The Last Dance

Questions: DaniK from live.radio-mi-amigo.com/Germany in coorperation with George from radio Sound of the Suburbs/Ireland (Thanks so much George!)

Please introduce your band to us...
Jeff: The Last Dance has been around for about 15 years, playing music around the world and releasing records. Just doing our thing and building a name in the scene. It’s all pretty underground, playing in a scene. People on the outside of that scene never really hear about you ever.


How did you get together? Did you know each other before?
Jeff: Rick and I have known each other for a very long time, when we were both teenagers. We started doing music when Rick was playing in a band and I was doing some kind of promotion and management for bands. When his project fell apart, we started doing music together. It wasn’t really meant to be a band, but it turned into that as people started liking it. Peter joined over 10 years ago. We met when he was with The Shroud and moved to Orange County.


Are you only musician or do you have also a "normal" job?
Jeff: I have a sales job in an office. I don’t mind working, but I do sometimes wish that music was more of a career for me. But that’s not really realistic playing in a small scene. I’ve always balanced work with music pretty well, but both suffer. I don’t get to take that big promotion because I leave on tour too often… or can’t go on tour as much because I have to work to pay the bills. It’s hard, but I’m constantly surprised to hear how many musicians I’ve heard of don’t get to do it full time.


Where did you get the name "The Last Dance" from?
Jeff: Ask any musician… coming up with a band name is more difficult than writing your first few songs! It was literally pages and pages of notes with possible names. Rick actually came up with the name.


Who writes the songs and where do you get your inspiration from?
Jeff: Rick and I do most of the writing. It’s usually done at home on our own. I tend to write all the time, and Rick usually only writes when there is an album coming up. Peter does a lot of side-work and projects that keep him busy all the time. Most of my writing style is too mellow for The Last Dance, so I end up with all these extra songs and nowhere to use them. Maybe I should start my own side project! Inspiration comes from many things. Actually writing music is a very technical process. You just know how you tend to write and see what comes out when you do something. It’s not like you have to search for what to do… there’s a lot more experimentation about it and seeing what seems to work.


What is first: lyrics or melody?
Jeff: Music almost always comes first. Then it’s listening to those ideas over and over again until a melody sort of appears. Then the words to fit what the music and melody seem to be about.


How would you describe your sound?
Jeff: It’s rock and roll. It’s melodic. It’s dance. It’s a little too melodic to be the next hot anger-band, and too much rock to be ethereal. It never sounds the same to me, but I don’t think that it’s very radio-friendly. I think it’s more like the music you listen to when you get home from a club, rather than the kind of music you here when you’re there. But I’m my own worst audience, so I really have no idea what I’m talking about!


Are you getting much support from radio in the states?
Jeff: Some college and independent radio, but the industry is very corporate and standardized. Basically, they figure out how to play the same 20 songs on 2,000 radio stations with the most commercials they can fit in. I don’t listen to the radio, because it ruins good music.

Your video "Once Beautiful" is visually very dynamic. Where did you shoot the video?
Jeff: The video was shot over two days. The first set is an open field full of dust and weeds. It looks great in the video, but it was very dusty and hot! The desert scene was shot the next day on a dry lake bed where they film a lot of car commercials. They had trailers and this big crew running around. The kids were melting in the heat!


How important is making a video to you and where do you get your ideas from?
Jeff: Making a video was never important to me. In fact, there’s a video interview we did just the day before we found out about the video shoot where I said that videos were stupid and I never wanted to do one! But it was all the director’s ideas. Sandy had a vision when he heard the song and made all the decisions about it. I think it turned out pretty good.


Have MTV shown an interst in showing it? What are your views on music television in Amerika?
Jeff:Music television is more of a lifestyle television lately. They do more hours of reality TV per day than actually showing music videos. It’s very much like radio. Take a corporate structure where air time is seen in terms of potential revenue. It’s a 24-hour per day commercial, because money is changing hands all the time. They haven’t expressed any interest in the video as far as I know, but there are smaller shows around the world who are playing it.


Which music do you like?
Jeff: I’m fairly diverse, but totally unpredictable. I haven’t been able to find the reasons why I like certain kinds of music, because I don’t like any single style. I like melodic music with a good beat and good production. I don’t like screaming singers or angry music. I don’t know, I think the last thing I listened to was Oingo Boingo’s Farewell live concert, followed by the soundtrack to Cabaret. I’ve had Sting stuck in my head for a few days, and was watching a Cirque du Soleil DVD the other day and have been reliving that a bit.


Do you hear your own music privat at home?
Jeff: My girlfriend listens to the CD from time to time when we drive, and I hear the songs when we’re out sometimes. But I won’t just put on the CD and listen to it.


How important is the internet to you? Can it help create a greater interest in your music?
Jeff: The internet has totally changed the way music is marketed outside the mainstream. The underground, especially, have changed everything. We used to mail out printed flyers to people’s houses when we had a show coming up. We used to mail out demo cassettes for college radio, and burn CDs for DJs. Merchandise was all mail order, and you had to do a newsletter just for people to know what was going on with the band. Now it’s all about Myspace and IPOD and your website to get everything done. It’s strange, but there is a huge growth for independent and underground bands, and I think that’s great.


You´ll play in Germany this year on "WGT" in June. Is it the first time that you play in Germany?
Jeff: We’ve been to Germany 7 or 8 times, toured all over Europe, played WGT in 1999 and other festivals. It will be nice to get back again.


How important is that bands keep in contact with their fans?
Jeff: I think that keeping in touch with people is important. You can literally keep in some kind of contact with hundreds of people from time to time, but you can’t be friends with all of them. People write and say little things… but too many people want to know all these things about you and there’s just no time to keep in touch with all of them. That’s another great thing about the internet, because we can post bulletins and blogs and emails to keep in touch with everyone at once.

What are your plans for the year 2006?
Jeff: We’re not doing so much for touring right now, but have a lot of one-off shows around the world in addition to a steady local show calendar. Probably no new album this year, but we’ll continue to write and stay in touch!

Thanks Jeff!

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