Cuckoo - the Derry based quartet who have signed to Geffen

It has been a long time coming but Derry based CUCKOO, experts in creating noisy and perfectly formed guitar pop gems, have finally got themselves a proper record deal. Not just any old contract you understand, this lot have signed to Geffen! After quite a few years of local gigs and self-released EPs they're now poised to follow-up one more release on their own Clique label with a debut album for Geffen, due around the beginning of '98. The four piece - Ruari O'Doherty (vocals/ bass), Andrew Ferris (guitar/ vocals), Brian Deery (drums) and Jason Flood (guitar) - have currently been seeing about getting rid of their day jobs and making inroads into the recording studio. I caught up with Ruari and Brian recently and decided first of all to get the low down on the Geffen deal.

Ruari: "Basically it all stems from the 'Non-Sequitur' EP which we released around this time last year. We intended it to be a big push to try and get signed so we put every penny we had into it. We had a very good initial A&R response but they were still giving us the old line about "there's something there but we can't figure it out" etc. In fact one company spent a lot of time coming to see us only to decide that they only liked "60% of the material"! This was going on for quite a few months and Geffen weren't on the scene. What happened next was that our subsequent demo got to be heard by the two guys who run the label Pet Sounds. They were keen for us to do a single and they sent over Phil Vinall (Placebo, Gene, Auteurs etc) to Blast Furnace in Derry to record 'I Don't Want to Get Up'. They put that out although at that stage we were still an unsigned band. The link up with Geffen happened by accident at In The City in Dublin last September. We were so sick of the whole A&R runaround that we purposely decided to just play our set and not to talk to any A&R people. It turned out that all the A&R people we'd been talking to for the past year ignored us, so that was grand! Then myself and Jason were at the bar and got talking to these two guys who we assumed were American tourists. Anyway, they really knew their stuff and we got talking about the Pixies, Sonic Youth and Beck and so on, and then they let it slip that they were from Geffen! That was in September, and when 'I Don't Want To Get Up' was released in November we went over to play in London for the first time and Geffen saw us then. By that stage they were starting to go "OK, maybe we'll do something" and one thing led to another and I think it only took about three weeks to wrap up the deal, so we lost our indie credibility virtually overnight!"

It has been a very long process with a lot of line-up changes, hasn't it?
Brian: "Well the currrent line-up has been together just over a year, but Cuckoo have been going for five years! Una was the original bassist and singer and she left about a year and a half ago, she had just too much going on in terms of university and other commitments. We've been through a lot of change. I mean on our 'Colonized' EP (circa 94, reviewed in Weedbus 8, I think!) Una's vocals were on every song so there's a big change that way.
R: " I was the last to join, I had previously been the singer in the Turtle Assasins which started as a bit of teenage fun and hung around too long! We put out a split release with Cuckoo - the 'Blow' EP - and toured around Ireland with them, and whenever Fearghal ( the original Cuckoo vocalist) left they carried on the tour with Jason singing. Then at the last Turtles gig I thought we would do a cover of the Cuckoo song 'Eyemuffs' and Brian was there and I think it was the first time he realised I could sing, as opposed to just shouting my head off! So when Una left they also needed a bass player so I was roped in for that as well. A lot of people say it's fate but I prefer to call it accident!

Derry can boast to have the best hands on music and video facilties courtesy of the Nerve Centre, set up by ex-Undertone and That Petrol Emotion songwriter Sean O'Neill. The members of Cuckoo, and their manager Tony Doherty are very closely involved with the day to day workings of the centre. So is Derry a good base for Cuckoo at the moment?
B: "We've no intention of moving from here just at the moment. We have a good team of people helping us out in the Nerve Centre so we're very happy. We recorded the last single in Derry, the producer came to us and we would love to do the album here. Geffen have suggested studios and producers but for what they cost we could book four or five months in Blast Furnace! Another thing is that although we're signed to Geffen, they're in no hurry to rush us. We had wanted to do another single ourselves and tour England for the first time in the summer in support of it, and they're happy for us to do that. I suppose it's a bit similar to the Beck set-up where they let him release another album on K just after 'Mellow Gold'. I think it's one of the reasons we got signed, because we'll be doing a lot of the groundwork and early promotion ourselves!

So what's the most important thing for Cuckoo to be doing now?
B: "Well, we're fairly into releasing another EP on our own as I said, much the same sort of package as 'Non Sequitur'. Really the most important thing is that we keep playing. We play every day, we practice. I think if we weren't doing this at this level we would be doing it as a hobby anyway, we all love music and want to play it. I know it sounds corny but that really is the main thing. We love playing live but we've always found it hard to get gigs. (they can't play the Empire in Belfast a couple of days after this interview cos the Skinflints have also been booked to headline!) It's hard in all the cities, particularly in Dublin were we've only just started to get good gigs. Plus in Northern Ireland, if you're outside Belfast there's really not many venues to play."
R: "What we're actually doing instead of the Belfast gig is playing in Monaghan and visiting a school which was set up for kids who want a career in music. We're doing a 'rockschool' type thing, talking about being in a band, writing songs and talking about the whole business side of it - copyright, A&R, releasing your own material etc. They'll probably think we're a bunch of chancers, but I'm looking forward to it!"

What keeps you going?
B: "Myself and Jason (gtr) are the two longest serving members and I suppose the main thing is just a love of music, a love of what we do. We like travelling around in a van and living a hard life!
R: "I think it was very hard around the time Una left, because we had made some progress through the release of the 'Colonized' EP, and had serious interest from Flying Nun, who pulled out when she left. So we just disappeared for about six months, regrouped, wrote loads of new songs and started again."

What did you make of the recent Hot Press Awards where you were nominated for Best New Band? (Bawl took the honour)
B: "I was happy enough to be nominated. I thought it would be between Bawl and Watercress, but I suppose Bawl have the album and a string of singles, and most importantly - a video! It was great to be there, it was a great night (probably a result of the free Heineken!)

Are there any bands around that you particularly like?
B: "I love a it of Mozart actually I've been listening to him a lot - hasn't done a lot of new stuff in a while! I love Fugazi, I saw them the last time in Belfast, they've got great energy. "
R: "I like things like Beck, the Beastie Boys and G Love and Special Sauce."

You can contact Cuckoo at 2 Northland Villas, Derry, Northern Ireland BT48 0EL.

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