Pas De Deux

Pas De Deux

  • 1982

  • Leuven, Belgium

  • Walter Verdin
    Dett Peyskens
    Hilde van Roy

After the won­der­ful be­lgian pop-year 1982, a sort of belpop-fever was spread­ing ac­ross the co­unt­ry. How else can it be ex­plained that the con­ser­vative Be­lgian Radio & Televison (BRT) made Pas de Deux it’s re­presen­ta­tion for the 1983 edi­tion of the Eurovis­ion Song Con­test.

Pas de Deux was a group, or per­haps bet­t­er a pro­ject of Walt­er Ver­din, an art-student who al­ready had a his­to­ry in music with Specim­en & The Rizikoos and as a solo-artist. For Pas de Deux, he teamed up Hilde van Roy and Dett Peys­kens (Paul Peys­kens also pro­vided some lyrics). More or less for fun, they joined the pre­selec­tions of the Eurosong Con­test, and be­cause of the pre­s­ence of Jan Schoukens in the jury, they were even selec­ted as the Be­lgian re­presen­tatives.

Chan­ces are this was the most un­con­vention­al song ever to be per­for­med on the Eurovision-stage : it’s al­most com­plete­ly in­strument­al and the sung parts have total­ly non­sens­ical lyrics : “Rendez-vous. Maar de maat is vol, en mijn kop is toe.”, which could be trans­lated as “Meet­ing. But my cup is full and my head is closed” or “Rendez-vous. But I’ve had en­ough and my cup is full”. Doesn’t make sense to me in any case.

Need­less to say that this ex­peri­ment was heavi­ly criticized by the “mainstream” audi­ence and has never been re­peated.
Non­et­heless, this song made it to the Be­lgian top 30, got a “Zomerhit-trophy” as the “Best single of 1983” and was pic­ked up by the em­erg­ing radio-station “Studio Brus­sel” (back then a re­gion­al sta­tion, now the most popular nation­al rock-radio. His­tor­ical foot­note : in fact the first ever re­cord to be played on Studio Brus­sel was “Re­ndez Vous”—here is a real-audio clip of the first broad­casted minute, back on April 1, 1983)
The follow-up single “Mani meme” is again made up out of non­sens­ical lyrics, this time most­ly in some­th­ing close­ly re­sembl­ing Italian. The title would mean so much as “But not with me”. Al­though this re­cord was clear­ly bet­t­er, the media-attention sur­round­ing Eurosong had al­ready sig­ned the death-warrant for the group.

Walt­er Ver­din went on from his pop-explorations to be­come a suc­cess­ful and re­puted modern video-artist.
Hilde Van Roy nowadays is ac­tive as a jour­nal­ist for the nation­al televised journ­al (re­memb­er the in­ter­view she made with Prin­ce Laurent when he had a stubble beard).
Dett Peys­kens is still very much ac­tive in the music busi­ness : latest news is that she has be­come a mem­b­er of Red Zebra.

 
 

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