Juaquin Stick

[Doug Millison]

Don't most of these new instruments just wrap up a set of synthesizer
triggers in some wacky shape? So that even if you're plucking strings or
whacking something or blowing into something, you're just triggering a
synthesizer that's going to play back notes of a certain tone and timbre or
perhaps pre-programmed sequences? Some friends have a band here in the SF
area called d'Cuckoo, they got started playing marimbas, then many years
ago caught the techno fever and wired their marimbas to serve as
synthesizer triggers -- they have (had? it's been a while since I saw them,
although I hear from my friend now and again) a fun act, a great-looking
all-girl band, up there banging drumsticks against these marimbas and all
this amazing sound comes out. d'Cuckoo also originated the "MIDI ball" -- a
big beach ball wired with wireless devices so that as the crowd pushed it
around, it would trigger sounds and sequences from the synthesizers on
stage. This was around '92; perhaps they weren't the absolute first to do
this, but certainly they were among the first (the MIDI interface and
sequencing software for the Macintosh computers they were using wasn't
invented until the mid-80s by another old friend, David Oppenheim, who
founded the company Opcode).

What's this about TRP playing keyboards on "Home of the Brave"?

Thanks Chris for your take on the Moby Dick performance. I wouldn't want
anybody's performance, lame or otherwise, to come between me and one of my
all-time short-list favorite novels.

But I still think it would be cool for TRP to do something original, a
story and lyrics for some sort of opera or performance or something. If he
doesn't have the musical chops to do it all himself, isn't there somebody
he could hook up with to do it? I saw/heard some killer new music the other
night in the latest concert of the Composers, Inc. series in SF. There are
brilliant people out there writing music.

d  o  u  g    m  i  l  l  i  s  o  n
http://www.dougmillison.com
http://www.online-journalist.com