Judith

Roxette song book on the way?

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According to some tweets from Twitter, Swedish Gehrmans Musikförlag should be working on a Roxette song book.

Here are the tweets:

Gehrmans: Music engraving madness for the #Roxette book. Why is it a always a choice between too spacious or tight? 3 or 4 systems/page we wonder…

(this tweet was re-tweeted by Per, that’s why actually some fans came across this information ;))

Sweet_curly : @Gehrmans Does that mean you are going to publish orchestral scores of Roxette songs?

Gehrmans: @Sweet_Curly No, it’s not orchestral scores but a really good song book!

@Gehrmans Thank you for your answer! Any chance, that this songbook will be published outside of Sweden as well? Germany, e.g.? 😉

@Sweet_Curly Yes. I beleive it’s in english for an international market. I’ll have the actual producer tweet you with info. /Henrik

Update: @joroxer The new #Roxette book will include their singles. 30 songs, about a third not published as #sheetmusic before.

Jonas Isacsson on tour with Hansson de Wolfe in March 2010

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As Jonas already revealed in an interview last November, his band Hanssons de Wolfe, where he plays guitar, is going on tour in March this year.

Here are the tour dates:

24 March – Uppsala, Katalin
26 March – Göteborg, Trädgårn
27 March – Stockholm, Rival
28 March – Västerås, Konserthuset

Band members:

Lorne de Wolfe: vocals, keyboard
Jonas Isacsson: guitar
Per Lindvall: drums
Jesper Nordenström: keyboard
Sven Lindvall: bass

You can buy tickets via www.lifeline.se and http://www.ticnet.se

SIRIUS XM’s Nordic Rox to air Roxette reunion performances

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We got this press release today. You can also read about this on Roxette’s official website and The Daily Roxette.

ROXETTE REUNION PERFORMANCES TO AIR ON SIRIUS XM’S NORDIC ROX SHOW

Listeners to hear highlights from “Night of The Proms” tour and an in-depth interview with Roxette’s Per Gessle and Marie Fredriksson

WHAT: Roxette, the Swedish duo consisting of Per Gessle and Marie Fredriksson, returned to the stage for the first time since their 2001 “Room Service” tour and headlined the “Night of the Proms” tour in Europe, the popular show featuring a full symphony orchestra and blending a classical and pop/rock theme. Nordic Rox, SIRIUS XM’s exclusive Scandinavian music show, will play songs recorded along the tour, including the number one hits “Joyride” and “The Look.”

During this special edition of Nordic Rox, SIRIUS XM listeners will also hear an in-depth interview with Per Gessle and Marie Fredriksson, the founding members of Roxette. The duo will share stories about the tour and discuss their upcoming project and new material.

WHERE: The Spectrum, SIRIUS channel 18 and XM channel 45.

WHEN: The special episode of Nordic Rox with Roxette will air on Sunday, January 10 at 8:00 pm ET, and will be rebroadcast on Wednesday, January 13 at 11:00 pm ET.

MORE: Each week, The Spectrum’s Nordic Rox turns the spotlight on the quality and depth of Scandinavian music, expanding upon the success of both established and up-and-coming artists. The specialty program has become the destination of music fans in the U.S. to hear exciting new music emanating from Scandinavia.

For more information, visit www.sirius.com or www.xmradio.com

A Story of The Luckiest (or the most unlucky?) Roxette Fan

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Majdy sent us her story about NOTP. You can also see the pictures taken by Majdy here.

BEING Roxette fan was always a challenge for me. Everytime I always wanted to get something Roxette-related, I had to always try extra harder to get what I wanted. Most of the time it would be so stressful.  But for some reason it was always ended great and by the end of the day it became a good story to tell.

I remember on 1993, I was only 14 years old and at that time still living in a very small town  of Indonesia (now I’m living in US).  At that time, my TV only had one channel, no cable at all.  One of my cousins liked to buy a tabloid which included a TV guide/schedules  for the whole week.  I remember it was Tuesday night, and for fun I pretended that my  TV had all the chanells like in that TV guide,  and I’d marked the shows that I pretended I was going to watch the next day.

Then I was shocked when I read that one of the TV station was going to broadcast a show called “About Roxette”.  I panicked because I was such a huge fan of Roxette, but never in my life I had watched a whole hour show about them. What was I going to do? No one I knew had cable. So, all night I prayed (I really did), that if I couldn’t watch the show, please  tomorrow  when I woke up, that the show will disappear from that tabloid. I couldn’t really sleep of course, and around 5 am I woke up and checked it. It was still there… And now it was only few hours away…

To my surprise, I heard someone knocked on our door and my mom opened it. I  stayed in my room but I could hear that it was my aunt. It was strange for her to visit my mom in that hour. Then I overheard her  saying,” we just installed cable yesterday.” Guess what, I jumped from my bed and went outside right away to make sure that I didn’t misheard. She was telling the truth, she had cable now and meaning I COULD see Roxette!

So, even though the show wouldn’t be on until 3 pm, I already sat in front of the TV at her house since 8 am in the morning. Then hours later, I finally was able to see Marie and Per for the whole hour (well, 30 minutes actually, because there were also commercial breaks) for the first time in my life. No Indonesian subtitles, just English and at that time I only understood maybe 5 percent of what they were talking about, but I didn’t care.

And that’s just the beginning…

Years later, I was still a Roxette fan and my dream was to see them live on stage.  However, things changed when Marie got ill. All of a sudden, my only dream was to see her healthy and happy, even when it meant that I’d never see Roxette live ever again. It didn’t matter as much to me anymore. Then due to work and school, I felt like I wasn’t Roxette number one fan anymore, probably then I was only Roxette number 37 or 38 fan.

Years ago, I wanted to be the first person who owned their latest album, but this time I even waited 3 years before I got Rox Box. But, when Marie joined Per in Amsterdam, things changed again. Suddenly now I was Roxette number 10 fan. I felt like 15 again. I admit I cried when I saw them (through YouTube) on stage again and I started having  a dream of seeing them live again.

Then I heard the news that Roxette would be performing on Night of the Proms. I was trembling when I realized that I might be able to see them. I realized that I had enough money on my bank to see them. I’d been saving money for travelling to a place that I hadn’t decided and now I COULD use that money. Now I had been living in US, as permanent resident but still an Indonesian citizen. I decided to go to see them in the Netherlands. And since this was  my first time travelling outside the US, I decided to call the Indonesian consulate and addressed my question to them. I asked them if I needed a visa to go to Netherland, and they said no. That’s how I made my first mistake ever. I didn’t double check with the Dutch Consulate. I BELIEVED them right away. So, then I bought the roundtrip ticket to Amsterdam, bought one NOTP ticket for Rotterdam show, booked 4 nights room for a hostel,  learnt how the train system works (printing the schedules, etc), even made a trip plan to Roxette’s walk of fame.

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Clarence Öfwerman: “When Christoffer joined us, everything became fun again”

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Kirsten and Judith met Clarence Öfwerman before the show in Munich on Saturday. In the following interview you will find information about the Night of the Proms, Clarence’s musical roots and family and much more..

Kirsten: So we heard the Olympia Halle is not standing anymore since yesterday.

C: Hm. Maybe not haha! It was fantastic.

J: Even better than Frankfurt?

C: Maybe the same, but the crowd was a bit wilder yesterday. Second and third in Frankfurt were excellent too.  The first wasn’t that good. Stuttgart was the best so far, and the 2nd in Munich.

K: We are going to top it today. The balloons are ready to be used.

C: Balloons! We saw some of them yesterday as well, it’s great you are doing this.

J: It’s actually just 1 week left of NOTP, how do you feel about that?

C: Yeah, Dortmund next Sunday is the last one. It’s kind of sad, we’d like to go on forever.

K: Christoffer mentioned last week it’s quite long time away from your families.

C: Yes, that’s true, but at least we had the family come down to us a couple of times in between, so I think it’s ok. All in all it’s great, when you get into it it’s wonderful to be on tour.

J: What are you going to do through Christmas?

C: I will be home with my family and Santa Clause..

K/J: ..and Kalle Anka..

C: Yeah! Do you know that? Haha! Well yeah, it’s typical Swedish. Specially if you have kids.

K: How did you start making music, playing instruments? Your family is quite musical, too?

C: My father did kind of the same things that I do, he played piano, jazz, and got into producing Swedish artists and later from all around the world. He always said to me “don’t become a musician, it’s very difficult to make a living on it”, he thought I should study economy, because he actually wanted to do that but never succeeded. He once produced an album with Toots Thielemans and he came down to Rotterdam and they hung out one night together, which was great!

But I started to play in bands when I was a teenager anyway. I started playing guitar, then I met a guy who was a lot better than me playing guitar, so I switched to piano. I think that was around 73, 74. You weren’t even born then I think!

Then I started to play with different people in Sweden, as a session musician in the studio, later I started to produce some albums. Then I met Per in 86, and from then on it’s been Roxette all the way.

J: How did you meet Per?

C: I met him once a couple of years earlier, when I played with Ulf Lundell on his tour. We were in Halmstad and Ulf gave a birthday party after the show, the Gyllene Tider guys joined us, and then we were introduced. Anders and Göran and I became friends.

The idea to produce Per’s third solo came actually from Kjell Andersson at EMI. He told Per “Why not try Clarence”, because I did some productions before for EMI, like 2 or 3 albums, so I was the new guy around.

I actually didn’t like his previous solo albums, I hadn’t listened to them very much. I liked the early Gyllene Tider, and Marie. Marie was involved in the first song, “Neverending Love”, so we did that one just to try and see what happens. It was actually Pelle who told me to go for it and take this production job, because I wasn’t much into this Per Gessle type of music.

J: And you brought Jonas and Tommy along.

C: Yes, I had known them for a long time, so I always wanted to have them as a band in the album. So I told Per, I wanted Pelle, Jonas and Tommy. Per himself wanted Tommy as well, but he preferred other guys on drums and guitar. So we reached a compromise, and we kept Tommy to record “Neverending love”, which was a success. Then for the album Jonas and Pelle joined, as well as Alar Suurna as engineer.

J: Were you also oin tour with Rock Runt Riket?

C: Yes, in 87, with Ratata and Eva Dahlgren. Each of us, Jonas, Pelle and myself played with two bands each. I played with Roxette and Ratata. Pelle with Roxette and Eva Dahlgren. Jonas with Ratata and Eva Dahlgren. Jonas couldn’t play with three bands, and since Roxette was the newest band for him, he went for the other two bands.

J: What can you tell us about this tour?

C: Each artist played a bit longer than one hour. We also had a support act, Orup, who became successful after that. Then Eva Dahlgren, Ratata and Roxette played. It was about ten minutes break between the acts, so after Ratata I had to go and change my clothes and make me ready for Roxette. It was kind of strange.

J: The pictures from that time are also kind of…

C: Strange? Yeah, that’s true. 80ies. Specially Per and Marie looked strange. Eva looked very different to now.

K: It’s interesting you’ve all been in the same band for such a long time.

C: Yes, it’s very unusual. But it’s very good as well not to have new people coming and going. Christoffer joined in 96, so it’s also a very long time. The band changed a lot when he joined, to the better, of course. He is an amazing guy, he can play anything.

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