Monthly Archive for March, 2011

Want to know how to achieve FAME and FORTUNE in the music business? Yes, YOU can be a pop sensation. Check out our very tongue-in-cheek entry on “The One Minute How To,” as we tell you the secret of “How to Get A Hit Record and Sell a Million Records.” It’s a fun show, hosted by George Smyth. In this educational, 550-episode series, you can learn everything under the sun from how to unclog your drain to how to ride a Bactrian camel, and all in sixty seconds.

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Follow along with the interview here:

GS: Hello everyone, this is George your host. On this show we’ve got Valerie Day and John Smith, and they’re going to explain to us How to Get a Record Deal and Sell an Million Records. Guys, can you first tell us a little something about yourselves?

VJD: Well, we had a band in the heyday of MTV called NU SHOOZ that racked up some Top-40 hits, one of which still plays somewhere on Earth every eleven minutes. Before our ‘overnight success’ though we spent seven years playing clubs, touring in a broken-down school bus, and recording when we could scrape up the money. So this How-To will give people a leg up on the step-by-step process we took to go from local obscurity to international stardom.

GS: OK, if you’re ready, then you’ve got sixty seconds.

VJD: How to Get a Record Deal and Sell an Million Records.

JRS: Start a band, make a poster and, oh yeah…Choose a band name.

Remember…

You’ll be stuck with it for life.

Play four or five nights a week

Four hours a night

For seven years

Oh, and don’t forget to record.

You never know

Which track

Is going to be MAGIC.

We sure didn’t know.

Get your recording reviewed in the local newspaper.

Make sure the writer says something about how you suck as a live band.

But that it’s too bad that Top-40 stations in town won’t play local music.

‘Cause the recording’s actually pretty good.

Have a DJ from the Number One pop station in your city read the review…

And put a call out over the air to bring the tape on down. They’ll pick a song and play it on the radio.

Then the next year becoming a Regional Hit.

So you can get turned down by all the major labels.

Put your single out on a 12” record for dance clubs

Have a remix artist

In Holland

Find your record in a record store bin

In Holland

Have him remix it.

So he can send HIS remix back to the states

Where it can wind up in all the New York City dance clubs

To be discovered by a nice Italian boy who happens to work at the Dance Department at Atlantic Records

Where his boss will hear it and sign you to a singles deal

That turns into an album deal

That produces more Top-40 Hits

That get you nominated for a Best New Artist Grammy

And help you sell over a million records worldwide.

GS: (Laughs) I’m hearing this and what takes me back to when I was in bands was the four-hour gigs, and you happened to mention that and I guess that’s something that’s rather common.

JRS: Oh yeah.

VJD: Back in the day. Now people have opening acts in clubs and stuff, but we played the whole time.

GS: Yeah, yeah. I can remember it would be like either an eight to twelve gig, or like a ten to two gig, and they’d give you one, maybe two breaks, and…not so easy.

VJD: No no, It’s a good way to learn though.

GS: Absolutely.

VJD: Yeah.

GS: OK, Is there anything else that you’d like to talk about?

VJD: Well, first of all there’s really no step-by-step guide as you know that can help you to get a record deal or sell a million records, but the point of the whole story is that if you really really really want to do something badly enough, you’ll just have to keep going no matter what, because you have to do it for you. And since the 80’s we’ve been doing all kinds of music, everything from Jazz to Classical, Film Scores to Funk, and we got excited about combining our favorite styles to create a new sound. So, we put together a new band called The NU SHOOZ Orchestra and we just released our first CD. It’s called ‘Pandora’s Box’ and you can find it on our website, nushoozmusic.com. We’ve got free tracks there, full streams for listening, and links to places you can buy actual physical copies of the CD if you want.

GS: And Nu Shooz is spelled N-U-S-H-O-O-Z.

JRS: That’s right.

GS: OK. I’ll have a link to that on the One Minute How-To dot com show notes.

VJD: Thanks George.

GS: Valerie and John, thanks a lot. I appreciate it.

JRS: Thanks for having us. It’s been fun.

VJD: It’s been really fun.

STRAIGHT NO CHASER: A Jazz Show Reviews “Pandora’s Box”

Nu Shooz were a footnote in Eighties dance-pop music, hitting the charts with “I Can’t Wait” and “Point of No Return”, and garnering a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist in 1987 (they lost to Bruce Hornsby & the Range). More than twenty years later, the husband and wife team of John Smith and Valerie Day have remade themselves as a small scale jazz orchestra, crossing genres of light classical, jazz and pop. And it works.

In the tradition of the best “Lounge” or “Chill” acts like Pink Martini and De-Phazz, the Nu Shooz Orchestra plays music that can serve as more than pleasant background music for cocktails or a late night rendezvous. The ten-piece band creates soothing sonic tapestries highlighed by the vibes of Mike Horsfall and the multiple keyboard instruments plaid by Smith.

But there of flashes of something more. Occassionally, as in the floating “Welcome to My Daydream” or the title track, they move beyond their sound to genuinely interesting vocal jazz, primarily due to Ms. Day’s soft, seductive soprano voice that recalls Astrid Gilberto in its otherworldly effects. Her soaring cover of “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most” is truly memorable. The orchestra shows they can swing, too, on tunes like “Skeets Beni”.

Remade and remodeled versions of their Eighties hits are included, and eclipse the orginals by eliminating the dated electropop sound. “I Can’t Wait” becomes a torchy love song, hihglighted by Ms. Days’ give and take with horn player Paul Mazzio. “The Return of Point of No Return” is sparked by a Horsfall vibes solo and a Manhattan Transfer-beautiful vocal part.

Since it first appeared in 1986 during the heyday of MTV, people having been asking us about the video for “I Can’t Wait”. What is the meaning behind it all? Why is Valerie pulling a shark out of a coffee pot? Is the dog wearing sunglasses a part of the band?

John and I have always loved the video for I Can’t Wait. Working on it with Jim Blashfield was one of the highlights of our pop music career. Jim lives in Portland with his wife Mellisa Marsland (who also produced the video), and his daughter Hallie. We have gotten to be good friends with Jim and his family over the years. We even got to work with Jim recently on a multi media performance called Brain Chemistry For Lovers. Jim directed, edited the script, and created video for it. Over the years we’ve had a few discussions about the music business and assorted other music related topics, but because the video for ICW had always “made sense” on a non-literal level to us, John and I had never thought to ask Jim “What was that all about?”

Enter Sloan de Forest, a woman who calls herself “the Pauline Kael of classic MTV”. Sloan has a blog called “Images of Heaven: Remembering The Lost Art of Music Video”. She had decided it was time to uncover the story behind the “making of” ICW. She emailed Jim. He responded and copied us on the email.

Reading Jim’s account of how the video came together made us appreciate him even more than we already do. And what a blast to have his version of the making of! He’s a master at using images to explore that theme park of the mind – the unconscious – and give us all a great time while doing it.

Thought I’d share it with you.

Here’s a link to Sloan’s post:

http://imagesofheaven.blogspot.com/2010/09/i-cant-wait-by-nu-shooz-1986.html

Enjoy!

In 1992 I was done with Nu Shooz.

Five albums and fourteen years on the road felt like enough. But a funny thing happened on the way to the rest of my life.

Nu Shooz came up every day.
On the street, in the grocery store, on the radio, at the dentist! People would say, “You played my high school prom back in 1982 and you were awesome!”

Flash forward twenty-five years and interest in 80’s Music is more intense than ever.
So we decided to look around in our tape vaults.

During our time on VOLDEMORT Records, (He who shall not be named,) we wrote lots of songs. Some of them are lost forever, and maybe that’s OK.

I loaded up eleven reels of two-inch tape in the back of my car and took it over to ‘Super Digital.’ The tapes were so old they had to be baked at 130 degrees for twenty-four hours before they could be played.

Two weeks later, they gave me a terabyte drive with…all these weird songs on it, a wild scribble of sound…crazy…and MIGHTY!
It was us in the past; bashing it out as hard as we were able.

Some of the music I thought was hopelessly naïve.

But here’s the thing…

You have to Love yourself in the Past.

The person you used to be

It’s so easy to blow off that guy with some disclaimer like,

“I was just a little pink embryo.”
But you have to Love your former self

Because, hey-

That’s YOU, man.

That’s me.

And I was workin’ hard.

That deserves respect from ‘me in the present.’
In that spirit I listened to the tapes.

They were recorded between 1988 and 1992. Some are demos from our basement. Some are full-on production numbers with our favorite producer, Jeff Lorber at the desk.

None of it was mixed, so it came up sounding like a hurricane.

In the midst of all that chaos, I could hear us, (our former selves,) striving, sweating, trying to make the cleverest noises we could.

I started pulling out elements I liked, and muting stuff I didn’t like…scraped them into little sandcastles.

I did a song a day.

Time traveling

Listening to who we used to be

Loving it.
Bye for now.
JRS
Nu Shooz Band

P.S…You’ll get a chance to hear the mixes as we finish them.

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