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EXCLUSIVE RADIO INTERVIEW WITH ENCUENTRO LATINO
Steven (radio D.J): I’ve gotta tell them (Singaporeans) you were formally know as Menudo, you’ve got your first English language album coming out on June1, in fact it’s your third album…
MDO: It’s June 8…
S: it’s June 8?
MDO: I don’t know… they told us. (mumble mumble, laughs)
S: Ok well, it’s coming out to a record store near you very shortly, how’s that? And we welcome… these guys are uncontrollable, what can I say? (MDO chuckles) And we welcome into our gold 90.5 studio Abel, Alexis, Didier, Pablo and Caleb. Welcome guys, it’s great to have you.
MDO: (Chorus of greetings)
S: I’ve gotta start off by asking you- who does all your choreography?
Alexis: We have a choreographer from Mexico, he’s been our choreographer for many years and is someone whom we’re comfortable with. He’s very talented.
S: Yes, because you guys were great on stage.
Alexis: Thank you, we practise a lot.
S: Yes, you have a great stage presence… don’t fidget with the mike guys, you’ll all have a chance to talk here.
MDO: (Guffaws)
S: I was reading your bios earlier and it all said your zodiac signs, are you into astrology?
Alexis: Er… I’m not really into astrology, I’m Alexis, but there are people who are interested in that, it’s interesting… Sometimes they strike you on the money. When you’re reading your horoscope then it’s like ‘you this, you that’ and it’s like wow… you’re talking to me?
S: Exactly. Well listen… I did catch the show the other night, you guys did a great job on stage. Well, the album that you’re gonna be releasing is A Little Piece of Heaven, it’s in the English language and I should say that we here in 90.5 fm have been playing your Subir Al Cielo album for months now, so we’re very familiar with your work already. But why do an English album?
Abel: I guess it’s always been a dream…
S: Tell us who you are.
Abel: My name is Abel, hi to everybody here in Singapore. I’m from Texas… I’m currently living in Miami and…
S: So tell us…
Abel: English album! English album… I think more than anything it’s always been a dream for us. It’s a big stepping stone and it’s the next level and it’s like we’ve been waiting for this opportunity to show the world our music and I think the English album… let’s just do that you know… it gives us that opportunity to visit countries and to get to know people and to take our music to everywhere because English, you know, everybody speaks English…
S: Well Caleb, before we hear our first track…
Abel: Well not everybody speaks English, but that’s one of the most spoken languages in the world.
S: But that’s the question I was going to ask… you are doing an English language album but do you think something gets lost in the translation, I mean, the feelings get lost in the translations and all that?
Caleb: Well not really because it comes naturally for most of us to speak the language English and Spanish. So we can translate the songs really easily.
Alexis: Actually it’s gonna sound funny but the songs in this album were first done in English and then translated to Spanish…
Abel: Yeah… this English album has been done, I mean we completed most of it almost a year ago.
S: But a couple of tracks like the one we’re gonna hear right now is called Es La Cosa. This is actually done in English first, is that it?
Abel: Well that began in English… that was an English song…
S: And then on your Subir Al Cielo album it was translated in to Spanish… very interesting… Well ok listeners, you just stay where you are to got more of MDO, the next big thing in Latin America, as we listen to this track off from their latest English album, which is again called A Little Piece of Heaven, and this track is called…
Abel and S: Es La Cosa!
S: And I should say that Caleb, for those who know Carlos Vives from Columbia, Caleb looks exactly like Carlos Vives… got the long hair and there’s Didier who’s originally from Cuba…
Caleb: Esa beso de tu bo ca que me sabé a fruta fresca...
MDO: (laughs)
S: Well listen, we don’t have to play any c.ds here, we can let you guys do all the singing. And of course there’s Didier who looks exactly like Ricky Martin (The web mistresses beg to differ…), I wanna ask you guys…
MDO: (Starts to cough out some sound effects and play with the mike)
S: (chuckles) These guys are so unruly! They’ve got so much energy!
MDO: (MORE guffaws)
S: The energy really comes out of the album, it’s a great album and it’s once again, A Little Piece of Heaven…
MDO: Little Piece of Heaven… yeah!
S: It’s their first English language album and it’s gonna be out in record stores here in Asia around the 1st or 8th of June… we’ve been told different dates… somewhere around there. Just look out for it. I wanna ask you guys because you guys are in your 20s and so on, what do you feel when people are calling you a boy band?
Abel: I guess we’ve kinda fallen into that category, we are five guys… sing and dance… but we’ll like to be a little bit deeper than that. I think we’re a group that’s not pre-fabricated. We are not a group that was made yesterday. You know our group has a history since 1977, we have members that have been in the group for 10 years, 6 years and we’re also a little bit more than that. We write a lot of our music, we’re very involved in all of our productions- everything that happens in the group from clothes to the production and who’s gonna produce and things like that are all run by ourselves. I mean if people wanna consider us a boy band, then that’s fine with me, but we don’t consider ourselves.
S: Cos you’re not just a band who just gets up there to perform…
Alexis: Yeah… definitely.
S: You’re pretty involved in this thing… then how would you consider yourselves to some like for example, Son By Four?
MDO: (Murmurs of approval)
Alexis: They’re great, they’re good guys…
Abel: But we’re not really… I think it’ll be unfair to compare us with Sons By Four because we’re basically different from them. Son By Four is a tropical band, they do have some songs, which are pop, but they’re mainly different.
S: And your roots were of course Menudo. You rebranded yourselves in ’97. So before we go to the next track, how are you different from Menudo?
Abel: Well, we’re older. We are 21- 24 years of age. Menudo has always been known for having really young ones being 12-15. And once they got older, basically they got the boot, you know. Well we’re older and like I’ve said, we’re involved in all areas of our music. And I think that’s a big difference because when I got into the group when I was 12, basically I was learning. I was going through the whole learning process… just learning how to be an artiste, learning who I was, and basically now with MDO, we feel prepared… we have the freedom to express ourselves in our music.
S: Sounds good, well another track from their English album. This one is called Baila- enjoy…
S: Guys, I’ve gotta ask you. What kind of music do you listen to?
Abel: Well we listen to everything. Basically if you look into our c.d case, we have… I don’t know… from rap, hip-hop, jazz, rock, salsa… I think everybody has a diverse…
S: You’re all living in Puerto Rico right now…
MDO: We live in Miami… Miami!
S: Miami, excuse me but you, Caleb, are from Puerto Rico…
Caleb: Yeah… that’s right.
S: Which is home to the new Miss Universe, what do you think of her?
Caleb: Oh… she’s excellent. Beautiful lady, excellent dancer. She used to dance for MDO before she was Miss Puerto Rico.
Abel: Yeah… actually Menudo when we were Menudo.
S: So what’s the inside track of her, guys?
Abel: Oh… she’s very talented, she’s very shy back then…
S: Can you arrange for us two to meet? Arrange for her to come to Singapore?
Abel: Erm… maybe we can do that…. (jajaja)
S: Ok… good, we’ve been looking forward to something like that.
MDO: (laughs)
S: Well listen, also you have so many fans here in Singapore because…
Abel: Before you… before you…
Alexis: continue on your…
Abel: Yeah, we want to say thank you. I know that our music has been heard here and it’s because of you. We like the music link between Latin America, Latin music and Asia. So thank you very much for everything and you have our support. Whatever you need from us… whenever…
S: Oh I appreciate that. Well I’ve been playing your Subir Al Cielo album and the response has been fantastic. And so I was getting emails from some of our listeners saying, ‘Is MDO coming? You know we heard from the grapevine that they’re coming…’
One of the MDO: We’re hee-re… (in a singsong voice)
Abel: We’ll be here till Sunday. Monday morning we leave, we’re going to Hong Kong, Phuket, Bangkok…
S: Well first now I wanna play this track, it’s called So Hard To Forget… let’s listen to it right here…
S: It’s (So Hard To Forget) a beautiful ballad. And this week it’s at number 11 on the Hot Latin tracks chart. It’s been on the chart for 30 weeks, it’s gonna be up there for quite some time.
Alexis: Well, it’s been many weeks, consecutive number 1s also. It’s already on its way down but it’s a song that just doesn’t want to go down (laughs). We’re now playing it as our second single and it’s still competing with our first single. But it is going great… it really is great… no complaints…
S: I wanna ask you guys a question because everyone knows Ricky Martin started out from Menudo, any of you has had the idea of leaving? We’ll let the Ricky Martin look-alike answer this.
Didier: Actually, well, I think we have a lot of after MDOs going solo or someone being a producer, but now we’re really focused on the group. We have a lot of goals that we wanna achieve as MDO and that’s why we’re here for. We’re here to work hard and to make this album, A Little Piece Of Heaven, a dream come true and I think we’re going to stay as a group for a while.
S: Do you get along?
MDO: (Chorus) Yes… definitely… like brothers…
S: I should say that Pablo is the chap who’s sitting almost outside the room right now because he’s very quiet. But I should say he’s very mischievous and was looking with some interesting eyes at our…
Pablo: (Scrambles to the mike) Yo hablo mucho, pero no hablao en Ingles… pero hablo mucho.
S: Ok he says he talks a lot but he doesn’t speak English so that’s why he’s being very quiet. But I noticed he was eying some of the ladies at my table the other night at their performance…
Pablo: yep… ar-ha…
S: So I’m sure he’s gonna be very active in his…
Pablo: (Lets out a loud cheeky chuckle- JAJAJA!)
S: Well, I want to ask you also… any artiste right now that you want to perform with? Any artiste in mind?
Alexis: J. Lo. Definitely. It’ll be very cool to dance with her and to do something with her… she’s hot.
S: Anyone else?
Abel: Yeah… that’s basically it. It’s just J. Lo, my god…
S: Listen, we’ve asked her to call in so many times Abel, but she hasn’t called in yet. We’ll have to speak to her manager…
Abel: Next time I talk to her I’ll tell her to come.
S: Have you met her?
Abel: (Gives a mischievous chortle) Yeah… well, actually yes, but er… she hasn’t called me yet.
S: Why not?
Abel: Still waiting. (Laughs)
S: What’s the deal buddy?
Abel: I don’t know!
S: What about the whole Latin scene in Miami? I know that that’s the Latin capital of the world.
Abel: That is the Latin capital of the world. It’s a very diverse place, we have people from everywhere, not only you have Cubans and Puerto Ricans, we have people from everywhere and I think what’s happening in Miami now is something very interesting. We have a mixture of many cultures coming into one big city and that’s what makes the city very unique.
S: OK, final thing, we’ve got to play the final track for the show and this one’s called Tonight, Te amare. But can you guys just sing a quick thing for us right now? Te quise olvidar, for example.
Pablo and MDO: (Delivers beautifully)
S: That’s MDO. Look out for them…
Alexis: Yeah look us up on the Internet. It’s www.mdo.org.
