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Roxette Diaries premiere in August!

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As we already wrote about it earlier, a Roxette movie is coming. According to Hallandsposten (1; 2), the Roxette Diaries behind-the-scenes documentary directed by Jonas Åkerlund will premiere in August at the Way Out West Festival. The festival is between 13th and 15th August 2015 in Gothenburg, Sweden.

As you know, Jonas got exclusive access to a huge amount of private videos filmed backstage during Roxette’s world tours, in studios, during PR tours and at other places. He received the videos in April 2014 and now he created a story about Roxette. The first updates were about tapes from 1988-2001, but later Per said what you’ll see in the movie is from 1986-1995. Now Hallandsposten mentions 1988-2001 again, but he used our article as reference, so it’s probably 1986-1995 in the end. Let’s see what happens.

Watch the fantastic trailer on Mr. Åkerlund‘s website HERE!

Hopefully, the movie will be available soon to a wider audience, too.

roxette_diaries_premiere

P.S.: Thanx for reading us, Hallandsposten. 😉

Roxette Diaries – a movie coming soon!

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You might remember that a bit more than a year ago, April 2014 Per posted updates (1; 2) about a cooperation with Jonas Åkerlund involving old video tapes related to Roxette. This was what he wrote back then:

MONDAY UPDATE w/ EXCITING NEWS: Going through loads of old Hi-8 and DV videotapes (mainly shot by Åsa) from 1988-2001 with Jonas Åkerlund and his gang.
Backstage, in the studio, video shootings, photo shoots – you name it. Have an idea to make a proper film out of it. What do you think? Cool or what? /P.

It seems the project is now very close to take form of a movie. Cool or what?

A trailer has been shared by the movie’s editor, Emma Backman. (Update: the trailer has been set (back?) to private. Probably, it was too early to publish it.) The film is directed by the most awesome Jonas Åkerlund and this fact itself guarantees a most amazing result. But that you’ll see already from the trailer.

The film will include tons of forgotten home videos and real behind the scenes of video clip shootings, photo and studio sessions, interviews, concerts, etc. More than you could ever think about! As Per says, all videos are from the years 1986-1995, so the quality of them is not compatible with the 21st century. But who cares, really? It’s so fantastic to have that many funny and magical moments documented in the past and now we will have access to them. Speechless is the word!

This is what Per says about the project:

Everything (and more) happened to Roxette between 1986 and 1995. This was the era where a videocamera wasn’t something you saw every day. The technical quality you would get was so-so but today I’m really happy we covered hundreds of hours of film from these magic years.

The ambition was to shoot everything. Studio-sessions, back-stage-parties, rehearsals. My wife, Åsa, was the commander-in-chief when it came to capture promo- and TV-shows as well as the extensive touring all over the world.

All in all I gave about 180 Hi-8/VHS-tapes to director Jonas Åkerlund and asked him if he and his team could do something special with it. Maybe create a movie that captured the spirit of Roxette in the early days as well as being honest, silly and fun to watch. Hey, I think they succeeded. Enjoy the Roxette Diaries.

Huge thanks to Åsa for filming so much over the years and that she still hasn’t got tired of it, using the camera for shooting more and more magic! We highly appreciate it!

As you can see, Jonas got appr. 180 tapes, a huge amount of material to go through. I’m sure there would have been many volunteers to help Mr. Åkerlund. The first updates were about tapes from 1988-2001, but now Per says what you’ll see in the movie is from 1986-1995. Does it mean it’s just a first part and later on there will be a vol. 2 with 1996-2001 videos? Then a 3rd part? Who’s in for a neverending movie?

Release date is unknown yet, but the film is coming soon! Whose soon? Hopefully, not Per’s. 😉

Roxette_Diaries_trailer_stills_rs

Stills are from the trailer. (Update: the trailer is set to private now, probably, because it was too early to publish it. Business as usual. 😉 )

Thanx to Roxette Diaries for googling “Roxette Diaries” and finding the trailer!

Update: So it’s Per’s soon. 🙂

ROXETTE DIARIES. Yep, it’s done. Waiting for subtitles. Release date? Soon! Cheers, P.

 

Roxette’s official videos disappearing again?

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Almost a year ago there was an issue with Roxette’s official videos disappearing for a while from YouTube. Only 6 big hits were kept online that time. It was a consequence of the EMI – Warner Music merge and back then it seemed no one was really prepared for the fact that emimusic channel on YouTube might not work after EMI is not existing anymore. The issue got solved in about 2 months and the missing videos were set back on YouTube at the same channel.

Roxette_videos_emimusic_YTNow it happened again. Some official videos, e.g. Listen To Your Heart, It Must Have Been Love, Joyride, Dangerous are set to private on emimusic channel. The last time Per shared IMHBL (March 4th) and LTYH (5th March) on Roxette’s Facebook page, the videos were still available. Will they be back with their millionaire view counts?

Other artists are facing the same issue, so it’s again not something uniquely related to Roxette, but still it’s quite annoying.

In the meantime, Warner Music Sweden is uploading many videos from the past. As per what we, Roxers are mostly interested in among them are mainly Marie Fredriksson videos, as well as a few Per Gessle vids. It’s lovely to see all those gems, but also funny to see Marie’s Tro got a new, interesting title from Warner, Sweetwater. Whatever it is and wherever it is coming from. 😉 They will surely correct it soon.

Roxette’s VEVO channel is still existing and many videos are still available at emimusic channel, but it would be great to get back all the other videos, too. Fingers crossed for it being solved this time for a longer period (forever maybe?) than just for another year.

 

Update on 21st March: When Roxette’s official YouTube channel was announced yesterday, the official videos were set back to public. Yay!

 

Unplugged tour wanted!

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Two days ago Per posted a video of Marie, Christoffer and Dea singing an acoustic version of “Stars” during the warm-up in Turku. The video went totally viral afterwards and has been shared 420 times on Facebook. It popped up several times on every Roxer’s timeline and made people go crazy and remember a wish that most of them have for a long time now: an unplugged tour.

The wishes and high hopes for an acoustic set and arrangement already came up when Roxette announced another world tour earlier this year, starting with the shows in Russia, Finland, Estonia and Lithuania. As we all know, it came differently, instead it’s (another) Greatest Hits tour in all the huge arenas around the globe.

Still, the “Stars” video which is furthermore even lo-fi and a totally unpretentious video of warming up made the hearts melt again. So, here there is our wish again: Give us an unplugged tour or at least some unplugged shows, dear Per and Marie. In case you haven’t seen the video yet (which we doubt!), you can watch it here:

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Per Gessle at the Göteborg Book Fair – the videos

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PG_20140928If you have appr. 40-50 minutes between listening to The Per Gessle Archives and reading the books, you might want to check some videos from the book fair seminars. Unfortunately, there was no proper video recording of the complete seminars, so I thought I would put together the parts I recorded. Sorry for my sometimes shaking hands – mainly at the beginning of the Friday session, but I’m not a pro when it comes to taking videos. I left the rough cuts between the parts in, not to miss any milliseconds owing to transitions. 2-3 minutes of both videos I’ve already shared in the book fair review articles (chapter 1 and chapter 2), but now you’ll be able to watch 17m 32s (appr. 1/3) of the Friday seminar (pop quiz with Per Gessle, Sven Lindström and Nisse Hellberg) and 19m 57s (appr. 2/3) of the Sunday session where Jan Gradvall interviewed Per about songwriting. I hope your eyes won’t get hurt, but in the latter video the projected background is vibrating every now and then. Or was it Per’s aura? Either way, both seminars were very exciting and entertaining. Make sure you check the part where Per talks about the upcoming Roxette tour and thanks the fans for always being around, even in the seminar audience (Sunday seminar at about 18:35).

We are grateful to have all these guys following us everywhere. It’s awesome!

Friday seminar 26th September (in case the YouTube link doesn’t work for you because of the pop quiz songs’ copyrights, try to watch it HERE on Dailymotion):

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYYws6w5X_Q

 

Sunday seminar 28th September:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec6-15y-6vU

 

I felt so sorry that my camera missed the Flickorna på TV2 part of the conversation on Sunday, because it was so very funny, but fortunately, Chrissie Röhrs recorded that part, so you can watch how the double meaning of words kicked in this time (starts at 9:20). Turn someone on or switch the TV on à la PG!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ValjtwZ6980