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First art exhibition by Roxette fan

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Roxette fan Manuel Terrón Browa held his first art exhibition at Salon Capelli in his hometown Osnabrück, Germany. A local newspaper wrote an article about the artist and hairdresser in which also Marie Fredriksson is mentioned. This is the English translation of the article:

Manuel Terrón Browa is not only an artist when it comes to hair. This talented 30 year old with Spanish roots is also passionate about painting. Salon Capelli in Osnabrück, where Manuel works full time, forms the perfect backdrop for a stunning collection of his work. Manuel says he has enjoyed painting from an early age, but the last two years brought a new wave of creativity – the result of which is currently exhibited at Salon Capelli. His art mainly features face studies although he never contemplates the outcome of a painting – he merely acts on inspiration.

The style however, is always abstract with pure, clean lines and sparse use of colour. “Abstract art”, says Manuel “lends itself perfectly for individual interpretation, for reading between the lines …”
Being a devoted admirer of Marie Fredriksson, the Swedish star of Roxette, Manuel admits that he is hugely inspired by her life and work. Marie was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 2002 and resolved to painting as part of her recovery process. I see her as a talented yet humble person, a survivor with fighting spirit and someone who sets an example to all with her positive outlook on life. Manuel dedicated a book of his works of art to Marie which he presented to her at a recent show. “I wanted to show her how greatly she’s admired and appreciated by all her fans.” says Manuel.

The few pieces currently on show at Salon Capelli, 48 Pagenstecherstraße, Osnabrück, are selected from Manuel’s impressive portfolio of between 80–90 paintings and are for sale. Art Gallery enquiries are also welcome. For further information see www.capelli-os.de

Last weekend Manuel celebrated his first art exhibition with fellow Roxette fans and many other people. Take a look at some pictures:

Thanks to Chrissie for sending in the article and the pictures.

Per Gessle goes Snowfish

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Per Gessle himself announced today that he is officially using Snowfish from now on. You find his page by clicking here.

This is what the site looks like:

Snowfish is a new community that allows everyone to share music, videos, pictures, make friends, and make money! On the Snowfish website it is said that:

It is our firm belief that great content will always find an audience and that media creators, publishers and owners should always be compensated for their work. That’s why Snowfish introduces a unique alternative to posting content on other popular video and media sharing sites by allowing its members to earn advertising revenue for the content that they contribute to the Snowfish!

At Snowfish, every single view, listen or read of your content earns you payment (50% of advertising income received from your traffic!). These payments may be small at first (pennies) but ultimately pennies add up!

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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Happy New Year 2010!

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…just like fireworks in the sky…

nordish-by-nature

Some days ago I talked with my best friend on the phone and we talked about our little tradition we started 10 years ago cause we met first on the New Years Eve where we became friends.

We are preparing New Years Rockets with some pics of Per and Marie every year and shoot them into the sky wishing them all the luck on earth. And as we all had such a fantastic Gessle-Roxette-year this year we just got the idea to spread the tradition. Then maybe the sky will be filled with funny Roxette rockets this year…

…Wish I could fly… over the rooftops…!

Thanks to nordish-by-nature from R2R forum for this picture and story.

Disappointing NOTP radio broadcasts in Germany

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Looking forward to the radio broadcasts of the NOTP shows of several German radio stations I listened to Bayern 3, WDR 2 and SWR 1 so far. After having spent three nights in front of the PC listening to the programmes the result is just disappointing:

Only Bayern 3 was able to bring us a “new” recording with “Wish I could fly” and “Joyride” from Munich. On some special they even played “It must have been love” AND interviewed Christoffer Lundquist and Clarence Öfwerman and played “The Look” from Munich, too. Unfortunately, the only thing that annoyed me on this show was the host who talked about Marie as a woman with silver hair. He reacted to emails very quick and admitted that he used some stuff from the CD and recordings from Antwerp/Rotterdam as well. But in the end – this was the best radio special about NOTP in Germany so far.

The next to come was the special on WDR2. They even splitted the NOTP broadcast in two parts on two nights, so I thought we were supposed to get some new stuff. In the end, they played “The Look” and “Listen to your heart” from of the official NOTP CD and “Joyride”, which most probably came from Rotterdam or Munich and was nothing new to us. The host said that Marie looks “static” on stage and that she hasn’t fully recovered yet – well, there is nothing MORE to recover for her. She will stay like that – I think. Of course, we all would be happy if it wasn’t, who knows. In fact the host thought she isn’t in the best of health and said it. In the end – no new recordings here, too.

SWR1 played “Wish I could fly” – which would have been nice to know, because they didn’t play it in the official NOTP hours but BEFORE the show started. Well, in the end there is nothing to be angry about because they also didn’t offer anything new but played the already known version from Munich. When the show started I was happy because they played live stuff which wasn’t on the CD, but now I think it also was the Munich stuff. Looking forward to Roxette the next disapppointment came immediately. Again: No new version of “The Look” and “It must have been love”, but another time from the CD.
Compared to what the Belgium and Dutch channels offered so far this is just really disappointing. But in the end the Belgian/Dutch shows were better as well. So it fits..

Looking to the future… the far away future… well, there will be a TV show about this year’s Proms on Deluxe Music around EASTER. A bit late, eller hur?

Full list:

The Look, Interview, It must have been love, Wish I could fly (from Munich)
Listen to your heart and The Look (from CD)
Joyride (from wherever..)
Thumbs up to Bayern 3, a big Boooh to WDR2 and SWR1 (although the SWR1 host was much nicer and seemed to know all the relevant facts about Marie)