BAMBOO BAMBOO

The cast and crew of BAMBOO BAMBOO!

Bamboo Bamboo was always going to be rock’n’roll... screeching guitars, throbbing bass, and a wild animal on the drums.

I spent last summer trying to tame a bamboo grove the size of a football field. It was like trying to stop an incoming tide. Bamboo grows rampantly. Over night, huge stalks of bamboo shot up like giant asparaguses. If I looked away for a moment it threatened to annex the neighbourhood! In early summer I dutifully stacked piles of fallen dried bamboo so I could better spot the fresh green new shoots. They sprang up like mushrooms. Where there had been a bare piece of ground yesterday, today there were numerous foot high shoots reaching for the sky. My mission was kick them over with my boot and take them to the grateful Thai Buddhists at the local temple.

As I stacked and kicked I came up with the song Bamboo Bamboo and did a quick demo in my home studio. I used samples for the guitar and bass, but knew the song needed to have a real animal on the drums for dynamics and a live feel.

Chris O’Connor is on speed dial... he is my go-to drummer. In fact it seems like he is the drummer of choice for the whole of New Zealand, playing for local icons The Phoenix Foundation as well as doing dance shows and improvised jazz in dimly lit basements.

So I hired a tiny studio in Kumeu, where Chris O’Connor thrashed the living daylights out of his drum kit in a single take. He also recorded the drum track for fleaBITE’s quirky song Chihuahua in the same session.
Then I asked Shannon Williams to come up with a character voice for Bamboo Bamboo to add an extra fun element. Shannon is an amazing vocal artist, and has performed cameo roles on every fleaBITE album. You may know him as ‘Granny’ from Don’t Sit Under The Poo Tree (CIRCUS OF FLEAS album), or Fatty Ratty from the crazy Fatty Ratty Party (BITE ME album). He immediately came up with a deep manly vocal in the style of Barry White, and did some vigorous maraca shaking.

For the video, award-winning director Grant Lahood and I discussed various scenarios and came up with the idea of children who hear the sound of throbbing drums, and are lured Pied Piper-like out of their everyday existence. They each travel through the bamboo forest to find a real live band of kids playing out in the open air.

Grant Lahood

Due to Grant’s genius and the great attitude of the children involved we pulled it all together to make a fab clip, filmed...you guessed it...in the bamboo grove the size of a football field. We were lucky with the winter weather, and the break in COVID cases. Two weeks after the film was in the can, Auckland was back in lockdown again.

Thanks to all the kids involved...especially Fern O’Connor (daughter of drummer Chris), who dutifully practised drumming for a month and shone like a star as the centrepiece for the clip.