However his early days in music have been shrouded in some mystery. Where did he hone his musical skills? Is there some Svengali lurking in the background that discovered the brave young man and guided him through his transition from coop to stage. Well the answers are now available on two DVDs of previously unreleased home movies made by and about Buckethead.

Originally shot on Super 8 film but now digitally remastered, Young Buckethead 1& 2 provide valuable information that gives us insight into the creative process that has allowed Buckethead to develop into what he has become today.

Jas Obrecht was an editor for Guitar Player magazine in 1988 when a sixteen-year-old Buckethead dropped off a demo tape for him. To say he was blown away was putting it mildly and he pushed Buckethead to continue to work on his guitar playing. In 1990 Buckethead asked Jas if he would film his band the Deli Creeps during a couple of their forth coming gigs. It's those films that provided the footage of the Deli Creeps in concert on Young Buckethead 1 & 2. Although the sound or video quality aren't the greatest because of the original medium, they are good enough to give a really good impression of what the Deli Creeps were all about.

The first thing you realize watching them is that they were as much performance art as they were a rock and roll band. The action started even before they took to the stage with Buckethead, wearing an airplane's emergency oxygen mask, being led through the audience on the end of a string by the lead singer. Once he was safely on stage Buckethead was released and set to doing what he does best; playing guitar. It was everything you'd expect from Buckethead today - effortless playing with fingers so impossibly large they look like they are creatures that exist in their own right.

The music itself is loud and discordant, but at the same time there is a purpose to the madness of the Deli Creeps. The manner of their appearance - dressed in clothes that could be worn by deranged clerks at a delicatessen where you wouldn't really trust the provenance of any of the meat; it might taste like chicken but who knows how many legs it may have had to begin with? It's not a political agenda, as in anti meat etc, rather it felt like wandering into some deranged version of our own world or maybe a deli run by the boys from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which I guess amounts to the same thing.