Minimal Wave Records

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.