|
We meet Moondog Jr
in what is essentially a first-floor living room above a Cambridge pub.
Having spent the last five hours driving from Manchester they look ready
to sleep, but we go ahead with the interview in any case. The band is
in Cambridge as part of a tour which has taken them across Central Europe,
through Britain, and they will return to tour Holland, Germany and Switzerland.
And America?
"No!" says singer Stef emphatically, "and we're not going either."
He explains further: "You see, we all play in different bands and we only
have two months to tour, really. So that's gonna be it."
So is Moondog Jr more of a side project?
"Not really, you've just gotta divide the time between all the bands and,
you know, this band gets two months now and gets a month and another week
later on in 96. Maybe we'll go to the States with the next album."
Of course, Stef also
plays bass guitar in dEUS, and it is tempting to see Moondog Jr as just
his own project; the other band-members, though, also divide their time.
Drummer Aarich Jespers, and Tom Pinters (keyboards and guitar), both play
in the less well-known Belgian band Flowers for Breakfast, while the sax-player
Benjamin plays in Kiss My Jazz with ex-dEUS member Rudy Trouve. It is
easy to see why they feel short of time. How long did the album take to
record?
"A month and a half," replies Stef, "to record and mix the album"
"In his living room," adds bass-player Tomas, pointing at the drummer.
Living room?
"It's a great room, you know," concludes Stef. "Sounds really good!"
Have they played
any festivals yet? After all, recording an album in a living room would
seem to indicate a partiality to small venues.
"Well, playing is playing," says Stef. "The only thing about festivals
is that sometimes you only get to play half an hour and that's really
stupid. And, especially on the English festivals people would rather have
you not playing at all, they just rush you all the time. You get there
and you've always got to hurry, because this promoter, or this guy organising
this festival has been working on it for a year and he wants the whole
thing to be perfect, you know, and this totally chaotic band arrives messing
up his whole festival, and he gets nervous. So he starts getting you nervous,
and that's a bad thing about festivals. But the crowds are really good;
sometimes it's really fun to play."
"In January we're doing a theatre tour in Holland and Belgium, for a sitting
audience," adds Tomas.
Won't that be a bit strange?
"No, it's really good," Stef assures us. "It's much more what we want
to do."
So you prefer playing in front of sitting audiences?
"Well, it's not really the sitting audience. If you play a theatre you've
got great light facilities, and you have a different atmosphere, as opposed
to playing a club. You know, it's much darker in a club, with beer and,
like, loud music. In a theatre you get to decide the whole atmosphere
of your gig yourself."
So it's more a live show how you'd want it be?
"Yeah. Then you can, you know, mess about with the background and . .
it's different. It's more like a play. Because that's what our songs are,
they're stories, with their own characters. They should really be in a
play, or in movies."
By this point, Moondog
Jr are beginning to sound like The Art Band From Hell. Stef, in fact,
admits to having attended art school and throughout the interview he is
working on a collage of wristwatches; this turns out to be artwork destined
for the sleeve of the next single.
Outside tonight's
venue, Moondog Jr are compared to Tom Waits. Do you think that's a fair
description?
Stef nods: "Yeah, I like Tom Waits a lot."
If you had to classify your music, what would it be?
"Yeah, yeah," says Stef, "we would call our music "Frozen Grunge"! No,
I say, but nobody agrees, I say we're a blues band. But the band don't
agree."
Does it annoy you that you have to be branded as a certain type of music?
"No, I don't really give a fuck. Other people I like, really, are loners.
They're just really individuals. They have their own style, their own
looks, image, there's always . . . anything they do has a special . .
. thing to it, you know. I like those kinds of artists in general, not
only musicians."
Do you think there are a lot of bands back in Belgium that would be good
in England, who don't have a major record deal?
"Yeah, there are some good things back in Belgium. There's a band called
Mad Dog Loose, one called Evil Superstars . . ."
"Flowers for Breakfast," shouts Aarich, modestly naming his own band.
"dEUS," adds Stef. "But if a band's really good, you know, someday they'll
take off somewhere, get a deal with an indie label or a major, or they'll
get abroad if it's good music, 'cause people wanna hear it. Unfortunately,
loads of bands who people don't want to hear get on a major label, and
they'll hear them anyway."
Do you get frowned upon back home for having a deal with a major label?
"It's not our problem, what people say about success and all that. We
just play good music and try to do, you know, good things. We work on
songs, and that's what bothers us. You know, we like to sell albums, and
we like to play gigs. We want people to hear our music."
Would you say you write music for other people more than for yourselves?
"No, both," answers Stef. "If we write a song which means something to
us, there's a good chance it might mean something to someone else - we're
not really that different from other people. A song's just a frame you
put around the situation or a person; someone else could learn something
from it or just enjoy it. Maybe it's just entertainment."
You don't have any messages, then. You aren't for any cause?
Tomas lights a cigarette, and says earnestly: "Life is a cause."
"If someone takes a mesage from it, that's OK," adds Stef. "You know,
if a song is a love song, then it's pretty obvious that it's just somebody
who talks about where he is, in love or out of love. You know, some things
happen, and that's what most of the songs are about. It's just songs about
life, really. There's no political message."
"I think anything you say or do is a message," says Tomas to general agreement.
Finally, why do you sing in English? Wasn't that a commercial decision?
"It's a really rhythmic language!" laughs Stef. "It goes well with funky
music! But we might as well sing in . . . you know, we can sing in three
languages, 'cause we speak three languages. It will happen. Later on we'll
make an album in our own language, in Flemish, and maybe we'll make one
in Finnish or something."
I, for one, wouldn't put it past them.
|
transcribed by MICHAEL WILLIAMS 
