of beer on various tables began slightly vibrating, expanding ripples like right outta Jurassic Park, and that's when I knew we were in for a Tyrannosaurus Rex of a funked-out rock show. After this extended intro on the synthesizer (brought to the packed & chattering crowd by the Maestro Bernie Worrell), I thought to myself "Rick Wakeman, sit yer ass down," and Buckethead strode out on stage with his signature Kentucky Fried Chicken Bucket on his head and long black hair, he moved like a marionette and immediately began stenciling out sporadic, intricate digital bleeps from the strings of his electric guitar with a series of impossibly quick and mechanized riffs, at which point BRAIN took the seat behind his drumset cockpit and released bursts of syncopation on his tomtoms with effortless gestures of his wrists, and the Man of the Hour w/the Psychedelic Power took stage right and kicked off the night with an impossibly dexterous attack on his phat coiled strings and now, the Colonel and his Bucket O' Bernie Brains launched in Full Force from their stacks, peaking their crescendo so the crowd felt it in all the way in the back. I had been anticipating PRAXIMUS, and that's just what we got--or maybe better yet, PRIMAX FUNKADELIC so it's a good most everyone was stoned out of their gourd one way or another because the carnival atmosphere funhouse of FUNK reached such heights of dizzying spunk there were no holds barred as the pits flat out erupted and all sense of complacency was suddenly disrupted. I mean let's get real for a second here, we were a soul-slapped choir, witness to the power fusion melodynamics of Les Claypool, Buckethead, Brain, and the legendary Bernie Worrell, anyone with a quarter-brain shoulda known well the night would rival a party thrown by old Saint Nick in Hell. Les had even stated in the paper that day that the set would be a freakshow directed by Tobe Hooper w/a soundtrack by Danny Elfman on a bad acid trip(!)... Well it was more like a pulp hybrid musical as envisioned by George Lucas and Stanley Kubrick, as Buckethead riffed on Star Wars and Darth Vader themes elicited from his ceaseless noodling along with excerpts from 2001: A Space Odyssey and Willy Wonka, and at one point, Claypool came back out onstage in a monkey mask and played a slapstick parody of the Naked Ape on an upright homemade whammy-stick bass, bending that funk right in our face, slappin' out notes with the bow of a fiddle, sowin' wild oats in a psychedelic riddle with his goggles and safari hat Les taught us all a lesson that we will not forget, that the Colonel's newest outfit is the tightest fitted yet. With Bernie on the synth-ivories worrying them so well laying down some wicked grooves to weave us in a spell while the Brain behind the battery syncopated rather well in fact he fired off percussive frills with such inventive fills the moshing started up again from the drum solo alone, and Claypool started rhythms that became so damn insane the crowd around me right up front became a hurricane of swirling spinning bodies in a spastic tribal dance with plastic beer mugs held on high and spilling on my pants and before I even knew it my brain was in a trance so there was really nothing to it but to just get out and prance amidst the mob, like a pack of jumping beans the FunK was so outrageous it shook the very beams and teleported everyone beyond their wildest dreams in a delirium quite contagious. Let it never be said or led into your head that C2B3 is a novelty cuz they're the real deal instead & if you're thinking of going to this show but change your mind you deserve some serious whoopin' on that lazy ass behind, so best take my advice on this most serious matter: beg buy borrow or steal so you too can be a witness to this crew & their Mad Hatter.
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