A while ago we asked the question, What would you like to see on our website?
The universal answer was (of course,) more stories about the ‘good old days.’ Some stories we’ve told over and over, like writing ‘Should I Say Yes’ in a full-blown [pun intended] tornado.
Is there anything left to say?
Valerie and I sat down and brainstormed, and came up with a pretty good list. We’ll take them in the order that they occurred to us. Here’s story #5.
In April 1981, five years before I Can’t Wait was released, Nu Shooz was on top of the world. That same month, an Oregonian newspaper article announced our arrival into the top tier of Portland bands.
The Shooz had come a long way in two years. The original four-piece group limped along through the winter of ’79. The horns and backup singers, the Shoo-horns and I-lets, were added in 1980. Now we were twelve, and it was starting to work.
Our first gig at the Earth Tavern, a hippie bar in Northwest Portland, we made fifteen bucks at the door. We gave it to the four horn players because they were pros who could read the charts. It was enough to buy a round of beer in 1980.
This was the beginning of the Second Incarnation of Nu Shooz.
We weren’t making any money, but we’d do things like show up at folkie open mike nights, get up on stage with twelve people and burn the place down. Then we got a break. The Last Hurrah was the number-one music venue in town, the place where everyone wanted to play. Dave Musser, our lead singer at the time, talked the owners into coming out to see us. They immediately gave us the coveted Ladies Night slot every Wednesday night for the whole summer.
We went from making eight dollars a night at the Earth and the Coyote Club to lines out the door at the Last Hurrah. It was the spring of ’81.
Nu Shooz was on top of the world.
Fast forward a year. Things were starting to fray. New Wave had come in. Half the band wanted to go in that direction. The other half wanted to stick to mid-tempo funk.
And, even though we were packing ’em in on Ladies’ Night, no one was making any money.
By this time, we’d slimmed down to nine people plus a sound man. Back in those days, some clubs on the road had ‘Band Houses.’ They were uniformly decrepit. Many had fleas waiting to serve YOU…for their evening meal!
On the Oregon Coast, all ten of us crammed into a two-bedroom (one-bathroom) Band House. Everybody got the flu. Then we were offered an eight-week tour of Montana, Idaho, and Washington by a Top-40 agent out of Seattle. We jumped at the money, five nights a week, four hours a night. Sixteen Hundred bucks a week. (Split ten ways!)
We had a grand time there at that club in Missoula. The band was pumping on nine cylinders. The club took us river rafting on our day off. In the afternoon, we ate pepper-jack cheeseburgers with shots of Wild Turkey at the Missoula Club.
They didn’t have a Band House, so they put us up at the Economy West Motel. The sign out front said;
For the REST of your LIFE
Well, at least we all got our own rooms. That was a plus.
Valerie and I shared a room. The Economy West Motel was next to a KFC. (Back then, it was known by its full name, Colonel Sanders Kentucky Fried Chicken.) Our room was right next to the drive-thru order box.
We’d get off the gig around 2 AM and stay up till four, winding down. At ten o’clock sharp, a metallic voice would tear us from our dreams. “Regular or Crispy?”
The Economy West Motel had an empty swimming pool with a dead rat down at the deep end. We had band meetings there. The rat was unmoved.
Then it was on to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.
Don’t remember anything about the gig except that our audience was stolen by a great Top-40 band playing right across the street. For two weeks, we played to… Tumbleweeds.
Next stop, Spokane, Washington.
Spokane was a little down at the heels forty years ago. They’ve spiffed it up a lot since then. We found ourselves booked into a biker bar, four pool tables, and a shiny phalanx of Harleys and Goldwings parked out front.
We played stuff that we always played, dance floor packing tunes from Tower of Power, Earth Wind & Fire, and the Isley Bros. Every song ended to the sound of crickets…and clacking pool balls. Every once in a while, a drunk biker would yell, “Quit playing that (N-word) music!” We were booked there for two weeks, four hours a night, six nights a week. Nothing but hostility from the Harley crowd.
The last song of the last night, I thought, “Alright, (F-word) it!” And I started playing “Cocaine.” Everybody knows that riff. And you can just make up any words.
When you’re out on the floor
And you want some more
Cocaine
When you’re walkin’ your dog
And he drops a log
You get the idea.
The bikers went wild!
It was like someone flipped a switch.
I was like, “(F-word,) you!”
On to Seattle.
In the ‘Emerald City,’ we were booked into a Medieval Inn-type place, you know, where it’s all dark timbers, the waitresses wear dirndls, and people are eating huge pieces of meat off of wooden platters. The stage was a little cozy for a nine-piece band and very hot.
Toward the end of the first night, this skinny kid comes up on the break and asks our Bari player if he can sit in. It’s the end of the night, so why not? We aren’t expecting much. Tom hands over the Bari.
The kid is fantastic!
A funk bebop genius.
So…
The next night he comes back.
He’s wearing a long tweed coat like we all have up here in the Pacific Northwest. But it’s Summer. The kid comes right up to the lip of the stage, opens his coat, and pulls out a double-barreled shotgun. He points it at Tom.
“I wanna sit in.”
No lie!
All nine of us freeze. Jaws on the floor.
The kid cracks up.
Ha-ha…just kidding.”
And we let him sit in.
Can you imagine that happening now?
When we got back to Portland, another band had taken our Ladies’ Night slot at the Last Hurrah and took our audience too. And a few weeks after that, five band members quit, and one was fired, thus ending the Second Incarnation of Nu Shooz.
Thank goodness the story doesn’t end there.