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marcel rodeka biography & history | | | |  | | Image © Melt Images | |
Drummer, Drum Tutor, Musician
When Marcel Rodeka was 11 years old, he volunteered to hit a big bass drum with a mallet twelve times in a school play. He was spotlighted upstairs in the theatre, and he says he felt huge and important. The boy never looked back.
Rodeka went from the mallet to sitting on his bed with old suitcases and rolled-up Road Safety magazines for drumsticks, playing along to Pete Sinclair's radio Hit Parade on Thursday nights, the only light in the room coming from his Pye radio. Then his parents bought him a set of Beverly drums, sparkling red metal flake in colour. “One roll from the snare to the tom and I was hooked.”
The first international band he saw was The Sweet at the Dunedin Town Hall in the early 1970s."They were in full glam-rock gear and they were awesome and loud. The drummer, Mick Tucker, spun his sticks at the end of a fast roll, the first time I had seen someone do that. It was amazing."
By now, Rodeka was working the local traps with bands like E-Shed, Bullfrog and Argus. Mother Goose formed in 1975 with global dreams - totally at odds with the historical norm of Dunedin bands to that time – and a stage act - outrageous costumes and tight choreography but the songwriting behind the tutus and sailor suits was strong. (Keyboardist Steve Young won the APRA Silver Scroll in 1981 with I Can’t Sing Very Well).
The band moved to Australia in 1976 and released Stuffed on the Mushroom label a year later. The single from that album, Baked Beans, was a massive hit after a memorable rock video shot in a supermarket. Rock videos were still in their infancy then, and nobody forgot Mother Goose and their Baked Beans.
The dream took them to America in 1978 and they were based in Los Angeles for nine months, working there and in New York. There was plenty of interest, but the international deal never came. They whiffed the bigtime one memorable day in New York when sitting in the office of Sid Bernstein, the man who brought The Beatles to Shea Stadium. Sid rang John Lennon right in front of them. Brilliant.
The band made two more albums in Australia - ironically they were always much bigger there than in New Zealand - and toured relentlessly, still in costume, before calling it a day in December 1984 after a five-month tour of Canada.
Rodeka's fast and furious drum solos and exciting stage tricks had always been a highlight of the Goose show, and he was quickly picked up by another Mushroom band, Perfect Strangers. Again showmanship was the key, their singer Andy Clayton Smith, a former top gymnast, hanging from the rafters and back-flipping across the stage. But when Smith died from cancer, the band broke up, and Rodeka returned to Dunedin.
After 15 years sharing stage and studio with artists like Queen, Ritchie Blackmore, Chris Rea, Joan Armatrading, Blood Sweat & Tears, Sir Bob Geldof, Midnight Oil, Jimmy Barnes, Rodeka settled back in Dunedin and co-founded a hugely popular covers band The Rockdaddys.
For the last four years he has been playing with local muso supergroup The Oxo Cubans as well as filling in on all manner of drumming gigs. And of course he now has, with the help of the NZ Rock Shop, The Drum Studio, a fully dedicated drum tuition studio situated in central Dunedin. As well, he tutors drums at Otago University at the Contemporay Rock Music Course. With a full teaching timetable and a full gigging schedule, Rodeka is as busy drumming today as he was back in the days of Mother Goose.
And as a drummer who once dressed up like a pixie and hurled speed and explosions at stadium crowds from behind his three bass drums, he not surprisingly sneaks some showmanship in there as well.
"Showmanship in drumming can never be under-estimated. It's about putting your own stamp on your style and adding your own visual touches, whether you're spinning sticks, crashing cymbals from underneath or blowing up your kick drum with pyrotechnics, it all ads to the excitement. You'll love it, and so will the crowd."
Rodeka had twelve years of film, television and video company work before opening his studio, and he is also writing songs with former Goose bassist Denis Gibbins.
"I'm still learning new skills and disciplines with the many different gigs I am playing, and I think the combination of that with the teaching continues to give my drumming an edge” he says. “I'm definitely enjoying my music and my drumming now more than ever.”
Portrait photo by Paul Hughson
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