Moving Heroes gave their first headlining concert at the St. Petersburg Ice Palace

Dieter Bohlen’s heroes once more proved that public interest in European pop is not waning and demonstrated their high level of professionalism, offering as they did a fully live two-hour show.

It’s important to note that the concert flew by quickly, which is likely because it was genuinely interesting and very varied.

The band’s hits were on offer, as well as two new songs and a few worldwide hits that Moving Heroes performed in their own style.

Today we’re discussing all of this with the heroes themselves – Elan and Jenier.

-How long did it take you to prepare for such a large concert? Were there a lot of rehearsals?

-Yes, of course we rehearsed, but that’s always pleasant for musicians. After all, we have a large band on stage – besides the two of us there are five other musicians, which means a total of seven.  We all get along well, if you ignore the fact that our guitarists are always tripping each other up.

-Speaking of guitars… You, Jenier, have a very original white glam-rock model. It would be the dream of any musician to have one.

-Yes, it’s my pride and joy. This ESP Forest guitar came into my possession very recently. It made its debut at this concert, so you could say it’s a genuine artifact of our show.

-What other artifacts were there?

-First would have to be our stage, which was arranged and set up just for our concert. We had our huge logo in the centre, with some splendid steps leading to it, and the lights was set up in such a way as to make the illumination on stage take the form of wings. This was our collaboration with the Euroshow company who brought all this to life.

Well and there is of course a singer’s most important artifact – her microphone! Ours are Sennheiser E-165 with an exclusive rim of Swarovski rhinestones – mine is pink and Jenier’s is light blue. And the Senheiser In-Ear system, which is just irreplaceable in a live performance.

-I really liked your new song, “Alien.” A very contemporary sound. You performed it in sunglasses and it seemed to me, Elan, that you were wearing Lady Gaga’s. Was that her gift, by chance?

-No, it’s from the Young Welder collection, laughs Jenier.

-Those actually are the same sunglasses worn by Lady Gaga and Adam Lambert, for example. You can also call those sunglasses an artifact from the show, there’s a cool story about them. That model of Versace was released in a limited supply of 500, but with stars competing for them the very last pair available for purchase ended up in Japan. But shipping sunglasses from Tokyo to Hamburg was no easy task, as all packages at the time were strictly checked because of the radiation. And it was necessary to pick them up at Customs in person, but we were on tour. They were at the checkpoint for two weeks and those pedantic Germans sent them back to Tokyo on the last day. This happened twice, until our third attempt our flight schedule and the long-sought sunglasses finally coincided.

-Now I understand why you didn’t throw them out into the crowd to your fans, like you did with your hat à la Michael Jackson after performing “You Are Not Alone” acoustically.

-That was also a nice hat, even if it was just from Hamburg. We don’t know who caught that souvenir…

-Speaking of cover songs at your concert… You made a very interesting cover of Eiffel 65’s song “Blue”, adding high falsetto in the chorus. I take it that was probably Dieter Bohlen’s idea?

-Actually no. Although the idea itself to sing that song was his. We all joked about the song in the studio and couldn’t understand how to make such a strange, silly song sound good, so we were very surprised when it started to come together. We liked it right away. It was Jenier’s idea to add the falsetto. And when we sang that to Dieter, it was his turn to be surprised.

-And do you sing the falsetto yourselves?

-Yes, and everyone could hear that at the concert. In the studio that part is sung by two more vocalists, so you get four different shades.

-Elan, where did you get that extravagant alien wig that you put on when you perform “Blue”?

-That’s yet another foreign artifact. Someone gave it to me as a present in the carnival in Amsterdam. It’s a very popular trend in Holland, especially among gays. The song “Blue” can be interpreted in many different ways, and we felt that this would work for the show, and it was fun.

-Alright, we’ve counted six artifacts from your concert already. Could we maybe find out the origin of those mysterious masks you came out onstage in for “Angel’s Dream”?

-That’s the handiwork of Italian artisans. Those masks were brought to us from Sicily. Our favorite colors are black and purple, so we used feathers of those two colors and on the masks themselves are notes – the melody to our song, “Angel’s Dream.” And you know what, such talismans genuinely work in a concert as well…

-The show really was a success. And it’s important to note that pretty much the whole concert was made up of the group’s own songs, which you write, Jenier. Are you overcome with pride?

-Of course I am. But the best thing was that there were people there who knew our songs by heart and sang them along with us!