Participants of interview:
SR – Specialradio press-attache, Maria Anikeeva
JB – Jesper Binzer (D-A-D)
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SR: OK. What is interesting for you – to write the songs about grey and lonely everyday life, or about some superhero saving the world?
JB: What we do in 1980 is very much try to find our who we are ourselves so we have a lot of lyrics about grey everyday life because that’s what the most of us do, so we need to find out what is the human race made out of. So, we have pretty much lyrics and writing songs close to our own hearts.

SR: And you find it interesting?
JB: Oh, yeah, definitely, because, I mean, everybody is walking around in small own little circles and it sometimes seems like it’s hard to get alone so we tried to explore what’s going on.

SR: Your concert tour haven’t got further that all Scandinavian countries for the last two years . Why?
JB: I mean, it’s what’s we do is we try to play with – I mean – at start we wanted to play first as many PU [?] as possible, that’s what we like to do. But it caused to bring our show on the road, so we only get go where a lot of people want us. So, that’s the main reason. The album has been out in Germany, it’s were some old our things were out, and some far away places, Japan, Australia, but these places it’s very expensive to travel, but we’ve been on several German tours, of cause, including Geneva as well.

SR: Are there any plans to come here to Russia because you have your fans here also?
JB: We would very much like to go to Russia, it’s been our big dream for a long time. We just need to hope and pray the things turn out good for us and we’re trying every way which we can to get to Russia

SR: Yeah, we will pray also. You’re playing classic rock music. In bounds of this style what is so important, what do you value the most?
JB: I must say that it’s the energy. I must say that we go trying to look where the energy is, I mean, that could be music style or it could be the way of – I mean – everywhere where the energy is flowing where you could see things are involving you, interesting & exciting you, that’s where we going so – being – being a rock band for 20 years – it really reflects on our different albums where we were at that time, so we’ve been playing, you know, heavy metal, and we’ve been playing very soft rock we’ve been everywhere, but just to explore the energy.

SR: But imagine if you could be any other artist of any other radical new style, could you play this?
JB: Oh-h, that’s a hard question, because I think that a lot of people that I have a lot of respect for for what they are doing, but I must say that what the DAD has been trying to refine our own way of doing things for many-many years… And I would… I would never… I wouldn’t try to exchange… to exchange with everyone. I think that what we do is very exciting at lea- especially at the moment when our new album is out, we are playing new songs live, and they are getting – it’s getting more and more interesting, so, no, I wouldn’t change and I think DAD in our own way are pretty radical.

SR: Stay the same, because people like you they way you are.
JB: Yes, that’s what we are trying to and trying to start off from where we left so to speak so that things become more and more honest and more and more close to – to ourselves.

SR: What do you think of a modern music scene, and are there musicians who interest you?
JB: That’s a lot of stuff going on. I mean in our scene there’s a band called Mars Volta who is very, very interesting. We saw – it at Roscelt Feld. We saw Black Guepard for the umpteenth time but this time around it was very, very good. There’s new bands and old bands, and it’s very, very interesting and it’s very, very – I mean – very expiring as well. So we listen to a lot of things, and we are four different people, so we listen to at least four different kinds of music.

SR: And what’s in your CD player now?
JB: At the moment I’d say that I’ve been listening to Mars Volta and as I said some Finnish rock. There are some Finnish rock bands that I’m listening to at the moment.

SR: You’ve been together with your band members for such a long time, so haven’t you got tired from each other?
JB: We get tired of each other every day, but on the other hand it’s important, we know that we need each other to fulfill our own personal dreams and we know that the other guys are someone that we respect very much for what they do and their musicality, so we couldn’t at all go at it alone and we couldn’t… and no one can really be missed at the DAD at the moment. So, with a lot of respect involved and a lot of freedom in the sense that everybody is allowed to do or say what they want it’s equal way in the band.

SR: Your new album Scare Yourself is out right now. And what is interesting in human being who is expecting any kind of accident?
JB: I think that it’s a many levels. I think that everyday people are afraid of something may something happen tomorrow or just around the corner. But I also – it seems that sometimes people put themselves in situation where they get their blood flowing or where they get exited so I think that human beings naturally tend to gravity, towards something exiting, and that’s also in the title of Scare Yourself. Everybody needs something like that whether it may be just driving a little too fast on the highway or maybe it’s a bungjee jumping, or may be it’s having an affair with someone else, stuff that people really need to scare themselves steadily.

SR: What is the biggest fear for yours?
JB: Well, apart from losing health and family I think that me and the other guys in DAD sometimes are afraid of losing our minds, so to speak, we had a song 15 years ago called Bad Crazyness, and I think we are at the moment – I mean, being in a rock band is such a crazy thing that sometimes you tend to – Am I little too crazy or what’s happening? Why can’t I – you know – have a normal life like anyone else, why do I have to seek these extraverties and stuff like that? I think losing our mind is one of our – our fears.

SR: Well, a couple of weeks ago Special Radio had a meeting with Danish journalists and they told us that in Denmark young people go for politics and it values a lot. So, in your art is there any sense of political stuff?
JB: I think that for instance the Danish people are leaving politics to the politicians, and they get so seek and tired of politicians and this hold yago-yago-yago thing going on. But on the other hand I think that people are getting more and more political in their own lives, and getting more and more individual, which is sad in a way but also I think people are trying to take care of themselves, and it’s very sad to see but it’s also – a political movement of the individual – and I think that people are political in a new way. But in our music – that was the question – and what we do at the moment is we are trying to be as honest as possible and with ourselves, and trying to put ourselves forward, and someone who doubts about their daily life, and have doubts about their own abilities, and I wouldn’t call that political, but I would call it humble awesome humility towards life in that sense – and I think that’s – for me at least – that’s politics at the moment.

SR: By the way, judging by your music, I think that your sense of humor is hilarious. So, is ironic attitude to life is your style?
JB: I think that it’s a style, but it’s also something we cannot really run from. It’s something that we’re born with, and whenever we are trying to be very serious, there’s always a joke, and whenever we try to make a joke, there’s always some very serious side to it. So, it’s a part of us, and it’s a duality that for instance Americans have a very hard time to understand, but this duality is something that we have in our daily life all the time.

SR: And in music what is the best way to express a joke?
JB: I personally like joke that are pointed at yourself, jokes about yourself are a lot more refreshing than jokes about other people. Putting other people down with sarcasm is not mine but being strong enough just to look at yourself in a different light that can be really funny.

SR: Do you have any favourite jokes to tell us?
JB: Oh, at the moment – no. I’m not a comedian, when I’m – when we are on stage, there’s a lot of fun going on, but – you know – back home I’m just an ordinary guy, I cannot really crag any jokes at the moment, I’m sorry.

SR: Oh, that’s Ok! Where the roots of this fabulous melodic mood in your music?
JB: I would like to call it Scandinavian, I would like to call it Danish, but I don’t really know. I mean, we’ve been listening to all kinds of music over the years, – I really don’t know, I mean the music that really inspired all the four of us, has been the music of the of the Ramones and CLASH, and I think that they’ve got a good sense of melody as well, but what kept us going with melodies for the next twenty years I really don’t know.

SR: And what is the best way to mix your own personality with acting on stage, be someone new but still remain who you are?
JB: That’s a good question, I think that’s something you are trying to find out everyday, and it doesn’t matter how long, you still are finding out some new aspects of it, I think that to be your own favourite band is one of the best rules, that means to do, to have the energy going to do what you would like with few hours watching a concert, then go for what you would like to see, I think, that’s being true to yourself, to put yourself, to produce yourself, so to speak, so yourself act out to your dreams of a rock show.

SR: Ok. Could you describe the perfect fan of yours?
JB: Well I could describe the moment just before you fall to sleep – that’s were the music should be.

SR: When you perform, what condition,what state of mind are you reaching for?
JB: At the moment I think that we are trying to get the music to speak for itself. Before we were very much into – you know, weaving up a lot of energy, I think that we’ve achieved that at a moment, I think that at the moment the music – we are trying to make the songs flow by themselves, so we are taking sometimes one step back so to see the music flow by itself, and it seems like we’re succeeding in a lot of ways, but it changes all the time, because at one moment you feel that you are tired of the old songs, and suddenly you’re [happy] with the old songs, it changes.

SR: Do you get intouch with your fans through a web site or just over the mail?
JB: I think that through our web site there’s a lot of fans talk to each other, we are not really chatting except very few times, – I mean, we’re not going in dialogue with our fans, in that sense, but our home page is of course, a forum where people can read each other and learn everything about DAD, but we are not answering questions, I mean, once a year, or so, we are having a chat session, but that’s it.

SR: Ok. What is the role of improvisation during the process of music recording or during a concert performance?
JB: I like both of them very much. I think that it’s very hard being a band if you don’t like both of them, because it’s too different kind of ways of playing music, but one thing is very internal, something you do, just the four of us are trying to get closer to our music, and the other thing is to get the audience to get to know it. So, its’ too different things, but I like it very much.

SR: Nowadays you are a rock band number one in all the Scandinavian countries. But could you please remember back those days when you just began, was it difficult to get to where you are now?
JB: I mean, we’ve always been lucky in terms of having a lot of recognition and people are getting to know us, and we’ve been very lucky in having an audience very quickly and we never had to do all kinds of things for people to get to notice us, so we’ve been lucky. I’d say it’s a lot harder now for a young band to get out through the media and to get attention to themselves, so in a way I feel that we’ve been lucky in that we had some interesting music to put out, and the people were ready to listen to it from day one.

SR: But if you could have a chance to change something in your music career, would you change anything?
JB: It’s hard to say, at one point we would have very much luck to have – because we started out being named Disneyland After Dark, I would like that band name a lot, but now we had to change to DAD because of the WaltDisney Corporation, I think it’s a little boring to be called DAD when you had – when our name was such and still before – so, at one point, I would like we could keep our name, but, I mean, now things are like they are, and people know us as DAD and we are still successful, so it doesn’t really matter, it’s just a name.

SR: When you first understood you want to be a musician and you want to be in a band?
JB: That was very early on, very early on. I’d say it was at school when I was about twelve yours old, then I was sure I wanna be in a band. Not that I could play and not that I had anyone to be in a band with at the moment, but that was what I wanted, I knew that very early on.

SR: And what is so special in being a band member or being a solo artist?
JB: I never tried to be a solo artist, but being a band is the responsibility of the whole thing is on more shoulders than one, I think that’s very relaxing and it feels a lot nicer. On the other hand, you need to get along with these people and you need to go – to make some compromises which at least at start off could be very hard, but it turns out good in the end.

SR: Forthcoming plans for DAD?
JB: At the moment – tomorrow we are going to London, to shoot some photos for a single cover and we don’t have a single yet thoroughly enough, but it’s really a new thing from an album in August, so we are trying to put that together, and then we are going on a big tour in Scandinavia in the fall, and right after that we’re supposed to go to Germany, and that’s it at what we know of.

SR: Special Radio is working with some young musicians. So, what would you like to wish to those who want to be musicians?
JB: I’d say what you need to do is to try to play your music as much as possible, that means, to get a lot of feedback, and try to have you feelings of what your feelings are about, how the audience perceives you, so always be in dialogue or contact with the listener.

SR: Ok, thank you. We are waiting for you in Russia.

2005, July

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Official site – http://www.dad.dk