Nada Surf is an American band from New York playing rock-punk-pop music. The three band-members are Daniel Lorca on bass, Matthew Caws playing the guitar and Ira Elliot, the drummer.
backgrpund
Nada Surf was formed in 1994. At that time Nada surf consisted of 4 members. This didn't really work out very well because the singer quit, and soon thereafter drummer left Nada surf too. Matthew Caws and Daniel Lorca were now alone in the band. They desperately needed a drummer. In 1995 Matthew and Daniel convinced Ira Elliott - a friend since 1984 - to join the band. Matthew and Daniel started doing the vocals instead of finding a new singer. The band as we know it today was complete. Daniel and Matthew, long-time friends since grade school, got the idea of starting a band early. In their teens they both played together in the band "The cost of Living".
Years later they played together again in another band. After that Daniel went to Europe, where after some time settled in Spain, where he played the band "Angelo la quais". Ira played in the band "the Fuzztones" for many years. In 1995 they worked on some new material - as well as some old before the split-up - and the result was a demo tape, called TAFKANS. They played at various clubs in New York, where they lived.
the breakthrough
One day they met Ric Ocasek, a famous producer, at a club in NY. They slipped him a demo-tape, and to their surprise, they were contacted by Ric a couple of days later. He was interested in their material, and they started discussing their future. An emplyee at Elektra Records had heard them as well and with his own label, "No.6 Records" Nada Surf released their first album, "Karmic"(1996). The 5 songs on the album didn't sell all that good (?), despite the quality of the songs. The discussions with Ric also went good, and after signing a contract with "Elektra", they produced the "High/Low" album with Ric Ocasek as producer that same year.
the controversy
"High/Low" became a major breakthrough, mostly because of their hit "Popular" reaching high on the charts. After producing the "Popular" video, they reached out all over the world through MTV (among other music TV channels). The high-school at which NAda Surf had recorded their video later on sued them and demanded that they withdrew the video because of a scene in a shower room where two footballers smiled at each other. The principal of the school saw this to be homosexual, and didn't want the school to get a bad reputation.
after the breakthrough
After their breakthrough the obvious thing for the surfers was to start touring, which they did. They toured in both the USA and most of Europe. After that there was a long time of silence from the three guys. Rumours about their new album spread, and at first early '98 was subject to release of their new album. This was however not correct, "The proximity effect" was released in Europe mid September and has yet to come out in North America.
