Nu Shooz cover "I Can't Wait"

Two weeks ago I was asked to cover "I Can't Wait" by Portland band Nu Shooz (now known as the "Nu Shooz Orchestra") for PDX Pop Now and the Oregon Historical Society's "Let It Rain!" compilation, which features Oregon-based artists from the present covering songs by Oregon-based bands of the past.

Here's my version:


Here's the original:



Here are some fun facts:

• The life cycle of "I Can't Wait" by Nu Shooz is an interesting one; the version that brought the band international acclaim was not that featured on their March 1985 release, Tha's Right, but a none-too-altered remix by Dutch producer Peter Slaghuis. Portland radio station KKRZ immediately embraced and spun the original version and Portland listeners drove it up the local charts, but it failed to garner much love elsewhere until Slaghuis "Long Vocal Dutch Mix" was released on Injection Records at the end of 1985, and still didn't really land on American audiences until a full year after the original version was released, when the remix was included on their Atlantic release, Poolside, at which point it rose to #3 on the billboard charts.
• In addition to the original "American" version and several existing remixes, Nu Shooz released two more versions of the song in 2006 on an "Unplugged" EP.  For my cover, I took the ideas from each version that were the most appealing to me and put my stamp on them. To accentuate the theme of anticipation, I accelerated the tempo gradually over the span of the entire song. To suggest patience in the face of anticipation, the rhythms of each of the song's main elements are slowly assigned to increasingly longer subdivisions, giving them a decelerating effect, so that the end of the song is almost a shuffle.
• This is the first recording of my newly purchased 1976 suitcase Rhodes
• This is the first mix from my new home studio
• This track features Sky Cooper on guitar
• This track was mastered by Gus Elg at Sky Onion Studio
• This is the first time I've successfully sampled Robocop