After building their own MIDI marimbas, drum triggers and audience-interactive MIDI Ball, the band wowed San Francisco and national stages in the 1990's Cyber Arts era.
San Francisco in the 1990's was alive with musicians, engineers, videographers and other free spirits abuzz with the creative potential of mixing art and electronics in just about any form. It was the dawn of the public internet, the height of Silicon Graphics, Industrial Light & Magic, Adobe and other high tech companies who themselves were inventing the first digital tools for future generations of musicians and visual artists.
It was in this stew of creative energy that D'Cuckoo was conceived. A band that dreamed up their own electronic instruments and found local engineers to help build them, because, as founding member Candice Pacheco once told me, "Technology is like a religion to people today, something they respect and revere, so let's use that make music and connect people."
I joined C'Cuckoo in 1990 after they had been established for a few years already. One of the women in the band became pregnant and had to leave so they were a member short. When I arrived at my audition my synthesizer wouldn't work, so I asked to borrow a screw driver so I could fix it, which I did. That, and my ability to play several different instruments, including MIDI marimbas, MIDI drum triggers, bass guitar, keyboards and sing, got me the job.
During the 3 years I was a member of D'Cuckoo we played extensively in the bay area at large venues such as the Great American Music Hall and The Fillmore, as well as for big corporate parties and functions such as those I mentioned above. We also toured nationally playing for festivals such as Bumpershoot in Seattle, Michigans Women Music Festival, and for tradeshows such as SigGraph and NAMM.
“Technology is like a religion to people today, something they respect and revere, so let's use that make music and connect people.”