Carlos And Should I Say Yes en Español
A long-time friend of NU SHOOZ found a video on YouTube and shared it with us. Somebody took our song ‘Should I Say Yes’ and spliced the Spanish version onto the end. (The Spanish version starts at minute 4:00 in the video above.)
The Spanish version.
Diciendo Si
Diciendo No
Long before their worldwide success with ‘Do That Conga,’ Miami Sound Machine was putting out Spanish versions of their songs in Latin America. That made us aware of that huge audience to the South.
’ S.I.S.Y.’ was the perfect song to do. We looked around for someone to write the translation. Right away, we thought of Carlos.
Carlos Camus was a very interesting gentleman, one of the true characters on the Portland music scene of the 1980s. A trim little man in his late 50’s/early 60’s, he came out every night to DANCE. Always impeccably dressed — elegant but never overstated. Valerie remembers his shoes. They were dancing shoes.
He came to hear our band when we played at KEY LARGO, a music club in Portland, OR. He came to hear all the bands, no matter what the style, punk, funk, or reggae, always sitting at his special table, sipping a flute of champagne, I believe. He was always one of the first people to get on the dance floor. Often he’d ask some young girl from the audience to dance with him. His invitation was always accepted. It wasn’t creepy. It was beautiful. He had those Old-World manners from another time and place. Everybody wanted to dance with Carlos.
We didn’t know his country of origin. There was something European in the mix, so maybe Argentina. He would have been right at home in one of those Tango movies from the 1940s. Later, we found out that he was Chilean, but the Tango image still fits.
Carlos would kick things off, then retire to his table and his champagne and watch as the dance floor filled with Hippie Twirlers, Leather Punks, and the Funky People.
For his day job, Carlos had a little shoe repair shop up on West Burnside. (This was before the world was taken over by disposable shoes.) He re-soled my Frye boots more than once.
Carlos was a little timid when I asked him to translate ‘Should I Say Yes.” He said, ‘I’ll get my daughter Jacqueline to help.’ Together, they cobbled together the version that you hear today.
I only wanted to change one thing. Their version of the chorus went:
Debo decir si
Debo decir no
That’s correct, but too many syllables for the song.
‘Can we say diciendo si, deciendo no? It sings a little better.’
‘Well,’ Carlos said, That’s saying yes, saying no, But I suppose you could do that.”
So that’s how the final version came together.
Back to the YouTube remix…
So, where did somebody find this rare piece of SHOOZ history?
We have a cassette version of it somewhere, in some box, from the studio where it was recorded. But, as far as I know, it was never released, not even as a test pressing.
Go figure.
The last time I saw Carlos, he had closed down his shoe repair shop. It had been a while since I saw him last. He had aged a lot. Most of the clubs he went to were gone. He didn’t remember me or the record we had made.
That whole scene is gone now, the bands, the clubs, and that elegant soul who came to dance and spread joy. There was a brass plaque on his table, stage left at the KEY LARGO club.