was invited on the basis that he had been part of the band Hip Hop that had reached the finals of a Danish competition to nominate a song to the Eurovision Song Contest. Since Richter already had a number of original songs, eliminating the need to jam, they were able to quickly record a demo tape intending it to be sent to the 'Rock Grand Prix' competition in their hometown Aarhus, they had to hurriedly come up with a name before posting it; Richter wrote as the name of the sender 'Michael Learns to Rock', partly inspired by a line from his school English textbook and partly because they were a pop band taking part in a rock concert. Lentz and Richter have admitted that the band was named after Michael Jackson: "I think Richter was thinking of Michael Jackson, because he was called 'the king of pop' and it was kind of funny, because it was like, what would he sound like if he learned to rock? It was wordplay," Lentz has stated. Richter claimed in an interview : "Yeah, it was like Johnny Hates Jazz and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Sure, I've regretted calling ourselves this many times since, but we were successful so quickly, we had to stick with it and over time I got used to it." On 22 May 1988, the quartet played their first public show in Aarhus in 'Rock Grand Prix' at Aarhus's biggest venue, Ridehuset. As one of the two winning teams, MLTR performed that summer at the Aarhus Outdoor Festival on 20 June, however, only 20 people turned up. The disappointment was offset by a daily newspaper, Information, describing the unknown group as "an immensely positive surprise". On 30 July 1988, the group entered and won the city's famed annual talent shows 'We Have The Stage – Do You Have The Music?' at Aarhus Musikhus. Jens Peter (J.P.) Andersen, a member of the contest jury as well as a promoter of Danmarks Smukkeste Festival (literally, "Denmark’s Most Beautiful Festival") at Skanderborg, was impressed with the band's talent but was somewhat annoyed at their lack of professionalism, so he decided to become the band's manager, at the band's request. Michael Learns to Rock continued playing live throughout Jutland and recording material in order to attract the attention of Danish record labels. One of these efforts included the band contributing four tracks for