BAMBOO was the working title of Dennis Wilson’s proposed second solo LP for Caribou Records. It was supposed to have been released in 1978 to capitalize on the buzz generated by Dennis’s first Caribou LP, PACIFIC OCEAN BLUE, but it remains unfinished and unreleased to this day for a variety of reasons. First, there was tension between Dennis and Caribou owner Jim Guercio, who wanted Dennis to work with a staff producer for his second album. Because of the label’s demands for a proven producer, the sessions for the album we know as BAMBOO were actually unauthorized under the terms of Dennis’s Caribou contract. Secondly, Dennis was in the midst of ongoing personal turmoil. Both his romantic relationship with ex-wife Karen Lamm and his rapport with some of his fellow Beach Boys were unsettled to say the least. After he sustained larynx damage during a physical altercation with Beach Boys manager Stan Love, Dennis’s voice-- already degraded from years of hard living as well as developing polyps-- nearly gave out on him. Finally, in mid-1978 when a final push should have been made to mix and release the record, the Beach Boy-owned Brother Studios was sold to jazz musician Tom Scott, and Dennis was removed from an environment wherein he could record spontaneously at any time of day or night. The sessions were temporarily moved to engineer Tom Murphy’s home studio, but ended rather abruptly when Dennis’ collaborator on the BAMBOO project, long-time Beach Boy touring band member Carli Munoz, bowed out to spend more time with his family. The death knell for the record occurred when Dennis reluctantly surrendered two of his best tracks intended for BAMBOO to the Beach Boys for inclusion on their under whelming 1979 LP, L.A. (LIGHT ALBUM).

However, despite the problems that plagued him during the period from mid-1977 following PACIFIC OCEAN BLUE’s release to his last sessions at Murphy’s home studio in mid-‘78, Dennis continued to make fabulous music. The gifted Carli Munoz contributed roughly half of BAMBOO’s songs and infused the production with a Latin flair that was a potent match for his partner’s unique brand of surfer soul music. Dennis had a history of working with talented collaborators (Steve Kalinich, Greg Jakobson, Daryl Dragon), but his partnership with Carli was unique in that it resulted in a tight and uncharacteristically commercial sound. To a large degree this lean approach was beneficial, as the music complimented but did not detract from some of the most honest, heartfelt singing of Dennis’s career.

Various track line-ups for BAMBOO have been discussed amongst the Dennis cognoscenti, and it’s generally accepted that a released version would have included the following tracks: “Companion”, “All Alone”, “It’s Not Too Late”, “Under the Moonlight”, "Shu-Ru Bop” and "La Plena de Amor" by Munoz, “Wild Situation”, “School Girl”, “Baby Blue”, “New Orleans” and “He’s a Bum” by Wilson. Of these songs, “He’s a Bum” has only been heard outside of Brother Studios’ vaults on two very poor sounding taped copies, while “Shu-Ru Bop” and "La Plena de Amor" were never completed and have not yet surfaced amongst collectors. Other songs possibly targeted for BAMBOO include a few as-yet-unheard PACIFIC OCEAN BLUE outtakes such as “Tug of Love” and “Holy Man and Slow Booze”, as well as “Love Surrounds Me” from the LIGHT ALBUM which was recorded shortly after the bulk of the BAMBOO sessions. Dennis's best friend, Ed Roach, is quoted as saying "Love Surrounds Me" was definately recorded with BAMBOO in mind. Some unofficial BAMBOO collections also include the haunting “Morning Christmas”, an emotive, stark ballad that was Dennis’s sole contribution to the aborted 1977 Beach Boys Warner’s Christmas Album.

Chronologically, the first BAMBOO tracks that Dennis recorded were “School Girl”, a rocking outtake from POB that incorporated the same dense arrangements that were so integral to that album, and the more laid back “Wild Situation” which also hailed from the ’76-’77 sessions for Denny’s first solo LP. Presented here in two incomplete mixes, this uplifting number would have made a fine addition to any Beach Boys LP were it not for the bit of X-rated raunchiness thrown in at the end. Backing tracks for the spine-tingling "Baby Blue" were recorded in 1976 and early '77 as well. Thoughout this period, Dennis never really took a break from recording-- he was constantly in the studio experimenting, leaving Caribou to worry about how to package his output. Dennis then hooked up with Carli and recorded all of Munoz’s numbers at Brother in 1978, as well as an incomplete backing track labeled as “New Orleans” about which very little is known. Denny's brother Carl leant his sensitive vocals to both “Baby Blue” and “It’s Not Too Late”. As Munoz later told Adam Webb: “It was Dennis and Carl who got to hear my original music ideas. Carl always supported me and backed me up very much. In fact he wanted the title song of an album to be one of mine - a song called ‘Companion’”.

The group Dennis assembled for these sessions consisted of Beach Boys touring band members Munoz, Bobby Figueroa, Joel Peskin and Sterling Smith, along with players from Smith’s new wave band The Load-- bassist Dave Hessler and Smith’s guitar playing brother Tommy. After the completion of the Munoz sessions, Dennis recorded the heartbreaking “Love Surrounds Me” in stages betweeen July and November, 1978. The track featured Dennis's now steady girlfriend Christine McVie on backing harmonies. Included on this CD for the first time is an alternate second take of this heartfelt ballad that explores Dennis’s loss of his wife Karen. After recording “Love Surrounds Me”, Dennis regrouped with Carli at Tom Murphy’s to put finishing touches on a couple of songs, including “All Alone” (presented here in an alternate version from the one included on the Beach Boys’ 1998 ENDLESS HARMONY soundtrack).

This CD is not an attempt to construct or re-construct a cohesive or “definitive” line-up for Dennis’s lost LP. Rather, it is a collection of tapes from the Brother vaults that were remixed in 2001 by engineer Alan Boyd. These tapes reveal layers of complexity that were previously missing from the poorer sounding copies of Dennis’s album that have been leaked and circulated amongst collectors. Listeners familiar with other versions of BAMBOO will still find this collection inspiring. After hearing these pristine remixed versions for the first time, I was dumbstruck at how music of such fantastic quality and obvious sensitivity could remain unreleased for twenty-five years. Someday, we may see an officially sanctioned BAMBOO on the shelves of every local record store. Until then, we are at least one step closer to hearing precisely what Dennis envisioned.

--Jason Penick