Nu Shooz - Poolside

Today (May 5th) marks the thirtieth anniversary of the release of Poolside, the first major label full-length album from Nu Shooz. The 1986 album spent thirty-two weeks on the US Billboard Album chart, peaking at number 27. It also hit number 79 in Australia, number 32 in the UK, number 30 in Germany, number 25 in New Zealand, number 23 in Switzerland, number 18 on the US Billboard R&B chart, and number 16 in Canada.

Nu Shooz - Tha's Right (30th anniversary)

This month marks the thirtieth anniversary of Tha's Right, a rare five song EP from the husband-wife musical team of John Smith and Valerie Day, collectively known as Nu Shooz.

For my full thoughts on this 1985 release, click here.

Nu Shooz - Kung Pao Kitchen

Do you ever have one of those days when you wanted to just party like it was 1992? Well, now here's your chance.

Last week, the Portland based husband-and-wife team of John Smith and Valerie Day, best known to the music world as Nu Shooz, released their sixth studio album Kung Pao Kitchen. The tracks were pulled from a nearly twenty year stay in the vault of previously unreleased material and re-mastered for the new millennium.

Nu Shooz - Tha's Right

Nu Shooz is the husband-wife musical team of John Smith and Valerie Day, who hail from Portland, Oregon. Their first recording, an eight song release, was done in 1982 on a small label called Nebula Circle. In 1986, they had their first major label recording Poolside on Atlantic Records (of which I am a huge fan - but that album is a blog post for another time). In between those two was a five song EP entitled Tha’s Right that was put out on Poolside Records.

I first heard of Nu Shooz in early 1986 (when I was back at college for my junior year) as dance clubs had picked up one their tracks. That was the Dutch remix version of “I Can’t Wait” which had gotten them major label attention in the United States. Recently discovering Tha’s Right, which includes the original US version of the song, was like unearthing a lost treasure after many decades at sea.

Let’s take a look at this release.