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Eternal Tango are a young band from the south of Luxembourg who are currently making very audible noise accross the Duchy. Having only been together, in their current formation for just over a year they head of to the Printemps du Bourges Festival, in France, this April (2007) to represent the Lorraine/Luxembourg region. David Moreira (Singer), David Schmit (Lead Guitar), Tom Gatti (Bass), Joe Koener (Guitar) & Pit Romersa (Drums) took time out of their pressing schedule to chat to UPFRONT.

So as a band what do you think are your biggest strengths?
Joe   One of our biggest strengths is our live show and the party we are trying to create when we are on stage. We are very dynamic I think, we run around, Tom, Dave and myself are singing backings. That gives an impact!

David   We also try to mix-in a lot of stuff… I think our strength is we have powerful songs but there not always aggressive.

Who or what has had the most impact on your life?
Joe   You mean the band that had the most impact? Or a certain record that makes us feel something or what inspires us?

Dave   I think we’ve taken our inspiration from all over the place whether it’s from people, school, work. Like all bands it’s from everywhere

Pit   Me it is System Of A Down after the album Toxic City, I decided then to play guitar. It was my first step into the world of music

Joe   for me then, it has to be Smashing Pumpkins… always!

Dave   Dr Dog.

David   Nirvana.

Tom  for me Queen.

What is about your favourite records is it the song writing, the music?
Joe    Just now as you say it I’m thinking “what is my favourite record, I was like ‘oh my god’ what is my favourite record?” It always depends sometimes it is the lyrics, or the singing, sometimes it is just the sound, sometimes when the songs are not even that innovative it is in the producing there’s a sound that they make in the production that can have so many nice elements in it. It also really depends on your mood.

What has given you the best advice?
Joe   I think it is from Dave’s dad.

All   yeah yeah yeah

David   He gave us a lot of advice.

Dave   I don’t remember everything, he came to our rehearsal rooms at the beginning he showed us how to write a song, how to use different elements in songs, how to produce and to play the songs as it is supposed to be. He is a musician, he’s been playing for like 35 years now and he has played in a lot of bands he has gained a lot of experience.

Joe   Sometimes when he gives you advice he’ll talk to you about life and about experiences in life and then you’ll suddenly recognise that he is actually telling you something about the way you should write your music. It is very inspiring…

If you could trade places with anyone who would it be?
David   I would say something evil… I would change places with George W Bush and end all the wars!

Tom   I would change places with you (David) and wouldn’t let you do that…

Pit    Hmmm I don’t know…

A day in the life of…?
Pit    Gwen Stefani

All   Laughter

Joe   Yeah, I would trade places with a girl find out what a girl’s life is like.

Dave   I don’t fucking know.

Joe    It would be interesting to change places with someone who has big influences on the world, the economy and everything. To change stuff… but, I don’t know who, or what to change. Perhaps someone from within the Luxembourg Economy, everything here is going down hill, it is getting way too expensive. But, then saying that we are not really a political band.

David    We try to avoid getting into all that. Each one of us has different politics and views on religion and stuff we try to keep that out of the band.

Joe    The music is about having a party, about providing a good time.

Pit     We don’t want to give advice, we don’t need to, we just want to make music.

So don’t mix politics with music?
Joe   There are a lot of things going on in everyone’s life, we just want to give people a good time. Sometimes it is so nice to forget about everything around you.

David   It is not that we don’t care about it, we just don’t want to make it part of our music

Tom   Music for us is about entertainment, it is not a lesson.

Joe   It’s what people in the scene say to us, those that are part of the underground or have a more political nature about them, they say to us “you are just a ‘fashion band’ you are just about entertainment and you have no message at all”, but we do have messages its just they are not political. It’s just ‘enjoy your self and your life’

Do you think there are a lot of bands in Luxembourg that just want to be political?
All    Yeah

Joe   Many, many, many, and some of them do it well

Why do you think there are so many?
Pit   Because they all want to say something and they can only say it through their music. No one listens otherwise.

Joe   People are angry!

Pit    So they do their music and they try to get a message across, but it’s not like they are doing music only for that.

Joe   Some bands do it very good, some not so good. I guess it is always easy to project your hate through music and to reach people who are just focusing on that hate. That’s not our thing – we are about dancing and have fun.

David   All that political stuff has been said already 100s of times, its not being heard anymore.

Currently, David is at music school in France, Tom is a social worker. Joe & Pit are studying to be social workers and Dave works in and office. How soon would you quit if things were to work out with the band?
All   As soon as we can. Straightaway!!!

Dave   If there is a real chance we will grab that chance

Joe   We will of course try to stay in this world with both feet on the ground but if there is a real chance…

David  That it is also difficult in Luxembourg, to give up everything just to do music, there is an attitude, “but how are you going to support yourself”.

Joe   People in Luxembourg have this mentality… I call it a ‘banker country’, everybody just wants to get as much money as they can and work for the state, nobody takes a risk!

Pit   They are afraid to loose something or to be poor or are afraid of having a bad life.

Joe   My parents for example they always told me “you can’t just do music you have to gain something… it has to be secure what will you do when you don’t have money, Joe come-on”. I guess most households are like that and people are stressed about doing something different. From an early age its like “go to school, go to work for the state, get a good job”.

Pit   “Buy a house, get a wife, get two cars, have a kid.”

Are you looking to break that mould?
Joe   it is something we often talk about.

David  No Luxembourgish band or football player or whatever really got out and made it in a professional way.

There are some in the Classic Music and Jazz scenes!
Dave   Yeah that is the classic music scene.

Joe  They get a lot more support from the state.

Dave  David Laborier, he is one of the best jazz musicians here and practically gets paid by the state to tour and stuff.

David   There is a status in some countries like Germany for instance that if you do a certain amount of concerts in a year you get a musician status, you get money.

Joe   Paid artists, Thierry Van Werveke is doing that here, if he does so many plays, theatre or movies he gets paid by the State.

Tom   Luxembourg deep down hasn’t really thought that we could be professional.

So on the slack about not being so hardcore not so screamo…
Joe   In the beginning we were getting very angry about it but then we were like ‘fuck it’ it is music… just let everyone do their own thing. It is still an art whether you scream or not, and now we are like whatever, we don’t care anymore… most of those things are born from jealousy. We are just going to go on doing our thing.

David   The people that talked that way about us don’t really know us. We were part of ‘that’ stuff 3 years ago and we listened to that music just as much as we listened to Justin Timberlake. There should be no boundaries in music… it is just music. We are just trying to create our songs with the things we like, maybe part of that is underground or maybe it’s pop music.

Joe   It’s who we are. We jump around we want to make a show, we play our music, we also dance, scream whatever… many people like it, but there are still people who are like “what are they doing, what is this entertainment, it is so fake”. It’s not fake we are having fun. These are the sort of people that will go to the Atelier and pay 20 euros to see an American band and then just stand there not moving [I reminisce about the fine comment made by someone after the Rolling Stones gig here back in 95 “it was like playing to the Japanese clay soldiers] what is the point in paying for this… people have this ‘thing’ in front of their head… “You are a Luxembourgish band you can’t do that”.

David   like stay little, stay small…
So you’re planning to tour a lot during the summer? You got a van?
Dave   We have, but we can’t legalise it

All   Laughter

David   We bought it in Germany and we are trying to get it licensed here in Luxembourg, but we don’t have all the papers. I mean we bought it legally but it was a case of a guy bought it from another guy who brought it from another guy and…

Joe   yeah there are no official papers they aren’t all there.

So extended time on the road what are each others annoying habits?
Joe    We don’t have any annoying habits. We laugh all the time we’ve never had a fight the whole time we were together.

Tom   We’ll put a playstation in the van and we won’t care.

All  Laughter

The new release comes out at the end of the month; what does it sound like?
Joe   We are pleased with it.

Dave   People have been waiting for it for a long time, there is a lot of expectation, they looking forward to something big…

David   We have been working on that record for so long personally we can’t say if it is good or it is bad. I can say I hope people like it… we’ll see…

And so finally Printemps du Bourges?
Joe   We are excited to go there and have our chance and to do our best there.

Pit   …and to get the money

All  Laughter

David   We have been so busy with the record and everything around that that we’ve not really had time to think what it means for the band… It is not the same thing as it was years ago, the level is much lower. If it had happened 10 years ago it would have been a big big big chance but now…

Joe   it’s a good chance! We’ll probably be a bit nervous but we’ll try not to think about what could happen and just do the best we can and take the opportunity to show who we are and have, well, just have fun…

Eternal Tango are releasing the new album ‘Last Round at the Sissi Cafe’ in April (2007).

More info: www.myspace.com/eternaltangoband, http://blog.eternaltango.net

 

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