As We Turn the Page... Some Love for Our Band ❤️

Every era has its beautiful moments. There have been many incarnations of the Nu Shooz band since our first gig back in the summer of 1979. We want to celebrate the fun we’ve had over the last five years with our current line-up. Thank you Gary, Fountaine, Margaret Linn, Tracey Harris, Haley Horsfall, Tim Jensen, Paul Mazzio and Johnny Riley for all your hard work and the joy you’ve brought to our lives onstage and off. Doing shows, rehearsing, and especially recording the ‘Bagtown’ album were a total blast.

Here’s a video we made of some of the highlights of the hang we’ve had since 2014.

Now it feels like the page is turning. The two of us will still be playing the hits for as long as you all want to hear them. Our first show of 2019 is just around the corner on March 30 near Phoenix, Arizona. (Check our website calendar for more dates near you.) There are new projects in the works; more about that later.

It’s a new era, and we can’t wait to see what’s in the next chapter. In the meantime…

Be well!

Love,

Valerie and John

'Bagtown' Lives On!

Time flies doesn’t it? Just over a year ago we did a video shoot for the song ‘Bagtown’, the title cut from the album… (You guessed it)…’Bagtown.’ We shot the band in front of a green screen. Director Mike Wellins was behind the camera.

Malcolm Smith went to work building the town. That project took seven months, burned up many hot-glue guns, and filled about 30 square feet of our studio. The result of his labor was fantastic and magical beyond our wildest expectations. Mike came in and shot it from every possible angle.

Then it was time to take it down. We were sad. “Can’t we leave it up for just one more day? Or a week?“

Mike to the rescue again. He happens to be the proprietor of the FreakyButTrue Peculiarium, one of those institutions dedicated to keeping Portland Weird. He offered us a home for our beloved ‘Bagtown’ set, and came up with this beautiful presentation. ‘Bagtown’ is now under attack from Godzilla and Sharknado!

All is right with the world.

The "Making of..." our nu video for "Bagtown"!

Seven months ago we had a video shoot with the band for the song "Bagtown"
Over the winter, our son Malcolm Smith has been working on the miniature Bagtown set - which is ALMOST complete. Next we'll put it in the hands of animator/director Mike Wellins and his talented assistant Jasper Thun who will take our green screen selves and actually put us INSIDE the town. Mike is also the proprietor of Portland's FreakyButTrue Peculiarium (something you must see if you ever make it to the city!)

No date for completion yet. The cool part is, BAGTOWN LIVES! Check out the video above that we made in our studio to get a behind the scenes glimpse into the "Making of..."

'Real Thing' Official Lyric Video Released

The Strands of Time (The Making of the ‘Real Thing Video’)

Is there a reason and a purpose for everything? Maybe – maybe not. And maybe the reason’s just not clear at the time. Ten years ago I started scotch taping pictures into old phone books. The original idea was to create an image file for drawings, otherwise known as an Art Morgue. This turned into a sort of mega collage, while it’s original function was completely engulfed by Google images.

Around the same time I was writing music for documentary filmmaker Larry Johnson for things like The Cowgirl Hall of Fame in Texas and a museum exhibit about Buffalo Bill in Colorado. We also traveled to Vietnam twice together to work on Larry’s film ‘Ghost Money.’

Fast forward to the present. The Nu Shooz band had come back to life, rising from the swamp like the creature from the Black Lagoon. The creature wanted CONTENT, and it wanted it NOW. Valerie got busy making a series of short films about life in Nu Shooz-land; in airports, in rehearsals, in the studio during the making of Bagtown.

Now she wanted to make a “lyric” video for the first single – ‘Real Thing.’ Our dining room table was soon cluttered with scissors, paste, and magazines as she started cutting out letters and pasting them together to form the words from the song. But she needed a background. The phone book collage! It would be the perfect backdrop for this frenzy of fonts. Two days later, after 100’s of photos and video had been taken, she sat for 6 hours and started to edit. 30 seconds in and it became obvious that unless she wanted to cancel life (and upcoming gigs) this project would never be completed in time!

A call to Larry was made. Could he take over the editing chair? Does he have time to get it done in a week? Yes! He’s available and into it!

So there you have it. All these crazy strands came together – the collage book, Larry Johnson, Bagtown,the films, the songs. Sometimes you have to do these things just for fun, and let the strands weave together on their own.  - John

Happy Holidays from the Shooz!

Dear Friends,

There are as many ways to celebrate the Holidays as there are families and individuals to celebrate it. Call it Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or Winter Solstice, it's a time to reflect on the people we hold closest to our hearts and hearths.

The Nu Shooz family has much to be thankful for, most of all YOU, our loyal listeners who have supported our band all these years. To all of you we send our wishes for a safe and lovely holiday season. Our gift to you...an intimate live video performance of 'Christmastime is Here' in our studio with our backup singers Tracey, Margaret, and Haley. You'll laugh - you'll cry - and not necessarily in that order. (Make sure and check out the outtakes at the end. They're the best part ;-) Enjoy!

Warmly,

Valerie & John

A Story About a Dad, Two Boys, a Giant Caterpillar and a NU SHOOZ Orchestra Video

Happy Father's Day! In honor of the occasion - we'd like to tell you a story about a father and son and how our new video came to be...

Once upon a time there was a little boy named Malcolm.

He had one of the best dad’s in the world - a dad who loved him IMMENSELY and would draw, and write stories, and create whole worlds that Malcolm grew up knowing.

One of Malcolm’s favorite stories was about a boy named Momo and his giant pet caterpillar Neener. Malcolm’s dad drew gazillions of pictures of Momo and Neener and told Malcolm stories about their adventures. Eventually he wrote the stories down and illustrated them.

As Malcolm grew he started to draw too. He loved drawing alongside his dad. Pretty soon he was drawing his own versions of Momo and Neener’s adventures…

They drew and drew and drew, and the years went by. By the time Malcolm was 8 there were 5 Momo and Neener books. He knew them all by heart…

Malcolm grew and grew and grew, and as the years went by he became a passionate artist. Momo and Neener were still a part of his life, but they slowly faded into the background the more he created worlds of his own...

One day Malcolm’s parents had an idea. They had made a record with their band the NU SHOOZ Orchestra called Pandora’s Box and on it there was a song called “Right Before My Eyes.” It was a beautiful bossa-nova that Malcolm’s dad had written about how quickly Malcolm was growing up and changing. Malcolm had been learning how to animate his drawings. Could he make a video for the song starring his old pals? It seemed like the perfect time for the boy and his caterpillar to return.

Malcolm said yes and began work in earnest.

But then he got distracted…

And then, all of a sudden he was grown and left home! Malcolm’s Mom and Dad missed him terribly - but especially his dad. He and Malcolm were creative buddies together. They had egged each other on and learned from each other’s art - every day since Malcolm had picked up his first crayon. He was heart broken.

But then Malcolm started working on the video again. This time he was going to finish it and make his dad proud.

And he did.

RIGHT BEFORE MY EYES

Music by John Smith

Video by Malcolm Smith

Dedicated to all those who take the time to BE with the young people that they love. Remember to savor every moment. How quickly it all goes by!

Nu Shooz and director Jim Blashfield talk about “I Can’t Wait” in an interview w/Sloan de Forest

When citing examples of music video directors with signature looks, names like Anton Corbijn or Matt Mahurin jump out, but the unfortunately overlooked genius in this club must be Jim Blashfield. Creating a trademark visual sensibility with just a handful of videos, the Oregon native created dreamlike fantasies with a cut-out xerographic animation style that reveals a gentle magic hiding the ordinary — strangely devilish garage-sale travelogues, if you will. Jim’s artisan videos, which embrace both texture and perspective, include Talking Heads’ “And She Was,” Paul Simon’s “Boy in the Bubble,” Tears for Fears’ “Sowing the Seeds of Love” and Michael Jackson’s wildly self-effacing “Leave Me Alone.” His most visually-trippy grab bag of kitchen sink mischief, though, is his clip for Nu Shooz’s “I Can’t Wait” from their album Poolside. The video he created for his fellow Portlanders, Valerie Day and John Smith, helped propel the duo’s inescapably catchy hit into pop history — and also into the still-curious minds of video music fans everywhere.

I spoke to Jim recently about his career, and he shared his experience on creating this amazing piece of filmmaking:

“I explained that I wanted to improvise it. I didn’t want to plan it at all. I wanted the experience of just making it up from what was around when we got to the studio. The morning of the shoot, I loaded my kitchen table and chair and lamp into my car along with some biology slides and a coffee maker and some kind of cigar box and headed over to the stage. I rummaged around among the props there and found some canvas and some walls from a commercial and some fake cactuses. I went upstairs where the band and the crew were assembled– we had a good and very professional crew, as you can tell from looking at the images– and told them I would be back in 10 minutes with instructions about setting up for the first shot, about which I had no idea whatsoever. I rummaged around in people’s offices and borrowed a few other items which looked promising. I went upstairs and said we were doing a video that took place in the desert, and set people about creating that. It seemed like we needed something in front of the green walls, so the video editor went down the street and came back with a dumpster, and rigged a way to make the lid go up and down with fishing line. I recalled that my friends who were on vacation had a great looking dog house for their dog Buster, and some people went there and stole it. We called up a friend with an obedient dog who would stay when asked, and he brought his pooch over. Somebody else got a bunch of tools out of the trunk of their car.”

“After the shoot the next step was a trip to Seattle to get the footage transferred and do strange things to some of it. Then, for post production, a trip to the thrift store and the corner grocery, returning with every other little gadget and doo-dah you see on the screen. The video editor was Mike Quinn who subsequently did the high-degree-of-difficulty video editing for my videos for Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel and others. During editing I called my friend Roger Kukes, the animator, and asked him if I could use part of his animated film ‘Up’ for the ending of the video where Valerie opens the little box and all the wiggly images come out, revealing all knowledge known to humankind. I recall that the opening scene with the Banana and souvenir totem pole dropping onto a piece of metal with holes in it took about 8 hours to composite, and was completed while I slept on the couch in the editing room. The scene where the image of the dog watching the golf ballish thing swings in and unceremoniously lands on Valerie’s head– and where it remains for longer than might be considered, strictly speaking, necessary– is there because it made me laugh when we tried it in post and was left in because nobody said I couldn’t. We had a take in which the guy with the smoke machine walks through in the background waving it around while Valerie is singing, but I left that out, due to some conservative impulse on my part, which I regret.”

Exclusively for The Golden Age of Music Video, Valerie Day and John Smith collectively answered a few questions about the video by email:

Q: How did you and Jim find each other?
A: Jim Blashfield was a local film maker/artist working in our hometown, Portland Oregon. We knew him first as a cartoonist, His drawings appeared in the local ‘free press.’ By the time the Shooz signed to Atlantic he’d become a world class video director, and his stuff was unique. It seemed like a good fit, and as it turned out, it was. His ‘I Can’t Wait’ video is our favorite of the three we made.

Q: How was working with Jim during the shoot? He said you really went with the flow.
A: The whole shoot was a swirl of madness. We had 48 hours between coming off the road and a vacation in Mexico. Jim improvised the whole thing, grabbing up objects like plastic sharks and samovars and somehow working them into the shoot.

Q: What do you recall as a highlight from the shoot?
A: A few days ago we were talking to a friend who worked on that shoot. She says she remembered Valerie sitting on a chair atop a spinning platform. They shot hours of this spinning thing. Jim kept saying ‘Shoot it one more time.’ None of that footage made the final cut.

Q: After I spoke to Jim, I realized that most of it was done on the fly and there’s no real subtext, other than Valerie plays a scientist examining things and trying get the answer to “tell me what it’s all about”. When people ask you to explain parts of the video, do you find that irksome or amusing?
A: We prefer to let people come up with their own interpretation. Carl Jung’s work with the unconscious suggests that everything in our heads is connected, all our preferences and prejudices, what we like and what we don’t. Somehow the random imagery in the “I Can’t Wait” video ended up saying exactly what we wanted it to say.

Q: Jim said, “If viewers look closely they may notice that happiness seems to be represented as a shark found lurking in a coffee pot, a metaphor which is certainly worth considering, if you ask me.” What do you think about that?
A: In the hands of a lesser director we might have ended up with a melancholy/needy girl waiting by the phone. Not Jim. It wasn’t that we discussed our vision so much as he was just as psychedelic as we were.

Q: What did you think the first time you saw it, and what do you think when you see it now?
A: MTV was a cultural revolution. In some ways it ruined music, in some ways it added a new dimension. At the time it was just thrilling to be a part of it, to know they were watching us in Cleveland…and Brazil. When we see it now, it still holds up as a perfect piece of art, one that represents Nu Shooz exactly how we wanted it to be seen.