D-A-D - Win Tickets For True Believer Special Event

October 4, 2008, 15 years ago

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Danish rockers D-A-D have issued the following update:

"D-A-D Web Services arrange a competition where the first 10 winners will get tickets for a very special preview of the movie, True Believer, on Wednesday October 8, 22.00, at Empire Bio in Copenhagen.

Before the preview of the movie Torleif (Hoppe - Director) and Jesper (Binzer - vocals) will be interviewed, and after the show, in the foyer, you will get the opportunity to listen in to three of the songs from the upcoming album!

Besides the event tickets we also have 4x4 tickets for the True Believer shows in Copenhagen, Odense, Århus and Aalborg on October 10. Four tickets for each city.

All you have to do to win one of the all in all 26 tickets is to share your most magic D-A-D-related moment with us. Write up to 350 words about a special situation where D-A-D played a part and then send your irresistible story to the Webtender, before Tuesday October 7, at 20.00 (Danish time). Remember to write in English.

Please write which city (Copenhagen, Odense, Århus, Aalborg) you would prefer to win tickets for.

We will read all stories and pick the winners among the stories we find are the best. Winners will be contacted by email Tuesday evening or Wednesday before noon. Winning stories will be published on the website."

A True Believer press release can be read below:

A movie about and with the rock band D-A-D narrated by the groups fifth member Torleif Hoppe

”It has turned out to be a substantial movie that I'm proud of. Torleif has truly found his own style”, says D-A-D front man Jesper Binzer about the movie.

It really is odd that there has not been produced a movie about D-A-D sooner. The group is one of Denmark's oldest and most popular, and unlike most groups it has a very large and loyal audience who transcends generation and who keeps coming back again and again. Because D-A-D delivers spectacular concerts and knows how to throw a good party – and who would not want to be part of a good party? As a living jukebox with an unsurpassed catalog of durable songs the group never fails its fans and delivers every time. The relationship “band vs. audience” is so in sync, and that is why D-A-D is truly the people's band.

It is not a position that the group came by easily. Quite on the contrary. We see this clearly in Torleif Hoppe's documentary True Believer where we follow the musicians from the early days in the first part of the 1980's with cowpunk in Disneyland After Dark through the much-courted years around 1990 up until today when the group is releasing their tenth album.

True Believer is a sort of road movie with lots of bumps and a few collisions on the way. However, the motto always seems to be “back behind the wheel and moving on” as the group moves victoriously in and out of the many day-to-day battles and overcome the different challenges. As an audience we are along for the ride in the passenger seat and get particularly close to events, whether it is internal victories and conflicts or external successes and defeats.

The movie strikes a fine balance between these poles. From fun to seriousness and back again. We are there when Stig's car has a flat and has to be repaired by a haggling mechanic who – when he realizes Stig is a musician – immediately wants to hire D-A-D to play at his garden party! But we are also in the band room at the fateful festival in Roskilde in 2000 when nine people were trampled to death in front of the Orange Stage during Pearl Jam's show. D-A-D is supposed to play the day after – on the same stage – and they are staggering: “Should we play or not,” is the question between the four musicians again and again. The group chooses to play and gives a very, very beautiful and intense performance where they also show the dead respect by lighting one torch for each dead.

Torleif is everywhere and constantly with his camera on standby. He catches divine scenes from life on the road, and he witnesses intense discussions about what it means to be a member of one of Denmark's most popular bands versus making their private lives work. Jesper Binzer takes that situation in his stride by bringing his son along at ”daddy's job”. After all, the group's name is DAD!

In the words of author Christopher Isherwood from his breakthrough novel Goodbye To Berlin (1939), Torleif is like a “camera with the shutter open. It is completely passive, it sees and preserves, but it does not think.” True Believer is a truthful portrait of a group of musicians who really want their music, and who are still hungry after 25 years.

“It differs from the music movies that I have seen by being more raw and honest, and then it is told in the present tense. Nobody is “telling it backwards”,” says Torleif Hoppe about his documentary about his friends through 25 years; cut from more than 500 hours of different footage on numerous different formats by the young editor Ida Bregninge.

The musicians in D-A-D have already seen True Believer and it is thumbs up from the group. Lead singer Jesper Binzer thinks that ”It has turned out to be a subtantial movie that I'm proud of. Torleif has truly found his own style,” and the lead singer also noted an ”unpleasant iron will” in the group when he watched the movie.

As a small curiosity the movie poster is created in the best ”Olsen Banden”-style by the director himself.

Director Torleif Hoppe comments:

"I have known D-A-D always. I have been around them, travelled with them, and worked with them. I am a part of the team. They are my friends.

True Believer is MY story about D-A-D. There are many ways to tell the story about the group, and everyone has expectations about what a D-A-D movie should contain. I tell the story as I see it, and it is, of course, different than most people's because I have always been close to the band members. They talk to me as a friend and not as a journalist who cross-examines them.

True Believer is a documentary without a conclusion. A portrait dictated by the events that occurred along the way. I began filming D-A-D back in the late 1980's and the idea of a documentary surfaced more than ten years ago, but the work on the movie did not take form until 18 months ago.

Since then I have watched more than 500 hours of footage and selected what to me is the essence of D-A-D. It focuses on the members' attitude: Why is it so important to keep going, to proceed, day in and day out, year after year. The attitude towards being in D-A-D is a part of the secret behind the group's big success.

When I first started it was important for me to do a movie that would not focus on the usual ”band things” about rehearsal rooms, recording, tours, etc., because the story about a band – any band that is – is enormously repetitive. And therefore boring. My criteria for succes was to make a movie that speaks not only to D-A-D fans, but which would have a broader appeal.

True Believer is an epic tale with its mix of new and old. It is not chronological, but it is still fascinating to see the same people over 25 years. It is an emotional journey more than a factual narrative."

In front of the camera:

D-A-D:

Jesper Binzer (guitar, vocals)

Jacob Binzer (guitar)

Stig Pedersen (bass)

Peter Lundholm Jensen (drums until 1999)

Laust Sonne (drums from 1999)

D-A-D was originally named Disneyland After Dark and was formed in Copenhagen in 1983 by Jesper Binzer (vocals, guitar), Stig Pedersen (bass) and Peter Lundholm Jensen (drums). Shortly after, Jesper's brother, Jacob Binzer (guitar), also became a member of the group, which from the start was a hit. The concerts were entertaining and often had more in common with the recording of a western than actual concerts. The stage was filled with cacti, cowskulls and straw on the floor, and the music was galloping along in a frantic pace and was therefore called “cowpunk”.

During a short time the group had released the EP Standing On The Never Never (1985) and the LPs Call Of The Wild (1986) and Draws A Circle (1987). The success grew beyond Denmark's borders, and in 1989 the group got a contract with the U.S. company Warner Brothers. The Disney group, however, realize that there was a rockband with the name Disneyland After Dark, and they were not pleased. Disney threatened to sue the band to hell and that made the four rock boys to change the name to DAD.

The music was simultaneously a turn towards more regular hard rock, and the group got its big breakthrough with Sleeping My Day Away from the album No Fuel Left For The Pilgrims (1989). A series of spectacular concerts was to give DAD status as “the people's band”, Gasolin's true heirs, and after that the group cemented both the success and the position with the albums Riskin' It All (1991), Helpyourselfish (1995) and Simpatico (1997), before Peter Lundholm Jensen left D-A-D in January 1999 to study to become an engineer.

Laust Sonne became the new drummer, before the band recorded Everything Glows (2000), which was received as one of their best albums by both critics and record buyers. After the more laid back Soft Dogs (2002), the group showed its claws again on Scare Yourself (2005), and on November 10, 2008 the band gives birth to the tenth studio album Monster Philosophy.

In addition to the above mentioned albums the group has released the compilations D.A.D Special (1989), Good Clean Family Entertainment You Can Trust (1995) and the double CD The Early Years (2000) as well as the live record Osaka After Dark (1990), which was only released in Japan, the double live CD Psychopatico (1998) and the live CD/DVD Scare Yourself Alive (2006).

Behind the camera:

Torleif Hoppe (director and screenwriter)

As the fifth member of D-A-D Torleif Hoppe (often under the name of Thorleif The Hammer Kid) has always been partly responsible for the group's visual expression. He has drawn and created many of the group's gadgets and album covers, he has directed and shot many of the group's music videos, and he has travelled with the popular musicians in many parts of the world. In addition, he has worked as a photographer and graphic designer on various projects, and he is trained as a screenwriter at The National Film School of Denmark in 1994. As such he has worked on various television series, including Hotellet and Nikolaj og Julie and recently the Emmy-Award-winning Forbrydelsen for DR TV. He is currently working on a new round of episodes of Forbrydelsen, which will hit the screen in the spring of 2009.

Ida Bregninge (editor)

Among other things she has edited Marie Louise Lefèvre's documentary Invitation fra Gud (2006), Suvi Andrea Helminen's På vej til Paradis (2007) and Martin de Thurah's short Vi der blev tilbage (2008), while she in parallel has worked with the extensive D-A-D material.

Watch the trailer below:



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